06/17/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/17/2025 08:15
What GAO Found
The Army's air and missile defense mission is to protect soldiers, equipment, and facilities from air and missile threats, such as cruise missiles and rockets. These are capabilities that near-peer competitors, such as Russia and China, have invested in. To address these threats, the Army is pursuing multiple efforts to modernize its air and missile defense capabilities.
Army Futures Command is responsible for developing requirements for future Army systems. It identified four capabilities that the Army needs and developed requirements to meet those needs. For example, the Army developed requirements for a short-range air defense system, the Sgt. Stout.
National Passport Information Center (NPIC) Post-Call Survey Respondents' Overall Customer Satisfaction, Fiscal Year 2018 through Fiscal Year 2024
Since 2021, the Army has identified seven air and missile defense efforts to develop and acquire needed capabilities and increased its requests in the President's Budget to support them. For example, the Army's requests for the efforts increased from $8.8 billion to $11.8 billion from fiscal years 2021 through 2025. The Army also chose acquisition pathways intended to speed development, production, and delivery of capabilities for most efforts.
The Army's development of the seven modernization efforts did not fully apply leading practices for product development. Most efforts use 3D modeling and simulation, in which a static representation of a product is tested with predefined data to understand how it will function in a specific situation. In contrast, leading companies use modern design tools like digital twins (dynamic virtual representations of products) and digital threads (common information sources) early and as part of an iterative development approach. Digital twins can enable design updates in real time. Digital threads connect stakeholders with real-time data across the product life-cycle to help inform decisions.
Fully using these tools can provide efficiencies, such as the ability to anticipate potential design flaws and reduce costs. Assessing the benefits and affordability of using these modern design tools can better position the Army to more quickly change designs than is possible with 3D modeling and simulations alone, speeding the delivery of capability to the soldier.
Why GAO Did This Study
Since 2018, the Army has focused on modernizing its air and missile defense systems to counter those of near-peer competitors.
A Senate report and the House report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 include provisions for GAO to review and assess the Army's air and missile defense modernization efforts. GAO's report (1) describes how the Army developed the requirements to modernize these efforts; (2) describes how the Army is acquiring the systems; and (3) assesses the extent to which the Army applied leading practices for product development to these efforts.
GAO reviewed the Army's processes for identifying capability needs and developing requirements for air and missile defense efforts. GAO also reviewed the Army's acquisition approaches, analyzed its President's Budget requests since fiscal year 2021, and assessed the efforts against leading practices for product development that GAO identified in prior work. GAO interviewed officials from Army requirements and program offices and the Department of Defense.