The Government Accountability Office said most of the Department of Defense’s hypersonic programs are not using leading product development practices, impacting the agency’s goal to quickly build hypersonic weapons with speeds of at least Mach 5.
Of the six hypersonic weapon efforts reviewed, four were found not using modern digital engineering tools, including virtual representations of physical products, and not soliciting user feedback to improve the capabilities of minimum viable products, GAO said Monday.
GAO also highlighted in its report the DOD’s limited experience developing and fielding hypersonic weapons, causing difficulty in how the agency determines cost estimates, and its insufficient report to Congress about the progress of its components in fielding such weapons.
The congressional watchdog provided 10 recommendations to address the issues, including increasing the incorporation of feedback from users into system designs, expanding the use of modern digital engineering tools, improving cost estimates and expanding enterprise-level reporting activities.