Test and Evaluation

As its budget declines, the Pentagon is faced with hard choices about how best to manage its $25 billion worth of test ranges. During the last 3 years, the Defense Department (DOD) has been working on ways to achieve savings and cut costs by consolidating test capabilities and streamlining management arrangements. This report discusses (1) the extent to which DOD has achieved savings and benefits through its consolidation efforts and (2) the effectiveness of the interservice consolidation process known as test and evaluation reliance. GAO notes that although DOD has realized some test and evaluation savings to date, it has missed potentially significant savings by not aggressively consolidating existing test range capabilities. Some test capability consolidations have resulted from intraservice efforts, but most savings are expected through the elimination of overhead positions and reductions to test range support accounts. The interservice test and evaluation reliance process, while laying a foundation for future savings, has resulted in minimal savings and few consolidations because of a lack of DOD aggressiveness. The planned test and evaluation budget cut of $729 million over the fiscal year 1991-95 period represented a cut of about 2.4 percent, a rather modest reduction considering that test and evaluation funding has risen by 25 percent during the past decade.

GAO found that: (1) DOD expects to reduce test and evaluation spending by $729 million through streamlining efforts and other management actions; (2) minor interservice consolidations are occurring in three of the nine test areas for land vehicles, nuclear weapons' effects, and gun munitions testing; (3) although the test and evaluation reliance process has resulted in minimal savings and few consolidations, the process has begun to overcome barriers to cross-service cooperation; (4) DOD has not aggressively pursued the consolidation of existing capabilities; (5) DOD established a policy to focus on future test investments at key locations and allowed other sites to atrophy for lack of funding and eventually cease operations; (6) the reliance process fostered policy decisions that allowed the services to retain their existing test capabilities and funding authority; (7) the reliance study methodology did not adequately address future test requirements, uniform measures of capacity and use, and cost-benefit analyses; (8) DOD did not have sufficient data available to determine whether it could consolidate test and evaluation capabilities; and (9) DOD expects to develop 5-year master plans for each reliance area that could improve the study methodology and result in more significant cost savings.

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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