Implications of Highly Sophisticated Weapon Systems on Military Capabilities

Many of the weapons systems developed by the United States today are viewed as being too technologically complex to permit a reasonable degree of confidence that they will work properly when needed. Consequently, the Nation's ability to be sufficiently prepared to sustain itself in a major war is of serious concern. Several problems that have resulted from the Department of Defense's (DOD) acquisitions during the 1970's include: (1) few weapons are available due to high unit cost; (2) weapons have reliability, availability, and maintainability problems; (3) small annual procurement quantities are economical; (4) high operating costs tax training resources; and (5) complexity and sophistication aggravate personnel problems. While DOD has tried to reverse this trend, it has not been as successful as desired. The operation and maintenance budget, portions of which are used to support deployed weapon systems, has increased substantially over the past few years; and it is expected to further increase in fiscal year 1981. However, the operations and maintenance budget supports so many activities that it is difficult to determine whether or not the projected increases will be sufficient to significantly improve readiness. The causes of any deficiencies in operations and maintenance funding is not totally clear. However, it seems that the services have chosen to develop a variety of high performance systems in lieu of seriously addressing the problems found in today's deployed systems.