Aircraft Acquisition: Affordability of DOD's Investment Strategy

摘要

The affordability of the Department of Defense's (DOD) aircraft modernizationprograms has been the subject of much recent debate and was the primary subject of hearings held by your Committee in June 1996 and March 1997. At those hearings, we testified that DOD'S planned investments in aircraft were not achievable within likely future budgets and appeared to be inconsistent with the existing security environment.1 The Congressional Budget Office (cBo) expressed similar concerns. However DOD continues to believe that its aircraft investment strategy will be affordable. Since the March 1997 hearing, we have updated our analysis of DOD'S aircraft investment strategy to reflect the December 1996 Selected Acquisition Reports. As you subsequently requested, we are issuing this report to assist you in your work on the fiscal year 1998 defense authorization bill and continuing review of the Quadrennial Defense Review. The Congress will be faced with a number of critical decisions on DOD'S aircraft investment strategy as the Nation proceeds in an environment of constrained budgets for the foreseeable future. The purpose of this report is to inform the Congress about the long-term implications and affordability of DOD'S aircraft strategy. To gain a broad understanding of the affordability of DOD'S aircraft investment strategy, we evaluated (1) DOD'S and cBo's estimates of the annual funding needed for aircraft programs, as a percentage of the overall DOD budget, and compared that percentage to a long-term historical average percentage of the defense budget; (2) the potential long-term availability of funding for DOD'S planned aircraft procurements; and (3) DOD'S traditional approach to resolving funding shortfalls.