Summary: The Comanche helicopter program, with a total projected cost of $48 billion, is the Army's largest aviation acquisition program. It began in 1983 as an effort to replace the Army's aging fleet of aging fleet of light utility, reconnaissance, and attack helicopters. Since then, the program has been restructured five times and is still in development. GAO found that the Comanche's restructure program is at significant risk of cost overruns, schedule delays, and degraded performance because it would (1) begin the engineering and manufacturing development phase before some key mission equipment technologies have matured and have been integrated into the flight-test aircraft; (2) compress the flight-test schedule, increasing the amount of concurrent development and operational testing; and (3) begin initial production before initial operational testing starts, resulting in concurrency between development testing and initial production. Successful commercial firms generally do not move into product development and production with such high levels of uncertainty. The Army is proposing changes to the aircraft that would adversely affect some of the Comanche's planned performance capabilities. For example, to meet increase range requirements for some missions, the Army plans to use external fuel tanks that would likely reduce the helicopter's planned stealth, cruising speed, and maneuverability. The Army acknowledges that it will not be able to restructure the Comanche program within its estimate of $4.4 billion through fiscal year 2006. A recent analysis found that program costs would exceed the Army's current estimate by about $150 million. DOD also believes that shortfalls in near-term funding could lead to a 6- to 12-month funding delay, which could add as much as $425 million to the program's overall development costs. Moreover, the Army's accelerated technology development and testing plans increase the risk of additional schedule delays and cost increases.
