Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army's acquisition and concurrent development of: (1) the Forward Area Air Defense System, (FAADS), an off-the-shelf ground-based sensor (GBS) radar system; (2) multirole survivable radar (MRSR), an advanced radar technology for potential multiple uses; and (3) an interim lightweight radar for its mobile light divisions.
GAO found that the Army: (1) under its FAADS GBS program, planned to acquire an off-the-shelf system to meet minimum air defense requirements and then modify the system to fully meet its requirements; (2) under its MRSR technology demonstration program, planned to develop advanced radar to meet the requirements of multiple future air defense programs; (3) had similar production and fielding schedules for both programs; (4) did not compare FAADS GBS and MRSR costs and capabilities to determine whether one radar, or the merging of the technologies, could satisfy all of the requirements; (5) estimated that development costs for the two programs would total $452 million; (6) projected that, while MRSR per-unit cost was higher than FAADS GBS unit cost, it would require fewer MRSR than FAADS GBS units; (7) planned to acquire the low-cost, lightweight interim system for its light divisions because of its 1990 retirement of the Forward Area Alerting Radar and the projected unavailability of FAADS GBS until 1997; (8) did not consider the lightweight radar adequate for high-intensity conflicts involving heavy divisions, but some officials believed that the lightweight radars were more capable than the forward observers that heavy divisions used; and (9) could equip all heavy divisions with the lightweight radar for about $39 million.
