The growth in the acquisition cycle time of large defense systems from what was planned (i.e., schedule growth) creates several issues for defense acquisition managers and policy makers. These issues include increased likelihoods of cancellations, changes in requirements, and delays in the fielding of improved combat capabilities and replacements for legacy systems, which have resulted in further cost and schedule growth. As a result, Congress, the DoD, and the individual military services implemented several major reforms to address the cost and schedule growth of weapon systems. This research presents an empirical model of schedule growth to evaluate the impact of acquisition reform efforts, defense budget changes, unexpected inflation, and major contingency operations (war) on schedule growth of major weapon systems. A fixed-effects panel regression model was utilized to describe the schedule performance (using earned value data) of the major weapon system programs managed by the Army, Air Force, and Navy from 1980 to 2002. This research found that unexpected inflation results in increased schedule growth.
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