Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the extent to which the Navy conducted operational testing and evaluation (OT&E) before it made decisions on full-scale development or low-rate initial production of weapons systems.
GAO found that: (1) the Department of Defense (DOD) incorporated an OT&E phase in its weapons systems acquisition policy to encourage the military services to conduct OT&E during the earliest possible acquisition phase; (2) DOD encouraged the use of operational assessments during early acquisition phases when prototype and hardware costs or availability precluded OT&E; (3) the Navy typically approved weapons systems for full-scale development and low-rate initial production before it completed OT&E; (4) the Navy conducted a limited number of operational assessments to support early milestone decisions, although some of the operational assessments were so limited that they could not project the systems' potential effectiveness or suitability; and (5) the Navy's independent OT&E agency believed that the DOD direction that it prepare operational assessments, based on data from nonindependent sources without actually testing the systems, threatened its impartiality and independence.
