Space Acquisitions: Assessment of Overhead Persistent Infrared Technology Report
What GAO Found
On October 11, 2013, DOD submitted to the congressional defense committees the OPIR Technology report. Upon reviewing the report, we determined that the OPIR report was comprehensive and appropriately identified its limitations. In particular, DOD, in consultation with the IC, provided a description of (1) the plan and budget for current and next generation OPIR systems and (2) OPIR technology requirements. The report elaborated on current cooperative efforts between the DOD and IC communities and identified potential future opportunities for further cooperation. Further details remain classified.
Why GAO DId This Study
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA), signed into law on January 2, 2013, required, among other things, that the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, submit a report on OPIR technology to the congressional defense committees no later than 180 days after the enactment of the act. The report was to identify DOD and IC’s OPIR technology requirements; describe the strategy, plan and budget for current and next generation OPIR systems; and identify opportunities for further cooperation between the DOD and IC communities. DOD provided this report to the congressional defense committees on October 11, 2013.
Additionally, the act mandated that GAO assess the comprehensiveness of the DOD OPIR technology report not later than 90 days after the date on which the Secretary of Defense submits DOD’s report. To meet the requirements of the mandate, we assessed the extent to which the report (1) was comprehensive, fully supported, and sufficiently detailed; and (2) contained limitations that may have affected the quality of the report. Due to the classification level of the DOD OPIR report, we are issuing this unclassified report to formally meet the mandated reporting requirement; we have offered to brief the defense committees on the classified details of our findings.
For more information, contact Christina Chaplain at (202) 512-4841 of chaplainc@gao.gov.
