Why are these operational tests inadequate? Well, there are many reasons. In some cases, the tests are performed by the contractor and contractor personnel. That’s not a very good substitute for a typical GI, because contractor personnel are often skilled technicians. It’s also a fact that the contractor and the contractor personnel, for understandable reasons, want to move forward with production because their jobs, their profits, depend upon it.
A second reason why these operational tests are inadequate in many cases, according to GAO and others, is that our test facilities and equipment are inadequate. Now, when you are trying to test these under combat conditions, we all fully understand that, at best, it’s no substitute for real combat. But we have got to do the best we can, so I believe it’s a serious matter when the GAO reports that we don’t have the wherewithal to simulate what the Russians might throw at us.
A further problem is the lack of adequate funding. Lack of adequate funding results, frankly, from the fact that the director of the testing activity doesn’t have a direct say and is not responsible for the funding of operational tests. He has to go through the Under Secretary of Defense who is responsible for procurement of weapons and our legislation would correct that. But the thing that bothers me the most, and one of the reasons why you see a shortening of time for testing, and attempts to downgrade operational testing, is that a project or a weapon system creates a momentum of its own. I have already mentioned that obviously, the contractor wants to move ahead to production as fast as possible.
The same is true of the military and civilians within the Pentagon, because their names, their reputations are at stake. I’m not saying that the desire to move, to expedite is all bad. In fact, there are many benefits in it, as long as we have an independent check and test of what a weapon system can do. And that’s what we are concerned with.
That was part of an opening statement from Senator William V. Roth on June 23, 1983, “Management of the Department of Defense, Part 5: Oversight of DOD’s Operational Tests and Evaluation Procedures.” Hearing before the committee on Governmental Affairs, US Senate, 98th Congress, 1st Session.
Weapon systems are inadequately tested because PMs are incentivized by their Services to skimp on testing. They are forced to pay for testing out of development funds; they are rewarded for fielding crap that doesn’t work, and punished for taking the time to make sure it works. The PM who oversees early development is long gone by the time the system’s ineffectiveness and unsuitability is demonstrated, and thus suffers no consequences for those poor early choices.
If DoD took testing seriously, it would provide test services for free to all acquisition programs, paid for out of general funds, and would punish PMs for failing to make good use of them.
I like the idea of a general fund for testing, and in fact think such a concept should be expanded to a wider range of RDT&E activities, including exploratory development.