If you want to know what’s up with the Pentagon’s nearly 80 MDAPs or “major defense acquisition programs,” you need to check out the SARs, the unclassified “selected acquisition reports” submitted to Congress to support the Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 budget request as well as the FYDP, the “future years defense program” that runs through 2021. It’s a daunting task, but lucky for the you, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has done the heavy lifting with its handy “Weapon Systems Factbook” available online.
Included are four programs that don’t have public SARs, the Air Force’s new B-21 bomber; Long Range Standoff Missile, Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (the future replacement for the Minuteman III) and the Navy’s Ohio-class replacement program. The report’s authors say enough is known about those four programs to divine reasonable cost estimates, and given that they are among the Pentagon’s largest acquisition programs, “any discussion would be incomplete without them.”