With LRIP, the prospective first buyer and operator (i.e., a country's defense authorities and the relevant military units) can 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.
Therefore, the LRIP is commonly the first step in transitioning from highly customized, hand-built prototypes to the final mass-produced end product.
This can mean that systems produced during LRIP are built significantly differently both in terms of technique and cost owing to the immaturity of the production line or changes in the weapons system's design, necessitating a large degree of hand assembly and trial and error typically associated with the prototyping stage.
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.
[2] The Japanese Ministry of Defense similarly lists R&D and initial production as "high-risk phases" in a 2008 report.