The U.S. military’s development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been hampered by cost overruns, schedule slippage, and disappointing operational results. The High Altitude Endurance UAV (HAE UAV) joint program, initiated under the direction of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), incorporates several innovative elements in its acquisition strategy that depart radically from traditional acquisition approaches. The program’s development phase for the Global Hawk and DarkStar air vehicles is analyzed in this research. The HAE UAV program has experienced problems that are typical of newly implemented methods, but it has produced significant benefits, and provides lessons that could improve a wide variety of future acquisition processes.