Navy Weapons Testing

Defense Policy on Early Operational Testing Gao ID: NSIAD-89-98 May 8, 1989

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the extent to which the Navy conducted operational testing and evaluation (OT&E) before it made decisions on full-scale development or low-rate initial production of weapons systems.

GAO found that: (1) the Department of Defense (DOD) incorporated an OT&E phase in its weapons systems acquisition policy to encourage the military services to conduct OT&E during the earliest possible acquisition phase; (2) DOD encouraged the use of operational assessments during early acquisition phases when prototype and hardware costs or availability precluded OT&E; (3) the Navy typically approved weapons systems for full-scale development and low-rate initial production before it completed OT&E; (4) the Navy conducted a limited number of operational assessments to support early milestone decisions, although some of the operational assessments were so limited that they could not project the systems' potential effectiveness or suitability; and (5) the Navy's independent OT&E agency believed that the DOD direction that it prepare operational assessments, based on data from nonindependent sources without actually testing the systems, threatened its impartiality and independence.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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