Summary: The Defense Department (DOD) has made the Joint Strike Fighter program a leading example of military acquisition reform. A key concept is to demonstrate, before moving into the engineering and manufacturing phase, that critical technologies, processes, and system characteristics are able to produce an affordable family of strike aircraft--one that meets all participants' needs. Once a weapons system enters the development phase, a large, fixed investment has already been made and any significant changes at that point will have a ripple effect on cost and schedule. Although GAO is encouraged by the design of the acquisition strategy for the Joint Strike Fighter, GAO has concerns about its implementation. GAO's biggest concern is that critical technologies are projected to be at low levels of technical maturity when the engineering and manufacturing development contract is scheduled to be awarded. Also, when the competing contractors experienced design problems and cost overruns, DOD restructured the program in a way that will provide less information than originally planned before selecting between the two competing contractors' proposals. GAO believes that program managers should continue to focus on risk-reduction efforts by maturing critical technologies before entering engineering and manufacturing development and be allowed to do so without the penalty of withdrawal of funding support.
