Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed 23 Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition programs, focusing on their: (1) requirements; (2) schedule; (3) performance; (4) cost; and (5) funding support.

GAO found that: (1) DOD procedurally makes milestone decisions after review of each program's four phases of acquisition; (2) DOD could not nominate any of the programs for milestone authorization for full-scale development or full-rate production until fiscal year 1990; (3) most of the 23 programs were approaching such a decision; (4) DOD reduced the budgets for eight programs by deferring some research and development costs and planned procurements and delaying new program starts; (5) nine projects were in early development stages, with total cost estimates ranging from $1,030 million to $11,599 million; (6) nine projects were in full-scale development, with total cost estimates ranging from $909 million to $41.5 billion; and (7) four projects were in production, with total cost estimates ranging from $5.2 billion to $12.6 billion. GAO also found that: (1) all of the programs established the need for their requirements and represented a significant increase in capability; and (2) some of the programs experienced or expected to experience schedule slippages, performance obstacles, increased costs, and inadequate funding.