Pentagon Increasingly Pays Defense Contractors To Test Their Own Projects

A Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV), part of the Future Combat System
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In 2007, the Defense Department paid the same private companies working on the Army’s modernization program to tell the DOD how the program was going, according to a not-yet-public inspector general report.

Politico got an early look at the IG report, which notes that, between 1987 and 2007, the DOD’s use of contractors for testing and quality control increased by 375 percent. The report finds that the trend toward privatization began in the 1990s, and continued through the Bush years.

The program at issue here is the $100 billion Future Combat System which was tasked with developing high-tech new brigades for the Army, complete with unmanned vehicles and communications systems.

Politico gives an example of the conflicts highlighted by the IG:

For instance, SAIC, a prime contractor doing systems engineering along with Boeing, received $2.2 billion for development of the FCS program, but in 2007 it also received $25.8 million for testing the program. Computer Sciences Corp., General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman also received money to create elements of the FCS at the same time they were helping to test it, according to the report.

Read the whole thing.

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