New GPS Operational Control System Development Years Behind Schedule, GAO Report Warns

Air Force development of a GPS operational control system that would replace the existing ground system is four years behind and $1.1 billion over budget, said a GAO study released Wednesday. While the Air Force has contingency plans for maintaining the GPS constellation even while operational control system work goes on, those plans "may not deliver the full range of GPS capability," such as the effort to develop GPS cards that can receive the military code signal, thus helping operate in jammed environments, the GAO report said. That military code capability won't be seen until mid 2019 at the earliest, even though the Defense Department has plans to generally buy only military code-capable user equipment after FY 2017, the GAO said, saying the Air Force should seek outside guidance and expertise to help address the systemic problems. Operational control system development "has been mired in development difficulties resulting in steady cost growth and schedule delays [and] has yet to turn the corner on resolving the problems that have affected the program since development began in 2010," GAO said. "Five years into what was originally estimated to be a five-year effort, [development] is still roughly five years away from completion." While many GPS satellites have lived beyond their expected lifespans, a modernized GPS system -- including the operational control system as well as GPS III satellites -- "is critical," and the operational control system development delays will take longest to address, GAO said. "Those delays are likely to pose significant risks to sustaining the GPS constellation, and consequently, delivering GPS capability to the military community." The GAO report recommends -- and the Department of Defense agrees in its response in the report -- an independent task force of other defense agencies and military services be convened and give guidance on tackling the underlying problems. The report and DOD also agreed on keeping members of that task force as a management advisory team to help in regular analyses of defects, on developing better cost and schedule estimates based on past performance of the operational control system development, and on a system for ensuring information from the operational control system assessment is used in seeing if further program changes are needed. But the DOD partially disagreed with a GAO recommendation that military services be allowed to assess the progress of military GPS user equipment (MGUE) design before committing test and procurement resources. Contractors are expected to deliver MGUE prototypes soon, well before any such assessment could be done, and would require contractors halt their current development work, which could lead to delays of months, it said. Military services aren't bound to buy any MGUE cards until an operational user evaluation report is done, and the Air Force will be responsible for MGUE card development until any performance deficiencies found in that evaluation report are fixed, the DOD said.