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441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

March 14, 2014

Congressional Addressees

Regional Missile Defense: DOD’s Report Provided Limited Information; Assessment of 

Acquisition Risks is Optimistic

In response to changing threats in the region and new opportunities created by advances in 

missile defense technology, in September 2009 the President announced a new policy for 

ballistic missile defense of Europe, called the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). 

EPAA is designed to rely on increasingly capable missiles, sensors, and command and control 

systems to defend Europe against threat missiles of various ranges. In its February 2010 

Ballistic Missile Defense Review, DOD presented EPAA as part of a broader policy for regional 

ballistic missile defense, to also include phased adaptive approaches for other regions such as 

East Asia and the Middle East. DOD’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is developing and 

integrating capabilities that will be part of EPAA. U.S. Strategic Command works with the 

military services and regional combatant commands—such as U.S. European Command for 

EPAA—to determine whether to accept those capabilities. We have issued reports in 2010, 

2011, 2012, and 2013 containing assessments of EPAA.

1

 

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) mandated that the 

Secretary of Defense submit to the congressional defense committees a report describing the 

status and progress of regional missile defense programs and efforts (including EPAA) and

required DOD to include certain topics:

2

 

• Assessment of the adequacy of the existing and planned European Phased Adaptive Approach to 

provide force protection for forward-deployed forces of the United States in Europe against ballistic 

missile threats from Iran, and an assessment whether adequate force protection would be available 

absent the European Phased Adaptive Approach, given current and planned Patriot, Terminal High 

Altitude Area Defense, and Aegis ballistic missile defense capability. 

• Description of the progress made in the development and testing of elements of systems intended for 

deployment in Phases 2 through 4 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, and an assessment 

of technical and schedule risks.

• Description of the missile defense priorities and capability needs of the regional combatant 

commands, and the planned regional missile defense architectures derived from those capability 

needs and priorities. 

 

1 GAO, Missile Defense: Opportunity to Refocus on Strengthening Acquisition Management, GAO-13-432

(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 26, 2013); GAO, Missile Defense: Opportunity Exists to Strengthen Acquisitions by Reducing 

Concurrency, GAO-12-486 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 20, 2012); GAO, Missile Defense: Actions Needed to Improve 

Transparency and Accountability, GAO-11-372 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 24, 2011); GAO, Ballistic Missile Defense: 

DOD Needs to Address Planning and Implementation Challenges for Future Capabilities in Europe, GAO-11-220

(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 26, 2011); GAO, Missile Defense: European Phased Adaptive Approach Acquisitions Face 

Synchronization, Transparency, and Accountability Challenges, GAO-11-179R (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 21, 2010).

2 Pub. L. No. 112-239, § 229. 
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• Description of the global force management process used to evaluate the missile defense capability 

needs of the regional combatant commands and to determine the resource allocation and deployment 

outcomes among such commands.

• Description of the missile defense command and control concepts and arrangements in place for 

United States and allied regional missile defense forces, and the missile defense partnerships and 

burden-sharing arrangements in place between the United States and its allies and partners.

The NDAA also required us to both provide our views on DOD's report and to submit a report to 

the congressional defense committees as soon as practicable. As such we assessed: (1) the 

extent to which DOD’s Regional Ballistic Missile Defense Report addressed the topics in 

Section 229 and (2) acquisition risks, if any, that could affect the planned delivery of capability 

for the U.S. ballistic missile defense of Europe. We provided a briefing on our results to the 

congressional defense committee staff on December 16, 2013.This letter meets the reporting 

requirement by formally transmitting that briefing (see Enclosure I).

3

 

To assess DOD’s report, we compared it to section 229 of the NDAA and to information 

gathered about regional ballistic missile defense efforts as part of an ongoing review of EPAA. 

We met with DOD officials to discuss DOD’s report methodology and met with other DOD 

officials to discuss their input. We focused our review on the form and substance of the material 

in DOD’s report and did not assess its compliance with the law. 

To assess acquisition risks to the planned delivery of capability for EPAA we reviewed the 

President’s EPAA policy, DOD directives and instructions related to missile defense, analyzed

MDA’s systems engineering Master Integration Plans, Integrated Master Test Plans, Integrated 

Master Assessment Plans, and Program Execution and Baseline Execution Reviews and other

documentation containing plans and accomplishments related to implementing acquisitions for 

EPAA. We compared the documents issued in 2010 to those same documents issued in 2011, 

2012, and 2013 to identify capability delays and risks. We met with MDA and DOD officials to 

clarify and corroborate that material.

4

 

We conducted this performance audit from October 2012 to March 2014 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. This timeframe includes work we already 

had underway on EPAA. Government auditing standards require that we plan and perform the 

audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings 

and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides 

a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Summary

We found that DOD’s Regional Ballistic Missile Defense report contained information pertaining 

to all five topics, generally describing plans and processes for regional missile defense; 

 

3 In 2012, the Chairman, House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, asked us to review a number of 

related acquisition issues concerning EPAA. Thus, our December 2013 congressional defense committee briefing 

and this report address both that earlier request and the subsequent NDAA mandate. 

4 In our briefing we noted that an integrated investment view of EPAA was not present. On February 25, 2014, in 

response to a 2011 congressional request, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, 

and Logistics submitted to the requestors a summary of life-cycle costs for EPAA prepared by its Office of Cost 

Assessment and Program Evaluation. As this was the same day DOD provided us comments on our draft report, 

although it is possible this could change our assessment, we did not have time to determine whether an update was 

appropriate. 
Page 3 GAO-14-248R Regional Missile Defense

however, for four topics, DOD has more comprehensive information which it could have 

provided to better reflect its current efforts and activities. As to the remaining topic—a 

description of progress in system development and testing for EPAA and an assessment of 

technical and schedule risk—the report characterizes technical and schedule risks as being 

minimized. Based on our body of work over several years, we see the report’s characterization 

of these acquisition-related risks as optimistic. Specifically, since our first review of EPAA in 

2010, we found that DOD has progressed in establishing some acquisition management 

practices for EPAA and it has delivered some capabilities; however, while the dates have not 

changed for declaring when technical capabilities for EPAA are delivered, technical and 

schedule delays have reduced both the capability MDA plans to deliver and the understanding 

of how that capability will perform.5

 

We see three challenges DOD faces in its acquisition approach for EPAA: (1) fully implementing 

a management process that synchronizes acquisition activities and ensures transparency and 

accountability; (2) improving execution of development and integration plans to stem 

fragmentation of development activities, schedule delays, and concurrency between key events;

and (3) executing plans for tests and assessments so that these activities can be completed 

before MDA declares that a technical capability has been delivered. Until these challenges are 

met, technical, schedule, and other risks will remain. 

We therefore concluded that, while DOD’s Regional Ballistic Missile Defense Report provides 

general information, DOD had additional details it could have provided which would benefit the 

congressional defense committees during their authorization and appropriation deliberations.6

We also concluded that MDA’s decision to delay delivery of some capabilities for EPAA as 

compared to initial plans and make subsequent upgrades after EPAA phase declarations 

reflects the complexity of developing and integrating systems that provide an increasingly 

capable defense of Europe. While this approach allows flexibility, it does so at the risk of 

delivering less capability than expected without demonstrating the actual performance of what is 

delivered. 

We are not making any recommendations in this report. We previously made recommendations 

related to EPAA: 

• In 2011 we recommended that DOD establish an integrated schedule and develop life-cycle 

cost estimates for EPAA.

7

• In 2012 we recommended that DOD assess the extent to which the dates announced by the 

President in 2009 are contributing to concurrency and recommend schedule adjustments 

where significant benefits can be obtained.8

Based on DOD’s response to those recommendations and subsequent follow-up, we do not 

expect them to be fully implemented. However, we continue to believe implementing these 

 

5 GAO-11-179R.

6 After our December 16, 2013 briefing, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, Pub. L. No. 113-

66 (2013) was enacted. Section 233(b) contains a requirement for DOD to again report on Regional Ballistic Missile 

Defense. 

7 GAO-11-220.

8 GAO-12-486. 
Page 4 GAO-14-248R Regional Missile Defense

recommendations is important to improve transparency and accountability of acquisitions for 

EPAA, especially given the EPAA policy’s commitment to deploy capabilities that are proven 

and cost-effective, and the Ballistic Missile Defense Review’s commitment that new capabilities 

must be fiscally sustainable over the long term. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

In commenting on our draft report (reproduced in Enclosure II), DOD noted that the Department 

had previously provided technical comments on the enclosed briefing, of which a majority were

still applicable. Regarding our views on DOD’s Regional Ballistic Missile Defense report itself, 

several of the technical comments relate to information that DOD had provided to GAO, but did 

not include in its report. Indeed, our assessment was that DOD has more comprehensive 

information than what was provided in its report, and we continue to believe that DOD could 

have better reflected its current regional missile defense efforts and activities by including this 

information. Regarding our assessment of acquisition risks for EPAA, MDA provided two sets of 

technical comments in November on our briefing. However, neither these, nor DOD’s technical 

comments were accompanied by supporting or clarifying documentation. Specifically, we found 

several suggested changes to be unsupported—and in some cases contradicted –by 

documentation MDA had already provided. For example, in its comments DOD states that the 

Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications element is on track to provide 

planned EPAA capability. However, the systems engineering, program execution, and budget 

request documentation we reviewed clearly show a reduction over time in the capability 

expected for delivery to support the next two EPAA phases as compared to initial plans. In its 

comments, DOD also characterizes ground test plans as streamlined. Indeed, we found that 

ground test events were taken out or their content reduced as compared to prior plans, which 

decreased the ability to gather key information on integrated capability performance. DOD 

further noted in its comments that modeling and simulation has matured relative to verification, 

validation, and accreditation of the element models through fiscal year 2013. We agree that 

MDA has made progress, though again, we found it has decreased planned events and 

activities in comparison with previous plans, placing DOD at risk of delivering systems without 

fully understanding their integrated performance. 

DOD also noted in its comments that GAO might not have all the data pertaining to certain 

aspects of system development for EPAA. We believe we requested and received sufficient and

relevant data. In 2010, we found that MDA had aligned systems engineering and testing plans 

with EPAA policy commitments to certain phases by certain dates, noting these were positive 

acquisition management practices. Specifically, in 2010 we identified MDA’s Master Integration 

Plan (MIP)—the systems engineering plan for the integrated Ballistic Missile Defense System—

and MDA’s Integrated Master Test Plan (IMTP) as evidence of MDA’s positive efforts. We 

currently find that it has been challenging for MDA to execute those plans and they have 

changed over time. The documentation we used to make this comparison is the same 

documentation we identified in our prior work as demonstrating MDA’s proactive management; 

both the MIP and IMTP are produced at least annually, and both documents have been 

organized around deliveries for EPAA phases since 2010. To show changes over time in 

acquisition of specific elements participating in EPAA, like Command, Control, Battle 

Management, and Communications, we supplemented that analysis with reviews of MDA’s 

program execution documentation presented to MDA senior leadership. MDA and DOD officials 

verified that these documents were authoritative for our comparisons and that we had the most 

current versions. If there is other relevant data, DOD did not provide it during the course of our 

review, at the exit meeting to discuss key facts, or in response to our draft report. 
Page 5 GAO-14-248R Regional Missile Defense

In its comments, DOD reiterated its commitment to delivering required functionality for EPAA as 

planned and in accordance with the phases and dates outlined in the EPAA policy. Our report 

focused on the changes in MDA’s plans for the content and timing of capability to be delivered

and we found that capability delivery is delayed as compared to MDA’s original plans. We made 

no determination as to the sufficiency of these capabilities to implement the EPAA policy. In our 

first report on EPAA, we found that the EPAA policy committed DOD to a schedule before the 

scope of system development was fully understood. In 2010, MDA identified a single capability 

increment for delivery in 2015 to align with EPAA Phase 2 and another capability increment for 

delivery in 2018 to align with EPAA Phase 3. This plan held until development delays led MDA 

to divide those capability deliveries into at least two increments per phase. DOD further stated 

that delivery of upgrades will not negatively affect the ability of each element to remain fully 

operational. However, defensive capability planned for EPAA increasingly depends on 

integrated performance of the participating elements, or systems. Given the development delays 

as compared to previous plans, the integration of systems is on a higher risk path. Reduced 

time between key events results in fewer opportunities to find and fix issues, increasing the risk 

of performance shortfalls and cost increases or additional delays.

- - - - - 

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees and to the 

Secretary of Defense. The report is also available at no charge on the GAO website at

http://www.gao.gov. 

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact Cristina Chaplain at 

202-512-4841 or ChaplainC@gao.gov or John H. Pendleton at (202) 512-3489 or 

PendletonJ@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public 

Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. In addition to the contacts named above, 

David B. Best and Patricia Lentini, Assistant Directors, as well as Wiktor J. Niewiadomski, 

Jennifer Spence, Brian T. Smith, and Gwyneth B. Woolwine made key contributions to this 

report. Also contributing to this report were Susan C. Ditto, Karen Richey, Robert Swierczek, 

Jay Tallon, and Alyssa Weir. 

Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management

John H. Pendleton, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management

Enclosures - 2 
Page 6 GAO-14-248R Regional Missile Defense

List of Addressees

The Honorable Carl Levin

Chairman

The Honorable James Inhofe

Ranking Member

Committee on Armed Services

United States Senate

The Honorable Richard Durbin

Chairman

The Honorable Thad Cochran

Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Defense

Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate

The Honorable Howard P. "Buck" McKeon

Chairman

The Honorable Adam Smith

Ranking Member

Committee on Armed Services

House of Representatives

The Honorable Rodney Frelinghuysen

Chairman

The Honorable Pete Visclosky

Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Defense

Committee on Appropriations

House of Representatives

The Honorable Michael R. Turner

House of Representatives
Page 7 GAO-14-248R Regional Missile Defense

Enclosure I: Briefing Slides
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Enclosure II: Comments from the Department of Defense
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