Latest Selected Acquisition Reports (SAR) Released to Congress

(MoneyWatch)  By Law the Department of Defense must submit to Congress annual reports on the major acquisition programs. The report chosen is called the Selected Acquisition Report (SAR). These are normally submitted when the President sends the full budget to the Hill. SAR reports are also submitted quarterly for programs that have cost or schedule issues. The latest sets of these reports were just submitted for the quarter ending 30 September. The Department puts out a press release summarizing the reports like this. These reports show a net change to the total cost of reported programs of over $2 billion.
The reason for this decrease was the termination of the contract with Bell Helicopter for the RH-70 Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH). This program had significant cost and schedule increases due to the complexity with integrating the required weapon, sensor and data links on the aircraft. The program will be continued with a new contract award next year. The Army had spent $500 million of the $5 billion planned for the program, which led to the decrease. Unfortunately another program, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communication satellite, reported major cost growth which led to the net change. If you want to track the major programs and their changes the SAR releases are the easiest way to do so.