The Government Accountability Office (GAO) late last week issued a new report of interest to the defense acquisition workforce entitled “GAO-23-106059 Weapon Systems Annual Assessment: Programs Are Not Consistently Implementing Practices That Can Help Accelerate Acquisitions”.

According to the GAO auditors, “this is our 21st annual assessment of DOD's weapon systems acquisition. We found that delivery of weapon systems continues to take longer than planned—affecting DOD's ability to meet threats. Supplier, software, and design problems drove these delays. We recommended that DOD update its policy on "modular open systems design"—an approach that helps DOD keep pace with advances in technology by allowing it to add or replace components once a weapon system is in the field. Weapon programs don't consistently verify that their approaches work as intended. Weapon systems acquisition is on our High Risk List.

Encourage readers to check out several related DAU learning assets, including a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) ACQuipedia article and our CLE 019 Modular Open Systems Approach online training course for additional information.