GAO report to the Secretary of Defense: We reviewed the Navy Area Theater Ballistic Missile Defense program to determine whether (1) the program has met its milestones to date and its remaining schedule appears realistic and (2) the tests being conducted or planned will be adequate to demonstrate the system's capabilities before production begins. We are addressing this report to you at this time because the program is now entering the phase during which developmental and operational testing is conducted and low-rate initial production is to begin. The Area program has experienced schedule slips totaling about 14 months due to several reasons, including technical problems in the two flight tests conducted prior to the engineering and manufacturing development phase. Our review indicates that further schedule slips are possible because of the acquisition plan's highly optimistic schedule for conducting operational tests. Slippages in completing these tests could result in the system remaining in a low-rate production phase longer than currently planned. The Navy plans to begin production of Area program missiles before conducting any operational tests of the system. According to the Navy, it needs to begin low-rate initial production of the missiles in June 2000- 5 months before system level developmental and operational tests are scheduled to begin because of the urgent need for the system and to maintain an efficient flow in missile production. In our opinion, two factors raise some questions about the Navy's rationale for the criticality of initiating low-rate initial production, namely (1) a prototype system capability consisting of two canisters equipped with UOES missiles will be in service at that time and (2) an earlier version of the Standard missile will still be in production, diminishing the need for low-rate production of the Block IVA missile to avoi.


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    Title :

    Ballistic Missile Defense: Improvements Needed in Navy Area Acquisition Planning


    Publication date :

    1997


    Size :

    17 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English