Despite numerous warnings of critical problems from experts within and outside the government over roughly 10 years, the cost to develop the now-canceled Redesigned Kill Vehicle program for homeland missile defense more than tripled, and the program’s schedule slipped by four years, a new U.S. government watchdog report reveals.

“At the time [the Defense Department] canceled the RKV program in August 2019, MDA [the Missile Defense Agency] had spent a total of $1.21 billion on RKV development — $340 million more than the agency’s original estimate for the entire RKV development effort, including eight initial production kill vehicles,” according to the Government Accountability Office report, released July 23.

The estimated cost increased by more than 230 percent from 2015 to 2019, the report said.

The Pentagon decided to take a “strategic pause” on the RKV in May 2019 before outright killing the program in August 2019. The department cited “technical design problems” as the reason for hitting the brakes and changing course.

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