“The reasons why DoD (the Defense Department) accepts flawed business cases are both structural and cultural in nature. Poor acquisition decisions are compounded by a budget planning process that requires DoD to secure long-range funding commitments before a program’s business case is fully understood. The current process incentivizes ‘starting fast’ -- awarding massive development contracts quickly, often in the name of preserving the industrial base, and obligating funds rapidly to ensure the budget is not ‘lost’ to another program. Success is all too often measured by activity (money spent), not by outcomes (capability delivered).”
That’s a quote from a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released June 9, entitled, Weapon Systems Acquisition: Beyond Business as Usual -- Using Leading Practices to Curb Waste and Save Billions. It describes long-term problems within the military procurement systems that have emerged from U.S. arms use in the Iran and Ukraine wars that in turn has drawn the attention of the White House, the Pentagon and the Congress.
The June 9, GAO report said, “DoD plans to invest over $2.4 trillion to develop and acquire its costliest weapon systems. The need for smart spending and increased urgency and innovation for these acquisitions are national imperatives to help DoD maintain a competitive edge over adversaries. But DoD continues to struggle with delivering timely, cost-effective solutions to the war-fighter, and slow, linear development approaches persist.”
The result, according to the GAO, is “the expected time frame for major programs to deliver an initial [operational] capability now exceeds 12 years. Every month of delay in a weapon system acquisition program causes a war-fighter to rely on aging, less-capable equipment for longer.”
The GAO found, “In contrast, leading commercial companies iteratively develop business cases to respond to users’ needs and finish fast, helping them stay on budget. They re-assess business cases regularly to avert problems sooner. They also ramp up investments as products demonstrate progress.”
In contrast, the GAO said, “DoD has yet to fully adopt these leading practices because acquisition policies do not treat iterative development as a founding principle for all weapon system acquisitions programs.”
However, as the GAO points out, “As noted in its November 2025 policy memorandum aimed at revamping the defense acquisition system, DoD now plans to maximize acquisition flexibility, among other changes.”
Perhaps the poster child for DoD procurement issues is the built F-35 aircraft, whose prime contractor has been Lockheed Martin.
The F-35 Lightning II is a family of fifth-generation strike fighters – with versions in the Air Force, Navy and Marines -- that integrate low-observable (stealth) technology with advanced sensors and computer networking capabilities. According to the GAO, DoD completed the final phase of the original F-35 development program in March 2024 -- over a decade later and at a cost of $250 billion more than originally planned. Now, DoD is upgrading F-35 capabilities by adding technology innovations under modernization efforts.
The GAO said, “In recent years, the program paid contractors hundreds of millions of dollars in incentive fees that were intended to improve on-time delivery. However, the structure of on-time delivery incentives allowed the contractor to deliver aircraft up to 60 days late, and still earn some of the fee.”
In addition, since 2017 there have been disputes over software with Lockheed claiming certain portions of the software were developed at the company’s expense and could not be used by the military unless it paid licensing fees. At the same time the Pentagon claimed that the government had paid for the F-35’s software development, and the military should not pay twice for access to it.
According to a 2025 GAO report, the Pentagon did not have the data rights needed to perform software diagnostics and some maintenance activities on the F-35s, including engine repairs, without an authorized contractor, because Lockheed Martin owned key intellectual property.
The newest GAO report on the F-35, sent last Wednesday to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, said, “DoD operates and sustains over 800 F-35s and plans to buy about 1,700 more aircraft by the mid-2040s. DoD uses the F-35 to perform a wide range of missions and it is vital to the success of U.S. combat operations and homeland defense, according to DoD.”
GAO also said sustainment costs for the planned life of the overall F-35 program through 2088 have been estimated at $1.6 trillion.
However, the main finding of last week’s GAO report is: “Since 2021, F-35 sustainment costs have increased as fleet size has grown, but the F-35 fleet continues to not meet sustainment performance goals, with mission capable (MC) rates and full mission capable (FMC) rates declining.”
For example, according to the GAO, while operating costs have grown, the Air Force full mission capable rate for its F-35A aircraft in 2025 was 28.5 percent; the Navy F-35Cs were 15.3 percent, and the Marine F-35B and C versions were 16.2 percent and 22 percent respectively.
The GAO report said the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) “identified depot repair speed and the ability to procure parts as root causes driving low sustainment performance rate.” It also added that “an investment of about $13.7 billion in addition to previously planned spending through fiscal year 2031 to meet performance objectives. Overall, the strategy aims to achieve a fleet-wide [F-35] readiness level of an 80 percent MC rate and a 65 percent FMC rate by 2030.”
In 2025, GAO found that, according to JPO officials and maintainers, “the F-35 has faced significant corrosion issues that maintainers cannot repair without contractor support due to a lack of technical data.” The GAO recommended the DoD determine whether it had access to technical data needed from manufacturers, but last week’s new GAO report said they had not.
“We have consistently found,” the GAO said, “that technical data issues have hindered F-35 sustainment. While the [Defense] Department has taken some incremental steps to address these issues, significant challenges remain without a clear timeline for resolution.”
This is a problem recognized on Capitol Hill. The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its Friday press release describing the panel’s approved version of the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act listed “Shifts burden of proof to contractors to justify restrictions on technical data” as one of its several major legislative reforms for the Pentagon.
Another DoD reform approved by the Senate committee: “Requires acceleration of the adoption and purchase of low-cost munitions, including a pilot program on air defense interceptors.”
Picking up on this issue last Friday was former-Joint Chiefs Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown Jr. Speaking at the Center for a New American Security’s 2026 National Security Conference, Brown said, “The challenge we have is when you look at munitions, we don't prioritize those as much and they become the numbers [that] will go up and down. The numbers are enough just to keep the stockpile, but not enough to actually execute [if you are in a war].”
Brown went on to say, “Resourcing is an issue. If you can't get a budget on time, you can't write a contract.” That’s a reminder that the last time Congress passed a defense appropriations bill before October 1, when the federal fiscal year begins, was in 2010, for the fiscal year 2011 Pentagon budget. In each of the past 16 years, the DoD has had to rely on continuing resolutions and omnibus reconciliation packages, which delay defense funding for months into the fiscal year.
Brown called for “consistency and delivery” by which he meant how quickly you're able to scale numbers of items and deliver them, knowing funds are available.
“One of the things that I was pushing for as the Air Force chief and again as a [Joint Chiefs] Chairman is multi-year procurement,” Brown said.
He went on, “If you did multi-year procurement with a floor, you're always producing X number. You can always go above that, but never go below a certain number. That keeps industry with some level of certainty and that builds that trust so they can continue to deliver.”
Brown added, “How well do we understand across all our various weapon systems? Who are the primes [prime contractors] to do this work? Who are the subs [sub-contractors] and what [does]] the supply chain looks like. And then on top of that, what is the workforce or whatever automation you're going to use. It was a work I was doing as the [Joint Chiefs] Chairman to identify as we looked at all of our operational plans.”
Brown then continued, “So if you buy affordable mass [of weapons and munitions] today and put it on the shelf, will it still be viable five years from now, or five weeks from now? And so the key part here is how can you actually have a level of affordable mass that's adaptable that you can continue to upgrade over time and change out -- either software or parts or hardware and then you can scale it very quickly.”
Brown said at one point, “The aspect of [defense] production is also part of deterrence,” adding, “and showing that you can surge capability” is an important part.
As Brown and others have pointed out, Ukraine and Iran have suddenly focused more attention on innovation at the lower weaponry and munitions levels, at the same time that costly changes are continuing to be needed in the more complicated air and space armament such as the F-35.
Like it or not, the American people may have to learn to live with spending $1 trillion-plus, hopefully for a Department of Defense, rather than a Department of War.
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