Defense Dept. needs more technical expertise, says chief weapons tester.

Despite decades of acquisition reforms, major military procurement programs continue to experience cost growth and technology readiness problems. These challenges could be solved to a large extent if the Defense Department put more emphasis on the early phases of the development process, says the Pentagon's chief weapon tester.

"The cost of programs is generally driven by decisions that are made in the initial 10 to 15 percent of the work that's done," says Charles McQueary, director of operational test and evaluation at the Defense Department.

Often the wrong decisions are made because the government lacks enough technical expertise to oversee complex programs, McQueary says in a recent interview. "You need top notch engineering capability in the government. Unfortunately, the government has lost quite a bit of its systems engineering capabilities, and when you lose these capabilities, you tend to do too much designing without an adequate knowledge of the tradeoffs."

Before they enter production, major weapon systems undergo "developmental testing" and later they move to "operational testing."

Program officials also tend to identify problems when the systems reach the operational testing phase. At that point, it becomes much more expensive to change the design. "Developmental testing is the place to find problems. Operational testing should be the period of confirmation, not a period of discovery," McQueary says.

Developmental testing is overseen by the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, while operational testing is primarily overseen by McQueary's office. There is a perception in the defense industry that the two communities are not working well together. McQueary says it would make sense for the operational testers to be involved early with the developmental test personnel.

A survey conducted at the annual National Defense Industrial Association test and evaluation conference, showed that the majority of respondents thought the relationship between development and operational testers was "strained, conflicting, minimal, sometimes non-existent, somewhat hostile."

McQueary's staff includes 46 government military and civilian personnel, as well as several contractors. The developmental test office, meanwhile, has only six government staffers and some contractors.

Over time, the developmental test office has lost its in-house expertise, McQueary notes. "There is a statute that requires [undersecretary for acquisition] Ken Kreig to certify technology readiness levels. However, the government has backed off in some of its [other] acquisition reforms ... resulting in some of the developmental test people going away: There was little work for them to do since their work was contracted out."

According to the industry survey, acquisition program managers increasingly are undermining the testing process. "The emphasis on testing has been diluted by the PMs and since they don't want to fail tests, they would rather not conduct them," one respondent writes.

Respondents offered several suggestions to improve weapons testing, such as giving testers more authority to halt systems that are unsuitable, recognize system improvements that may not be large or significant, improve the way test funding is handled, make operational tests more mission-oriented, and place more emphasis on operational testing during concept development.

James F. O'Bryon is a former Defense Department deputy director of operational test and evaluation.