Electronic Warfare

Early Production of Tacit Rainbow Missile Not Warranted Gao ID: NSIAD-91-71 March 8, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Tacit Rainbow Missile Program to determine whether the system met the Air Force's criteria for beginning a preproduction verification phase.

GAO found that: (1) Tacit Rainbow did not fully meet the Air Force's criteria for beginning the preproduction verification phase, since the Air Force had not flight tested the production configured system; (2) during testing, Tacit Rainbow proved to be unreliable; (3) the Air Force restructured the program in 1988 because of continued schedule delays and unexpected cost growth; (4) the Air Force planned to commit Tacit Rainbow to production without ensuring that the system performed satisfactorily during operational testing, which could increase its risk of producing a deficient system that would require costly modifications to correct problems found during later testing phases; and (5) the Secretary of Defense cancelled the Tacit Rainbow program in December 1990.

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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