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GAO-16-6R 1 (2015-10-08)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaajie0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 October 8, 2015 The Honorable John McCain Chairman The Honorable Jack Reed Ranking Member Committee on Armed Services United States Senate Space Situational Awareness: Status of Efforts and Planned Budgets Space systems provide capabilities essential for a broad array of functions and objectives, including U.S. national security, commerce and economic growth, transportation safety, and homeland security. These systems are increasingly vulnerable to a variety of threats, both intentional and unintentional-ranging from adversary attacks such as antisatellite weapons, signal jamming, and cyber attacks, to environmental threats such as electromagnetic radiation from the Sun and collisions with other objects. The government relies primarily on the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Intelligence Community to provide Space Situational Awareness (SSA)-the current and predictive knowledge and characterization of space objects and the operational environment upon which space operations depend-to provide critical data for planning, operating, and protecting space assets and to inform government and military operations. According to DOD, as space has become more congested and contested, the SSA mission focus has expanded from awareness of the location and movement of space objects to also include assessments of their capabilities and intent to provide battlespace awareness for protecting U.S. and allies' people and assets. For example, in addition to allowing satellite operators to predict and avoid radio frequency interference and potential collisions with other space objects, SSA information could be used to determine the cause of space system failures-such as environmental effects, unintentional interference, or adversary attacks-better enabling decision makers to determine appropriate responses. In a report accompanying a bill for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, the Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision for GAO to estimate the cost of SSA efforts over the next five fiscal years.1 This report formally transmits updated information we provided in a briefing to the committee on July 8, 2015, to meet our reporting requirement. We have updated the briefing to reflect current data on SSA workloads and to incorporate additional agency technical comments that we received since that time. See enclosure I: Space Situational Awareness Efforts and Planned Budgets Information Presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee. This report addresses the following: (1) What are the government's current and planned SSA-related research and development, procurement, and operations efforts? (2) What is the planned budget for these efforts for fiscal years 2015 through 2020? GAO-16-6R Space Situational Awareness Efforts iS. Rep. No. 113-176, at 235 (2014). Page 1

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