Defense Information Superiority

In 1996, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a conceptual framework for the military's war fighting. Known as Joint Vision 2010, the document identifies information superiority over the enemy as essential. The Defense Department (DOD) defines information superiority as "the capability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary's ability to do the same." DOD believes that information superiority can provide significant advantages over the enemy during a conflict and increase the efficiency of peacetime and wartime operations. However, greater reliance on information systems may also make DOD vulnerable to computer attacks and intrusions, damaging its war-fighting capability. This report evaluates DOD's progress in implementing key information superiority activities. GAO examines DOD's progress in establishing a DOD-wide architecture for the information systems known as Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4), Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; developing and implementing the Global Command and Control System; and establishing the Joint Tactical Radio System.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD faces many challenges in achieving its information superiority goals and objectives and may need many years of concerted effort to reach them; (2) one of the key challenges is to complete the development of a C4ISR architecture, maintain it, and ensure that the many systems that make up the C4ISR infrastructure comply with the architecture; (3) without an established architecture and the ability to enforce its use, DOD will find it difficult to make cost-effective development and acquisition decisions and ensure that the systems work with each other, perform as expected, and are adequately protected; (4) DOD has been trying unsuccessfully to establish some form of Department-wide C4ISR architecture; (5) in the past 6 years DOD refocused its efforts and made progress by building Department-wide consensus on what should be accomplished by the architecture and how it should be built; (6) DOD also established the architectural component that defines technical standards for C4ISR systems; (7) the most important component, which defines the information needs that are the basis for setting system standards and acquiring and protecting systems, is not completed; (8) furthermore, plans for developing and implementing the remainder of the architecture are still being formulated; (9) DOD has been developing a number of critical C4ISR systems and information assurance measures without the benefit of a completed and approved architecture; (10) enforcing compliance with the C4ISR architecture will be an important factor in achieving information superiority; (11) DOD said that compliance with the architecture will be achieved through a combination of new and existing oversight organizations and processes; (12) however, DOD has had difficulty in achieving compliance with related C4ISR policies and decisions in the past; (13) in the absence of a C4ISR architecture, DOD has had mixed success in developing and fielding GCCS, its premier strategic C4ISR system; (14) although some of its features are well liked by users, GCCS has encountered problems; (15) it also has potential year 2000 problems that could cause systems failure; (16) DOD officials told GAO that the Department has suspended development of the JTRS program until Congress approves and funds the program; and (17) to meet interim needs, DOD has allowed the services to acquire a limited number of service-unique radios until the joint radios become available.

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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