The Pentagon reduced waste, abuse, and mismanagement in most “high-risk” areas over the past two years, but is losing ground in weapons acquisition, the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report.
The latest edition of the biennial “High-Risk Series” arrives as the Trump administration is working to shift 8 percent of the 2026 defense spending plan to new priorities, fire up to 61,000 department civilian workers, and pass a department-wide audit.
“The government has great difficulty in controlling the costs of high dollar value [weapons systems] acquisitions in its more than $750 billion procurement portfolio,” the report says, describing “cost growth, schedule delays, or both” in major weapons purchases. For example, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s block 4 modernization upgrade is years behind schedule and billions over budget. That could mean fewer fighters are available in a potential conflict with China and Russia.
GAO also found the potential for big cost overruns in the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, or NGAD, and said the Air Force isn’t being fully transparent about cost projections. The report also notes delays for B-21 stealth bombers, Columbia-class submarines and Ford-class aircraft carriers.
The Defense Department and the military services, with the exception of the Marine Corps, have consistently failed to pass an audit, despite Congressional pressure. But the new administration has promised to change that.
Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing Monday, Stephen Feinberg, the nominee for deputy defense secretary, said he sees the challenge with an audit is the department is full of sprawling programs that become far too complex to manage. “We’ve had some great, obviously civilian leadership of the Pentagon, in my humble opinion, but at times, some of the people in the operational execution jobs are not involved in detail,” he said.
If confirmed, he said he’d commit to examining virtually all Defense Department programs in great detail, to find which duplicate other efforts and can be scrapped or merged.
“I was told we have 480 systems at DOD. I’m not sure the exact number, but obviously we’ve got to consolidate systems. We’ve got to bring in the right help that can work closely with the Pentagon to be able to clarify and make simpler our financial process,” he said.
That’s a very different, more deliberate and detailed form of cost understanding than has been championed by others in the Trump Administration. During his confirmation, Feinberg also promised a similar sort of analysis of force cuts—on that’s more careful than the arbitrary firing of all probationary workers.
Tara Murphy Dougherty, CEO of data and decision science company Govini, which also analyzes Defense Department data, told Defense One that the Pentagon has a number of areas that are “ripe for cuts,” but, like Feinberg, she urged caution and delicacy.
“Legacy weapons systems and programs that have no business in the new American way of war,” are the most appropriate targets, she said. “Part of this is modernizing the defense acquisition process so that it’s more efficient and can better fund modernization programs.”
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