The Pentagon wants to get troops new weapons faster, but its testing isn’t following best practices, according to a new government watchdog report.
Current policies have often focused on looking for problems after weapons are already developed, slowing down the process. Policy changes, the report concluded, would ultimately help the Department of Defense achieve the speed and modernization it is looking for.
The Government Accountability Office said the Pentagon needed to get testers involved early on, conduct iterative testing to find problems quickly and results in gradual changes, use digital twins to mirror actual physical systems, and seek regular user feedback.
These are key principles followed by companies for product development and they are applicable to the US military as it seeks to update its policies for faster, better weapons. Currently, GAO reporting indicates, the DoD implementation appears haphazard and sloppy.
For example, the development of the Air Force’s new pilot training aircraft, the T-7A Red Hawk, didn’t include allowing testers to access test data in a timely manner, and the contract didn’t require a complete digital system model of system. And upgrades for the F-22 Raptor haven’t considered how user feedback could be incorporated into an iterative testing process.
Without revising these development and design policies, “the Air Force is missing opportunities to ensure that testing proceeds expeditiously and that the systems under test are responsive and relevant to warfighter needs,” the GAO said.
In the Army, the new MV-75 Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, which will eventually replace the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, hasn’t followed an iterative design approach. That could’ve resulted in tailoring testing to different changes in the aircraft’s development, which could’ve gotten the system to pilots quicker, the watchdog office determined.
And then the Navy, the GAO report said, only followed an iterative design process on its Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers for cybersecurity and didn’t have a digital twin.
Reviews of the Department of Defense policies ultimately led the GAO to issue 13 recommendations, including that officials revise how they evaluate weapons and align their plans with better practices. The GAO said the Pentagon fully agreed with seven of those, partially agreed with five, and didn’t concur with one.
The Pentagon did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Broadly, the defense department faces a choice, the report concluded. “On the one hand, it could continue to treat test and evaluation as a means of identifying deficiencies in weapon systems already developed and, often, already produced,” it said. That wouldn’t require any changes to the status quo but wouldn’t help the Pentagon get weapons to troops faster.
“On the other hand, DoD has an opportunity to embrace test and evaluation as a core foundation of every weapon systems acquisition program,” the GAO report added, which would be a significant change in the short term but position the department to “ensure that warfighter needs are consistently understood, prioritized, and met” in the long term.
How the Pentagon builds weapons is undergoing a shift as department leadership under the Trump administration seeks to speed up the process and get new technologies to troops quickly. Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo directing the department to modernize its testing, reduce test oversight, and streamline requirements.
“Speed to capability delivery is now our organizing principle: the decisive factor in maintaining deterrence and warfighting advantage,” Hegseth wrote.
Earlier this year, Hegseth gutted the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, which independently supervises the performance of weapons before they’re given to US military personnel, decreasing the number of programs it oversees.
Hegseth said the cuts reduced bureaucracy and allowed for more rapid deployment of new weapons. Oversight experts, however, raised concerns that the cuts to DOT&E could put troops in danger and mean problems aren’t identified before they hit the field.
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