Low rate initial production (LRIP) is a term commonly used in military weapon projects/programs to designate the phase of initial, small-quantity production of a weapons systems. The prospective first buyer and operator (i.e., a country's defense authorities and the relevant military units) gets to thoroughly test the weapons system over some protracted amount of time—in order to gain a reasonable degree of confidence as to whether the system actually performs to the agreed-upon requirements before contracts for mass production are signed.
The term is also applied in fields other than weapons production, most commonly in non-weapon military equipment programs.
The Congressional Budget Office has found that the United States Department of Defense rarely achieves projected cost savings because too many programs fail to move from LRIP to full scale production.[1]