Defense Acquisitions

The Comanche helicopter program, with a total projected cost of $48 billion, is the Army's largest aviation acquisition program. It began in 1983 as an effort to replace the Army's aging fleet of aging fleet of light utility, reconnaissance, and attack helicopters. Since then, the program has been restructured five times and is still in development. GAO found that the Comanche's restructure program is at significant risk of cost overruns, schedule delays, and degraded performance because it would (1) begin the engineering and manufacturing development phase before some key mission equipment technologies have matured and have been integrated into the flight-test aircraft; (2) compress the flight-test schedule, increasing the amount of concurrent development and operational testing; and (3) begin initial production before initial operational testing starts, resulting in concurrency between development testing and initial production. Successful commercial firms generally do not move into product development and production with such high levels of uncertainty. The Army is proposing changes to the aircraft that would adversely affect some of the Comanche's planned performance capabilities. For example, to meet increase range requirements for some missions, the Army plans to use external fuel tanks that would likely reduce the helicopter's planned stealth, cruising speed, and maneuverability. The Army acknowledges that it will not be able to restructure the Comanche program within its estimate of $4.4 billion through fiscal year 2006. A recent analysis found that program costs would exceed the Army's current estimate by about $150 million. DOD also believes that shortfalls in near-term funding could lead to a 6- to 12-month funding delay, which could add as much as $425 million to the program's overall development costs. Moreover, the Army's accelerated technology development and testing plans increase the risk of additional schedule delays and cost increases.

GAO noted that: (1) the Comanche's restructured program contains significant risks of cost overruns, schedule delays, and degraded performance because it would: (a) begin the engineering and manufacturing development phase before some key mission equipment technologies have matured and have been integrated into the flight-test aircraft; (b) compress the flight-test schedule, increasing the amount of concurrent developmental and operational testing; and (c) begin production before initial operational testing starts, resulting in concurrency between development testing and initial production; (2) the program is proceeding to the next development phase with high levels of uncertainty; (3) successful commercial firms generally do not proceed into product development and production with such high levels of uncertainty; (4) the Army is proposing changes to the aircraft that would adversely impact some of the Comanche's planned performance capabilities; (5) while their exact impact is unknown, these changes will increase the risk that the Comanche's planned performance goals will not be achieved; (6) the Army acknowledges that it will not achieve its goal of executing the Comanche's restructured development program within its funding estimate of about $4.4 billion for fiscal years 1999 through 2006; (7) an analysis by the Department of Defense's Cost Analysis Improvement Group in November 1998 found that total program costs would be about $150 million (3.4 percent) higher than the Army's estimate; (8) the Group also believes that insufficient near-term funding could lead to a 6-12 month schedule delay, which could add between $275 million and $425 million to the program's overall development costs; (9) further, the Army's accelerated technology development and testing plans increase the risk of additional schedule delays and cost increases; (10) the Army continues to single out the Comanche as the centerpiece of its aviation modernization plan; (11) the Comanche program would absorb an increasingly larger share of the Army's total aviation budget and would account for about 64 percent of the budget in fiscal year 2008; (12) according to the Army, its modernization plan provides the best balance between capabilities and resources; (13) the plan recognizes that because of funding constraints, some program modernization requirements must be traded off; and (14) as a result, older helicopters will have to be retained longer than originally planned, some helicopter upgrades will be foregone, and lower quantities of some helicopters will have to be procured.

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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