Electronic Warfare

Radar Jammer Proliferation Continues Gao ID: NSIAD-92-83 February 28, 1992

The Air Force and the Navy continue to develop separate jammer systems--electronic devices that protect tactical aircraft by interfering with the radar systems of enemy weapons--instead of building a less-costly joint system. The services have been urged repeatedly to develop jammers that can be used by more than one service to meet the common air defense threat, thereby avoiding duplicative costs for system development, enabling lower unit production costs through larger quantity buys, and simplifying logistical support while lowering costs. The military services, however, continue to acquire many different jammer systems to protect the same type of aircraft against a common threat, and no commonality has been achieved. Furthermore, the prospects for commonality are bleak because the Air Force has abandoned the only program having promise for commonality. The proliferation continues in part because of ineffective DOD oversight.

GAO found that: (1) rather than promoting the use of a common jammer, the Navy and Air Force spent approximately $9 billion to use, procure, or upgrade 12 different self-protection jammers and 2 separate mission support jammers to protect tactical aircraft against common threats; (2) the Air Force has procured different jammer systems to protect the same aircraft; (3) although the Department of Defense (DOD) planned to save an estimated $1.2 billion by designating the Airborne Self-Protection Jammer as the common jammer for both Air Force and Navy aircraft, DOD did not realize that goal since the Air Force withdrew from the program, citing poor test results, congressional restrictions on full-rate production, and high program costs; (4) the Air Force and Navy are spending $726 million and $1.3 billion, respectively, to separately upgrade various components of the ALQ-99 mission support jammer; (5) ineffective DOD oversight of Air Force and Navy jammer upgrade programs has resulted in jammer proliferation; and (6) although DOD has developed a congressionally mandated electronic warfare master plan, the plan cannot be used to achieve commonality among jammers since it only lists systems that the services plan to acquire or upgrade, and lacks commonality provisions.

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:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.