Battlefield Automation

Better Justification and Testing Needed for Common Computer Acquisition Gao ID: IMTEC-88-12 December 31, 1987

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army Command and Control System (ACCS) common hardware and software acquisition program to determine its cost-effectiveness for providing battlefield computer systems.

GAO found that the Army: (1) plans to use a consolidated acquisition strategy to procure computer hardware and software for four battlefield systems; (2) has not performed the required operational or cost-effectiveness analysis to justify its acquisition strategy; (3) assumes that readily available, off-the-shelf products will meet its needs; (4) plans to acquire its proposed common hardware and software system before fully testing it; and (5) has sufficient time to analyze its acquisition strategy and test the equipment before deploying it to the battlefield systems. GAO also found that several Army and independent studies questioned the operational and cost-effectiveness of the proposed acquisition strategy in terms of: (1) ability to meet individual battlefield systems requirements; and (2) potential consistency and coordination with current battlefield system development efforts.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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