Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

GAO's evaluation of the Short-Range Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program--a $2.7 billion effort to produce pilotless aircraft for use in surveillance and other activities--revealed that the aircraft has not shown its readiness for production. Yet the Pentagon, contrary to earlier plans for operational testing before limited production, now expects production after only limited testing that does not adequately assess the performance of several critical systems. Moreover, the testing was done under unrealistic conditions; although the aircraft will need to fly over heavily forested and mountainous areas, the testing took place in the Arizona desert. In addition, the criteria used to evaluate the aircraft's performance are inadequate. As a result, the Defense Department may be committing itself to producing a largely unproven system.

GAO found that: (1) the UAV Joint Project Office plans to exercise two system production options before operational testing; (2) limited user testing did not address critical performance issues; (3) limited user testing was not performed in a realistic environment; and (4) operational test agencies that conducted the test could not fully evaluate most of the test results.

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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