In July 2007, the USD (AT&L) established CSBs for every current and future major defense acquisition program in development as a measure to limit requirements change and avoid cost increases. The CSBs were to have a broad membership, including senior representatives from the offices of USD (AT&L) and Joint Staff. CSBs were intended to review all requirements and significant technical configuration changes with the potential to adversely affect the program. The USD (AT&L) directed that these changes should generally be rejected or deferred unless funds and schedule adjustments could be identified to mitigate their effects. In addition, program managers were asked to identify options to reduce program cost or moderate requirements, referred to as “descoping” options, on a roughly annual basis. USD (AT&L) also instructed that, while policy would be to keep within planned costs as much as possible even at the expense of scope and content, all expected increases in program costs must be budgeted at the absolute earliest opportunity. USD (AT&L) incorporated CSBs into DOD’s primary acquisition policy— DOD Instruction 5000.02—in December 2008. In October 2008, Congress enacted the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, which required the establishment of CSBs for the major defense acquisition programs of the military departments. According to the statute, a CSB must meet at least once each year for each of these programs. The statute also provided direction on CSB membership and responsibilities. It requires CSBs to include the appropriate service acquisition executive as chair and include representatives from USD (AT&L), the Chief of Staff for the armed forces, representatives from other armed forces as appropriate, the Joint Staff, the comptroller of the military department, the military deputy to the service acquisition executive, the program executive officer for the program concerned, and others as appropriate;  prevent unnecessary changes to programs that could have an adverse impact on program cost or schedule, mitigate adverse cost and schedule effects of changes that may be required, and ensure that each program delivers as much planned capability as possible at or below the planned cost and schedule; review and approve or disapprove any proposed changes to program requirements or system configuration with the potential to adversely affect cost and schedule; and review and recommend proposals that could reduce requirements and improve cost and schedule. In addition, the statute provided program managers the authority to  object to adding new requirements that would be inconsistent with previously established parameters unless approved by the CSB and  propose opportunities to reduce program requirements to improve cost and schedule consistent with program objectives. In our March 2010 assessment of selected weapon programs, we reported that only 7 of the 42 programs we assessed held CSB meetings in 2009. As a result, in the Senate report accompanying the bill for the Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, the Senate Armed Services Committee directed USD (AT&L) to take appropriate steps to ensure that CSBs meet at least once a year to consider the full range of proposed changes to program requirements or system configuration for each major defense acquisition program. The military departments’ compliance with statutory CSB requirements varied. The Air Force and Navy did not fully comply with the requirement to hold annual CSB meetings for all major defense acquisition programs in 2010; the Army did comply. In total, the military departments held an annual CSB meeting for 74 of 96 major defense acquisition programs they managed in 2010. According to our survey results, when the military departments held CSB meetings, 19 programs endorsed requirements or configuration changes. In most of these cases, strategies were developed to mitigate any effect on a program’s cost and schedule—a key provision in the statute and DOD policy. However, key acquisition and requirements personnel were often absent from Air Force and Navy CSB meetings when these issues were discussed. Two major defense acquisition programs—the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) and the Chemical Demilitarization-Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives programs, which are managed by DOD components rather than military departments—are not subject to the CSB provisions in statute, but rather to DOD policy, because the statute only applies to programs overseen by military departments. This policy differs from the statute in that it only requires major defense acquisition programs in development to hold annual CSB reviews and does not require the same members, including the comptroller of the military department. The Air Force and Navy did not hold CSB meetings for all of their major defense acquisition programs in 2010. The Air Force did not hold CSB meetings for 13 of 31 programs, and the Navy did not hold CSB meetings for 9 of 37 programs. The Army held a CSB meeting for each of its 28 major defense acquisition programs. Of the 96 major defense acquisition programs managed by the military departments, 74 held CSB meetings in 2010 and 22 failed to do so. Table 1 shows how many programs had CSB meetings by military department. Of the 22 programs that did not have CSB meetings in 2010, 9 programs had meetings in early 2011. In addition, according to the Air Force and Navy, 8 other programs were in the process of being completed or cancelled. Table 2 includes explanations from the Air Force and Navy about why CSB meetings were not held for individual programs. For each of the military departments, when a CSB meeting reviewed requirements or configuration changes, most were endorsed and strategies to mitigate the effects on a program’s cost and schedule were developed and discussed. However, most of the programs we surveyed did not present requirements or configuration changes to be approved or rejected at their fiscal-year-2010 CSB meetings. Specifically, our survey showed the following results:  Air Force: 6 CSB meetings reviewed requirements or configuration changes, 5 of these meetings endorsed changes, and 4 discussed the cost and schedule effects and ways to mitigate them.  Army: 6 CSB meetings reviewed and endorsed requirements or configuration changes, and 4 of these discussed the cost and schedule effects and ways to mitigate them.  Navy: 10 CSB meetings reviewed requirements or configuration changes; 8 meetings endorsed changes, and 7 of these discussed the cost and schedule effects and ways to mitigate them. The Navy did not hold CSB reviews for all programs that experienced requirements changes in fiscal-year 2010. According to our survey results, three Navy programs changed system requirements or specifications yet did not hold a CSB meeting. Two of these programs, the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile and the Remote Minehunting System, held other high-level reviews during this period—two program management reviews and a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach review, respectively—and officials reported that a third program, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, did not conduct its CSB meeting because DOD proposed canceling the program. Key acquisition and requirements personnel were absent from many of the CSB meetings held by the Air Force and Navy in 2010. The CSB provision in the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 lists seven officials or offices that should be part of a CSB, including the service acquisition executive who should serve as the chairperson of the CSB; representatives from the acquisition, requirements, and funding communities; and others as appropriate. Army CSB meetings held in 2010 included the full array of board members in all but one case. Although USD (AT&L) was invited to the meeting in this case, Army officials reported that the office did not send a representative. The medium of CSB board members’ participation also varied among the military departments. The Army conducted all its CSB meetings in person, whereas both the Air Force and the Navy conducted virtual, otherwise known as paper, CSB meetings for certain programs in 2010 and early 2011. The Air Force held all of its 2010 CSB meetings without key acquisition participants listed in the CSB statute. According to Air Force officials, their CSB meetings may be chaired by either the service acquisition executive or the principal military deputy to provide for flexibility in scheduling meetings. Generally, the principal military deputy acts as chair in the place of the service acquisition executive and does not attend those meetings that the service acquisition executive chairs. According to the attendee lists provided by the Air Force, only 2 of the 18 CSB meetings held were attended and chaired by the service acquisition executive. At one of those meetings neither the principal military deputy nor a representative of the comptroller was in attendance although officials report that both had been invited. The CSB meetings the service acquisition executive did not attend included numerous discussions of changes that could affect programs’ costs and schedules, including requirements and configuration changes or descoping opportunities. For example, one meeting discussed changes to the Space Based Infrared System’s architecture that could accelerate the program’s delivery of initial capability by 2 years but would cost an additional $45 million. The Air Force also allows paper CSBs to fulfill the requirement for an annual CSB for programs it believes are stable. A program is eligible to conduct paper CSB meetings if (1) it has a Probability of Program Success score of greater than 80; (2) it has made no requirements and/or significant technical configuration changes since the last CSB that have the potential to affect the cost and schedule of the program; (3) when in production, it is in steady state production but has not reached 90 percent of planned expenditures completed or 90 percent of quantities delivered; and (4) descoping options will not yield any real cost savings. The Air Force did not conduct any paper CSBs in 2010; however, 6 of the 13 Air Force programs that did not hold a CSB meeting in 2010 conducted paper reviews in January 2011. According to Air Force officials, the process for these paper reviews began in December 2010. The Navy held most of its 2010 CSB meetings without key acquisition and requirements personnel.