Military Satellite Communications

DOD Needs to Review Requirements and Strengthen Leasing Practices Gao ID: NSIAD-94-48 February 24, 1994

Congress has urged the Pentagon to make greater use of commercial satellites to reduce the cost of military communications. Although the Defense Department (DOD) is studying the issue, a new criterion that DOD uses to set communication requirements has reduced general purpose requirements by more than 40 percent. In addition, core requirements may be overstated because users may have favored military communications that are provided at no direct cost to them. General purpose requirements may also be understated because users must pay for commercial services through their units' budgets. All these factors reduce the potential use of commercial satellite services. DOD's current approach to leasing commercial satellite services is not centrally managed and does not take advantage of economies of scale. According to DOD, most of this leasing is done on an ad hoc basis. In addition, leasing individual circuits is costly, compared with packaging them into larger quantities and using full satellite transponders that have the capacity to handle multiple circuits.

GAO found that: (1) national policies have emphasized greater use of commercial satellite communications to reduce the cost of military satellite communications; (2) the potential for utilizing commercial satellite communication services has been reduced due to overstated core requirements and understated general purpose requirements; (3) DOD has established a new criterion that has lowered its communication requirements by 40 percent; (4) DOD commercial satellite leasing practices are inefficient and do not utilize economies of scale; (5) DOD lacks adequate planning and often does not obtain cost-effective satellite communication services because most communication satellite leasing is obtained on an ad hoc basis; and (6) DOD could reduce communication leasing costs by packaging circuits into larger quantities and using full satellite transponders that have the capacity to handle multiple circuits.

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.