DoD has appointed a new leadership to oversee space acquisitions that have committed to adopting practices GAO said it recommended for improving outcomes.
Those practices include delegating the maturation of technologies to the science and technology community; adopting an evolutionary development approach; funding science and technology to allow for the pursuit of significant breakthroughs; and improving collaboration on requirements, the report said.
It said however, that adopting best practices for space acquisitions would not be easy because DoD as a whole encourages competition for funding, something that has been detrimental to stemming cost and schedule growth.
Further, the changes being proposed will require new thinking about how space systems should be developed and incentives used, GAO said.
It said that by establishing investment priorities embedding best practices in policy, and addressing capacity shortfalls, DoD can mitigate these challenges and better position programs for success.
