Undersea Surveillance

Although the threat posed by the Soviet submarine fleet has declined dramatically of late, the Navy has not yet completed an undersea surveillance system to handle enemy submarines in shallow water--a more probable threat scenario in the future. The Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) was built to pick up sounds from Soviet submarines in deep ocean water. The Navy, however, now plans to use SURTASS to detect diesel submarines cruising in shallow water--a capability that has yet to be demonstrated through developmental and operational testing. At the same time, the Pentagon is looking into other ways to detect submarines in shallow water. The Navy currently has 19 ships equipped with SURTASS. It expects to replace 18 of these single-hulled ships with nine twin hull ships by 1998. Between fiscal years 1992 and 1998, the Navy plans to spend about $1.2 billion on SURTASS upgrades and procurement of new SURTASS twin hulled surveillance ships.

GAO found that: (1) the Soviet global submarine threat has declined dramatically and is no longer the primary threat to the United States; (2) the focus has shifted to the evolving threat of regional conflict in shallow water; (3) the Navy has not yet developed performance requirements for an undersea surveillance system to counter the shallow water threat; (4) the Navy built SURTASS to counter the Soviet submarine threat in deep water, but it planned to use SURTASS against the shallow water submarine threat; and (5) preliminary test results showed that SURTASS had potential for shallow water submarine detections, but the Navy has not demonstrated SURTASS shallow water capability through developmental and operational tests.

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.

Director: Team: Phone: