Summary: The Pentagon's strategy for acquiring nearly 8,500 fighter planes, attack helicopters, and other aircraft at a total cost of $335 billion through 2020--a level of spending not seen since the peak defense budgets of the 1980s--is neither realistic nor justified given current budgetary constraints and the end of the Cold War. The Defense Department's (DOD) acquisition strategy assumes that overall defense spending will begin to increase in real terms after fiscal year 2002 and that it will realize large savings from infrastructure downsizing and acquisition reform. However, GAO believes that overall defense spending will be stable, at best, for the foreseeable future and the savings from infrastructure reductions and acquisition reform are unclear. In GAO's view, DOD's aircraft acquisition strategy is a "business-as-usual" approach--adding billions of dollars to defense acquisition costs and delaying delivery of weapon systems to U.S. forces. DOD has typically made long-term commitments to acquire weapon systems on the basis of optimistic procurement assumptions and then made significant changes because of insufficient funding. The upshot is that large numbers of weapons are not procured at planned rates, leading to schedule stretchouts and billions of dollars in higher program costs. In other words, DOD often buys less and pays more than expected. GAO urges DOD to bring its aircraft investment strategy into line with more realistic, long-term projections of overall defense spending.
