A nonpartisan government watchdog is calling on the Department of Defense to update its testing policies so U.S. troops can acquire weapons at a quicker scale.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent government agency, published a new report on Thursday highlighting gaps in current weapons acquisitions. It encourages DoD to adopt 13 recommendations to better equip the military while elevating testing and evaluating capabilities for modernization.
The GAO analysis, published as part of a 65-page report, analyzed DoD-wide policies and “found they were not fully consistent with selected leading practices for product development as applied to test and evaluation: involve testers early, conduct iterative testing, use digital twins and threads, and obtain user feedback iteratively.”
Recommendations are being suggested as the Pentagon has pushed its own standards towards modernized systems that includes a bigger emphasis on artificial intelligence and not lagging behind global adversaries in the ongoing race for technological advancement. Broader DoD plans should be met with rigorous standards, per the GAO.
“We relied on DoD’s individual test and evaluation-related organizations to define modernization in the context of how they’ve defined their organizations’ future needs. … Collectively, these modernization plans identified a need for DoD to issue new or revised policies and guidance to support modernized test and evaluation,” Shelby Oakley, director of contracting and national security acquisitions at the GAO, told Military.com.
“Our subsequent review of these test and evaluation-related policies, including ones at the DoD-wide and individual military department levels, substantiated this need for policy changes,” she added.
GAO Recommendations
Of the GAO’s 13 total recommendations issued to the defense secretary and the secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy, the DoD concurred with seven recommendations, partially concurred with five recommendations, and did not concur with one recommendation.
The Navy was the only branch not to concur on a recommendation for test plans to incorporate “end user agreements that detail a process for obtaining ongoing user input and feedback.”
One item flagged in the report is the Air Force’s T-7A Red Hawk, which is expected to replace the legacy T-38C trainer fleet. However, Air Force officials per the report have had difficulty accessing such data in a timely manner—in addition to challenges transferring large files due to cybersecurity requirements.
Improving Warfighting Capabilities
The GAO conducted three site visits to the Air Force Test Center (AFTC), Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC), and Navy Operational Test and Evaluation Force (OPTEVFOR), specifically chosen due to being primary test agencies at each of the military departments. They also have centrally located workforces to meet with test officials and better understand modeling, simulation and live virtual constructive environments.
The report says that “DOD has yet to realize its goal” in rapidly developing weapon systems due in part to test and evaluating challenges, leading to delays in development that negatively impact the timeline for weapons to reach troops’ hands.
This has been a point of emphasis in Washington, notably in the new National Defense Authorization Act that passed the House of Representatives earlier this week. The timing of the report’s release is not related to the NDAA.
GAO reported in its findings that DoD’s digital engineering policy, along with its test and evaluation section of DoD’s systems engineering policy, “do not describe specific processes to ensure application of leading practices to testing.” It also discovered that military department-level test and evaluation policies “generally did not reflect the leading practices beyond the level found in DoD-wide policies.”
Key program documents, like acquisition strategies and test strategies for selected weapon systems acquisition programs it reviewed, were not properly reflected.
“Our report identified gaps between DoD policies and leading practices in how to develop, test, and evaluate weapon systems such that they are relevant and responsive to warfighter needs,” Oakley said. “Warfighter needs are mission-dependent, but generally include things like schedule for delivery, capability effectiveness and lethality, and suitability factors such as reliability, maintainability, and safety of the operator.”
Not a New Point of Emphasis
The issues conveyed in the report that are leading to the GAO suggestions are nothing new. In fact, they’ve been around for decades.
Oakley said that DoD weapons systems acquisition has been part of the GAO’s high-risk list dating back to 1990.
“The problems facing this issue area, including weapon system test and evaluation specifically, are long-standing and have persisted through numerous administrations over the past 35 years,” she said. “We did not compare policies across administrations nor did that aspect factor into our report.”
For example, in June of this year, GAO found that the DoD’s expected time frame to deliver initial capabilities for 79 of its major defense acquisition programs averaged about 12 years—longer than the average time frame of 10 years for 82 programs identified in May 2019.
“We have undertaken a body of work and issued reports since 2022 documenting the practices that leading product development companies rely on to successfully develop, test, integrate, produce and support innovative products that fulfill the needs of their customers and users,” Oakley said. “This work has provided a roadmap that we’ve encouraged DoD to use to restructure its policies and processes for weapon system acquisitions.”
Oakley added that the GAO looks forward to implementing the DoD’s November 2025 memorandum to transform the nation’s defense acquisition system into the warfighting acquisition system, as well as its implementation of the report’s recommendations.
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