Defense Acquisitions: Senior Leaders Should Emphasize Key Practices to Improve Weapon System Reliability

To identify how selected DOD acquisition programs addressed reliability, we assessed a non-generalizable sample of seven major defense acquisition programs. We selected both older programs that have publicly reported reliability problems, including problems we have previously identified, as well as programs that started more recently, to see how they were addressing reliability during acquisition. We reviewed key documentation, including operational test reports, Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability and Cost Rationale Reports, Life-Cycle Sustainment Plans, Systems Engineering Plans, Test and Evaluation Master Plans, and interviewed knowledgeable officials, including reliability engineers, testing officials, and program managers. We selected a mix of older and more recent acquisition programs representing all of the military services to account for changes in the acquisition environment. We excluded Navy shipbuilding programs because we have ongoing work in this area. Figure 1 shows the DOD acquisition programs included in our review.