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Huge increases in development costs for major weapons programs start with uninformed estimates by Defense Department agencies that lead to inadequate funding and inevitable cost overruns, congressional auditors said.

"DOD's inability to allocate funding effectively to programs is largely driven by the acceptance of unrealistic cost estimates and a failure to balance needs based on available resources," the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report done for Congress and released on Thursday, July 3.

The GAO recommended that the Defense Department adopt more disciplined approaches to weapons acquisition programs, insisting on gathering more information up front and planning the funding needed for the entire length of a system's development, not just the first five years.

The Defense Department partially agreed with the recommendations, but said in a response to the GAO that they are being addressed through current policies and new initiatives. The department said some things are beyond its control, including how much funding is authorized by Congress.

Army Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Defense Department spokesman at the Pentagon, declined on Thursday to elaborate.

The GAO said the development costs for the Air Force's Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle, ballooned to $3.5 billion from the initial estimate of $992 million (a 264 percent increase). The Global Hawk program, one of 20 military programs the GAO reviewed, is managed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

According to GAO investigators, the Air Force assumed that warfighter needs could be met with minor additional development to a version of the Global Hawk designated the RQ-4A. But, a year into the program, it was determined that a larger airframe and additional, unproven technologies would be needed. So the Defense Department reworked the acquisition program to include a second model, dubbed the RQ-4B, driving up the costs and extending the development cycle from seven years to 12 years, the GAO said.

The Army initially estimated that it would cost $338 million to develop a Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) communications network of radios and software. But the Army underestimated the scope of the work and the costs are now estimated at $2 billion, an almost sixfold increase, the GAO said.

Of 20 major weapons programs the GAO reviewed, the independent cost estimates came in higher than the military's initial estimate in 19 of them. The independent estimates still understated the actual development costs by billions of dollars in five of the programs, the GAO said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.