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Defense Department leaders must change the cultural causes of waste and mismanagement in weapons programs, House lawmakers said on Tuesday.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee heard testimony on the significant cost and schedule overruns for weapons acquisitions detailed in a recent Government Accountability Office report. In its annual assessment of the programs, GAO found that none of the procurements it reviewed was meeting best practice standards for mature technologies, stable design or mature production processes by critical junctures.

While weapons acquisitions face difficulties similar to those in major procurements governmentwide, lawmakers are interested in them, in part because of the massive funding they receive. From 2000 to 2007, Defense roughly doubled its planned investment in new weapons systems from $790 billion to $1.6 trillion. Weapons systems now represent one of the largest discretionary items in the budget. The department expects to invest about $900 billion during the next five years in development and procurement, 37 percent of which will go specifically to new major weapons systems.

Cost overruns in major weapons acquisitions now reach almost $300 billion, according to the GAO report, making them "one of the biggest sources of wasteful spending in the federal budget," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the committee. Lawmakers' frustration and outrage crossed the aisle; the hearing was called by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

Davis said the problems GAO cited are far from new, describing schedule and cost issues with the procurements of six small warships in 1794. The ranking member of the committee said Congress and the Defense Department have focused too long on symptoms instead of addressing the "root causes of chronic dysfunction in major system development projects."

"We should look beyond the persistent symptoms to the broader, deeply ingrained personnel and management practices that can empower -- or cripple -- complex procurements like these," Davis said.

Several lawmakers said department leaders have not done a satisfactory job prioritizing weapons acquisitions based on budgetary realities and the relevant security risks. "One gets the sense that the Pentagon is functioning as if resources are unlimited and no competing demands exist," said Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass.

Michael Sullivan, GAO's director of acquisition and sourcing management, said he has seen some improvement in the programs' leadership and believes that those at the top are working to make the hard decisions necessary. He also noted, however, that these improvements are taking place close to the end of an administration.

"There's reason for optimism, but the transitory nature of people at the top is really what keeps anyone from being able to change the underlying culture," Sullivan said.

James Finley, deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology, said the best way to mitigate major shakeups at the political level to ensure there is a strong cadre of career employees in the acquisition community. "When I came in we brought in very senior executive people with industry experience and military experience and the passion to help our country," Finley said. "That has made an astounding difference from the leadership point of view."

Sullivan said the department has sufficient funding to acquire the weapons systems it needs, but it must improve internal oversight. The structure of the department, he believes, contributes to the difficulty in managing procurement programs.

"When you have the parochial nature and stovepipes that exist in the acquisition community, oversight within the Pentagon is critical. That's where hard decisions have to be made," he said. "Oversight within there has to improve significantly."

COMMENTS

• Attacking two major problems could make a significant dent. 1) Improve the requirements engineering. We need to do better at developing and managing the requirements. We need to get stakeholder concurrence with the requirements and put a halt to requirements creep late in the program (after the requirements phase). 2) Improve program cost and schedule estimation. We have to quit doing the success oriented programs with aggressive schedules and plan for problems, sort of like performing risk engineering. We have to quit adding effort and holding cost and schedule firm. You know, the old "we have to suck it up." BW Posted May 6, 2008 12:00 PM
• Well 1 out of 3 ain't bad. We are overworked we need more people we need more training we need more money. Great solutions to a problem but I would not have expected less from our cadre CS Dan ketter Posted April 30, 2008 2:08 PM
• The changes necessary to address the problem have to come from Congress, not DoD. As long as there are programs of the scale that DoD has, the acquisition process will continue to be manipulated for political purposes,a dn the blame shifted to acquisition personnel tasked to accomplish the impossible. It is not suprising this problem is framed as a Defense issue and one of program management, rather than one of resources allocated by Congress and of the assumptions they made in authorizing those programs. GovtPCO Posted April 30, 2008 2:07 PM