Pentagon ‘alarmingly slow’ at fielding new weapons, government report says

[rangerrebew]

Pentagon ‘alarmingly slow’ at fielding new weapons, government report says

By PHILLIP WALTER WELLMAN STARS AND STRIPES • June 18, 2024   
 
The U.S. military takes too much time to get new weapons in the hands of troops and needs “a wholesale shift” to maintain its edge, a federal watchdog agency said this week. The Defense Department “remains alarmingly slow in delivering new and innovative weapon system capabilities, even as national security threats continue to evolve,” the Government Accountability Office said in its annual report on weapons systems, which was released Monday. The report highlighted the risks posed by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and China’s growing capabilities. The GAO examined more than 100 of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons, which together are expected to cost more than $2 trillion to develop and acquire.

Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-06-18/weapons-systems-gao-report-14220906.html
Source - Stars and Stripes

[PeteS in CA]

The development and testing process can be 5-10 years in some cases. My previous employer built and finished delivery of a batch of prototype microwave power modules before I started there. Six years after I came there the military (not sure which branch) gave approval for production and ... the engineers on the project had to find some way of replacing a key IC which had been obsoleted, had no equivalent, and had not been put into production by a semiconductor company that specialized in producing obsoleted components for military and industrial users.

Few companies are willing to put up with the high-risk, long-term dev/test cycles for military products that Congress can and sometimes does slash in half or wipe out of existence with a pen stroke.