The U.S. military takes too much time to get new weapons in the hands of troops and needs “a wholesale shift” to maintain its edge, a federal watchdog agency said this week. The Defense Department “remains alarmingly slow in delivering new and innovative weapon system capabilities, even as national security threats continue to evolve,” the Government Accountability Office said in its annual report on weapons systems, which was released Monday.

he GAO examined more than 100 of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons, which together are expected to cost more than $2 trillion to develop and acquire. The average major acquisition program takes more than a decade for a system to be fielded in its initial phase, “a time frame incompatible with maintaining military advantage in an environment shaped by the needs of technological advantages,” the report said.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-06-18/weapons-systems-gao-report-14220906.html