Enhanced Fiber Optic Guided Missile

Need to Define Requirements and Establish Criteria to Assess Performance Gao ID: NSIAD-96-7 October 17, 1995

The Army plans to acquire limited quantities of the Enhanced Fiber Optic Missile and field them for a two-year user evaluation. The missile is designed to strike armored combat vehicles and other targets beyond the line of sight at ranges up to 15 kilometers. The Army expects the limited acquisition to cost about $280 million, but, on the basis of the results of the demonstration and evaluation, a much larger acquisition could occur. This report reviews selected aspects of the Army's plans for acquisition of the missile system.

GAO found that: (1) the Army lacks a formal requirement for EFOG-M and has not prepared comprehensive comparative cost studies because requirements documents and analyses are not normally required for Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) programs; (2) the Army should develop the requirement documents because of its prior difficulty in justifying the systems; (3) Congress has required the Army to certify that the requirement and analyses exist by December 1, 1995; (4) the Army has not fully defined EFOG-M performance criteria to evaluate the system's military value; (5) the ACTD program may not shorten the EFOG-M acquisition process unless innovative strategies are devised and formal testing agreements are reached; and (6) resources are not available to support limited fielding of EFOG-M after the 2-year ACTD evaluation period.

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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