Navy Procurement

Option for EA-6B Aircraft Parts Should Be Reexamined Gao ID: NSIAD-89-88 January 13, 1989

GAO examined the Navy's procurement of universal exciters, a jamming pod component for its EA-6B aircraft.

GAO found that the Navy: (1) initially ordered 503 universal exciters with an option to procure about 70 additional units at a cost of $471,000 each, totalling about $33 million; (2) planned to exercise the option before it expired on January 31, 1989; and (3) established an inventory objective of 552 universal exciters to support a fleet of 159 aircraft. GAO also found that the: (1) Secretary of Defense terminated EA-6B aircraft production in July 1988, reducing the fleet to 131 aircraft; (2) Navy would only need about 453 universal exciters, if it made a corresponding inventory reduction; and (3) Navy's program office recalculated the requirement for 571 universal exciters after it discovered an error, but was unable to explain the criteria it used in making the calculation.

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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