Summary: GAO reviewed the military services' efforts to develop and acquire new high-frequency radio systems and improvements necessary for the systems to meet Department of Defense (DOD) interoperability standards.
GAO found that: (1) DOD needed to improve testing and implementation of its interoperability standards, since the Air Force Automatic Communications Processor and the Army Short-Term Antijam (STAJ) System would begin production in 1989, but had no planned interoperability tests; (2) the contractor's informal testing revealed that the systems might not interoperate in the antijam mode; (3) the Army and the Air Force planned to procure large amounts of automatic link establishment (ALE) equipment to automate manual functions before incorporating the interoperability standard; (4) because the Air Force was developing an advanced modem without incorporating interoperability standards, the modem might not interoperate with other advanced modems developed for Army radios, even though the Army's advanced modems were interoperable; and (5) any changes required to make the systems interoperable would likely result in additional retrofit costs.
