Comptroller: 60% of IDF purchases fail quality control tests

Some 60% of IDF equipment purchases fail quality control tests, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Tuesday warned in an annual report.

This issue is exacerbated, the report noted, by the fact that the IDF does not report comprehensive data on quality control failures to the Defense Ministry, which manages the purchases.

Englman said these statistics were especially worrying in the middle of an extended war when equipment failures could cost lives on an ongoing basis.

According to the report, from 2020 to 2022, the IDF Unit for Testing and quality control of the IDF Logistics Command carried out 2,490 initial tests, with suppliers failing 868 times, or 35% of the time, taking into account all products individually.

Further, the report said the unit carried out 20,740 return-ongoing tests, with suppliers failing 3,027 times or 15% of the time.

Failures in initial tests

During that two-year period, 80.4% of suppliers had failures at times in initial tests, and 72.3% of suppliers had failures at times on regular-ongoing tests, when focusing on the suppliers as a whole as opposed to their individual products.

Next, the report said many tests were not even recorded or kept track of.

The comptroller cautioned that this occurred despite the suppliers sometimes having repeat failures on the same issues, wasting resources and time, and delaying the opportunity to use the equipment in question.

Often the parties set new testing dates that were completely unrealistic relative to the time needed to fix the defect, which led to failing the quality control test in question.

Portions of the report were kept classified from the public due to national security concerns.