Committee Holds Hearing on Defense Department Acquisitions

The Full Committee and the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee held a joint hearing titled, “Oversight of Defense Department Acquisitions” on Tuesday, April 29, 2008, in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building. A preliminary transcript of this hearing is now available.

The hearing examined the recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) titled, “Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs.” This report found that the Defense Department’s 95 major weapons acquisition programs currently exceed their original budgets by nearly $300 billion dollars and are, on average, 21 months late in delivering these weapons systems to warfighters. These rates of cost overruns and delivery delays are significantly higher than in previous GAO surveys. The hearing will represent the first opportunity for Department of Defense officials to testify to Congress about the report.

The following witnesses testified:

• Michael J. Sullivan, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management, Government Accountability Office
• James Finley, Deputy Undersecretary for Acquisition and Technology
• David Patterson, Principle Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Comptroller