Computer Technology

Air Attack Warning System Cannot Process All Radar Track Data Gao ID: IMTEC-91-15 May 13, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the capability of the AN/FYQ-93 (Q-93) computer used to process Atmospheric Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment (Atmospheric TW/AA) data for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), focusing on the Air Force's plans to integrate upgraded and new radars into the system.

GAO found that: (1) the Q-93 architecture provided limited expansion capabilities to accommodate changing processing work loads and requirements; (2) Air Force studies identified serious problems with Q-93 memory available to process and store aircraft tracks generated from planned radar sources; (3) the Air Force did not adequately analyze Q-93 capacity and performance capabilities or establish a formal capacity management and performance monitoring program; (4) the Department of Defense (DOD) did not manage the components of the Atmospheric TW/AA system from a system-level perspective; (5) although DOD spent almost $3 billion to acquire planned radar upgrades and additions for Atmospheric TW/AA and counter-narcotics missions, it did not resolve how the work load generated by those radars would be effectively processed and forwarded to decision makers; and (6) NORAD processing of DOD counternarcotics mission data was duplicative and placed an unnecessary burden on Q-93.

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.