The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Tuesday explaining the challenges and progress the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) faced in fiscal year 2016.
The report was released before Tuesday’s first successful test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) System intercepting an ICBM-class target (Defense Daily, May 30).
The GAO conducted this study of the MDA due to a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2016 directing the office to assess to what extent the agency achieved acquisition goals and objectives. GAO highlighted MDA has received about $123 billion in funding over its lifetime and is planning to spend an additional $37 billion through FY 2021.
The report found the agency has made some progress in achieving its testing and delivery goals for individual elements of the larger Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) and also for capabilities that can be derived when individual elements are combined (called BMDS level capabilities). However, MDA was still unable to complete its planned FY ’16 goals. The agency conducted 10 flight tests but had to delay others.
The GAO said MDA delivered new interceptors, upgraded fielded interceptors, and delivered five BMDS level capabilities “however, testing revealed that the BMDS level capabilities delivered will not likely provide robust defense as planned.”
The report focused on MDA challenges to achieving FY 2016 testing, asset, and capability delivery goals; ensuring transparency of test schedules and costs; and establishing a sound business case for future efforts.
The GAO made four recommendations to increase transparency into testing and cost estimates and also improve acquisition strategies for MDA’s future efforts.
The report noted MDA’s test schedule continues to be aggressive, which results in frequent changes to planned testing from year to year. Such changes are not clearly tracked, which reduces the traceability of planned test objectives. The GAO also noted “MDA requests more than $1 billion in funding each fiscal year for tests, but the cost estimates to support the request are inconsistent and lack transparency.”
“Until MDA addresses the limited traceability in its test schedule and transparency of the associated costs, the ability to track test progress costs will remain difficult,” the report added.
GAO conducted this performance audit from May 2016 to May 2017.