The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has made progress but can do more to strengthen acquisition management by improving how it develops and fields the nation’s Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS), a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said.
GAO makes four recommendations for MDA, which has a new director, Vice Adm. James Syring. The report said the new director who has been on the job only about six months, has the opportunity to refocus the agency, which has spent about $90 billion since 2002, and plans to spend about $8 billion a year through 2017.
GAO recommends MDA fully assess alternatives before selecting investments. Some analysis of alternatives (AoA) have been conducted as MDA considers new programs, but the agency did not conduct “robust” AoA’s for its new programs, Aegis BMD SM-3 Block IIB and the Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS), the report said.
The annual report (GAO-14-432) said in the past it has found “That without analyses of alternatives, programs may not select the best solution for the warfighter, are at risk for cost increases, and can face schedule delays.”
The Fiscal Year 2014 budget request called for the termination of both the SM-3 Block IIB and PTSS (Defense Daily, April 11).
GAO also recommends MDA reduce the risk that unproven target missiles can disrupt key tests. The report noted that “development issues discovered after three programs prematurely committed to production continue to disrupt both interceptor production and flight test schedules.” MDA plans to fly targets for the first time in its first operational test using several BMD systems, adding risk.
DoD partly agreed with this recommendation, saying the decision to perform target risk reduction flight tests should be weighed against other program factors.
The third recommendation is for MDA to report full program costs.
Finally, GAO recommends the agency stabilize acquisition baselines. While MDA has made “substantial improvements” to the clarity of cost and schedule baselines since first reporting in 2010, the report said, “they are still not useful for decision makers to gauge progress.”
As an example, the GAO report said, by not including service operation and support costs in their program costs, life cycle costs for some programs could be “significantly understated.”
DoD said its current forum for reporting MDA program costs should not include non-MDA funding.
GAO said it believes the recommendations are valid.