Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In developing its latest drone spy plane, the Outrider, the Defense Department (DOD) is repeating the same mistakes that it made in producing earlier unmanned aerial vehicles. DOD plans to award production contracts before adequate testing has been completed, and, as it did with the Hunter and the Pioneer, DOD has underestimated the time and effort required to integrate certain components into the Outrider, including electromagnetic interference shielding and stronger landing gear needed to satisfy Navy requirements. Finally, weight and engine design problems have raised doubts about whether the Outrider can be deployed aboard Navy ships. Consequently, DOD will have few guarantees that Outrider will satisfy the military's needs by the time a decision is made on low-rate initial production in fiscal year 1998.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD is not applying lessons learned from prior UAV programs to the Outrider ACTD; (2) for example, despite problems with the Pioneer and Hunter stemming from DOD's decision to award further production contracts without conducting operational testing or demonstrating that the system is user-supportable, DOD is pursuing the same strategy for the Outrider; (3) in addition, DOD has underestimated, as it did for the Pioneer and Hunter programs, the time and effort necessary to integrate nondevelopmental items into Outrider; (4) moreover, the Outrider system may not satisfy user needs unless problems associated with meeting joint requirements are resolved and interoperability with other DOD systems is ensured; and (5) consequently, DOD will not have assurance that the Outrider will meet user needs by the time of the planned fiscal year 1998 low-rate production decision.

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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