Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Although the Defense Department (DOD) has spent more than $4 billion to acquire the Hunter Short-Range Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a pilotless reconnaissance plan, the aircraft suffers from serious performance problems and has crashed repeatedly during flight tests. The plane's engines, originally designed for a motorcycle, have proven especially unreliable. GAO believes that the plane may prove unsuitable for use by military forces and could require costly contractor maintenance to stay in the air. DOD's recent restructuring of the program would further delay and curtail critical testing while allowing for additional procurement of systems whose performance is so far unproven and possibly defective.

GAO found that: (1) the Hunter UAV system is not logistically supportable and has serious unresolved performance deficiencies; (2) the contractor had not delivered required logistical support information as of December 1994; (3) the system may be unsuitable for theater operations and may require costly contractor maintenance and support; (4) the vehicle is grounded because of a number of crashes during testing; (5) DOD plans to go into full production before determining whether the land-based vehicle is suitable for naval operations, which jeopardizes the joint-service system; (6) although DOD recently restructured the Hunter program, the program faces further delays and curtailment of critical testing while allowing for the procurement of defective systems; and (7) the planned award of a second low-rate production contract will have a minimal effect on preserving the contractor's skilled labor pool.

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.

Director: Team: Phone: