Electronic Warfare

Established Criteria Not Met for Airborne Self-Protection Jammer Production Gao ID: NSIAD-92-103 March 23, 1992

The Navy's Airborne Self-Protection Jammer program is intended to produce a device that will protect Navy aircraft by interfering with the radars used to control enemy missiles and guns. The Defense Department (DOD) authorized limited production of the jammer in August 1989, despite its marginal performance during initial operational tests. In GAO's view, the jammer failed to meet criteria set for further production. Although the criteria were established and approved for the jammer's reliability growth tests, the Navy changed them after system failures arose during testing. The new criteria, which excluded software failures from the scoring of test results, allowed the jammer to pass the tests; otherwise, the device would have failed by a large margin. GAO concludes that the Navy's actions in this case circumvented DOD testing standards and failed to recognize the adverse impacts of software problems experienced with other electronic warfare systems similar to the jammer. Reliability growth tests done after the Defense Acquisition Board allowed the program to proceed show that the jammer still has software problems. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Electronic Warfare: DOD Did Not Meet Test Criteria Before Production of the Airborne Self-Protection Jammer, by Louis J. Rodrigues, Director of Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence Issues, before the Subcommittee on Federal Services, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. GAO/T-NSIAD-92-22, Mar. 25, 1992 (11 pages).

GAO found that: (1) the Defense Acquisition Board approved the ASPJ reliability growth criterion in November 1990; (2) after system failures began to occur during reliability growth testing, the Navy changed the criterion to exclude system failures attributable to software errors; (3) despite software-induced failures, other tests conducted outside of the reliability growth test program, including developmental flight tests and contractor tests using modified software, provided reasonable assurance that the software problems had been corrected; (4) if such failures had been included, ASPJ would have failed the test by a large margin since the purpose of the flight test was not to evaluate software under reliability growth test conditions, but to evaluate other aspects of ASPJ performance; (5) by excluding the 43 built-in test failures attributed to software, the Navy circumvented DOD testing standards and failed to recognize the adverse impacts of software problems experienced with other electronic warfare systems similar to ASPJ; (6) additional reliability growth testing conducted after the Defense Acquisition Board allowed the program to proceed showed that 21 of the 43 failures that occurred during the first phase of reliability growth testing recurred during the second phase; and (7) later tests also revealed additional software-induced failures not detected during the first phase.

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