The term “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” or “ISR,” encompasses multiple activities related to the planning and operation of sensors and assets that collect, process, and disseminate data in support of current and future military operations. Intelligence data can take many forms, including optical, radar, or infrared images or electronic signals. This data can come from a variety of sources, including surveillance and reconnaissance systems ranging from satellites, to manned aircraft like the U-2, unmanned aircraft systems like the Air Force’s Global Hawk and Predator and the Army’s Hunter, to other ground, air, sea, or space-based equipment, to human intelligence teams. DOD ISR activities support the missions of the Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the missions of other government agencies. ISR activities directly support current and future operations and military forces rely on the collection, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence in the planning and conduct of their operations and activities. Many defense organizations play a role in identifying ISR requirements, managing current assets, and developing new capabilities. DOD established the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)) to coordinate policy and strategic oversight of defense intelligence, security, and counterintelligence to meet combatant commander requirements. Other defense intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency have key roles in supporting defense and national security missions. Combatant commanders may identify their needs for ISR capabilities to support their missions through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For example, the U.S. Central Command is charged with identifying the ISR capabilities required to support his theater of operations. Generally, the individual military services or other DOD agencies are responsible for managing the acquisition of new DOD ISR systems. In 2003, DOD altered its unified command plan to give the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) responsibility for planning, integrating, and coordinating ISR in support of strategic and global operations. To execute this responsibility, USSTRATCOM established the Joint Functional Component Command-ISR in March 2005 and designated the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency as the commander. The Joint Functional Component Command-ISR is charged with developing strategies for distributing, or allocating, existing ISR assets among combatant commanders and ensuring the integration and synchronization of DOD, national, and allied ISR capabilities and collection efforts. In the case of ongoing operations, the Joint Force Air Component Commander generally tasks theater-level ISR assets made available for support of the Joint Force Commander’s operational objectives. Implemented in 2003, the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) is DOD’s principal process for identifying, assessing, and prioritizing proposals to improve existing capabilities and develop new capabilities. The JCIDS process is designed to facilitate coordination among DOD components in assessing proposals for new capabilities to ensure that they enable joint forces to meet the full range of military operations and challenges. Under the JCIDS collaborative review process, proposals for new intelligence capabilities that support DOD or national intelligence requirements must be reviewed by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, which consists of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a four-star officer designated by each of the military services. Eight Functional Capabilities Boards assist the Joint Requirements Oversight Council in evaluating proposals and making recommendations on approval. The Battlespace Awareness Functional Capabilities Board (BA/FCB) is responsible for reviewing proposals to develop and acquire new ISR capabilities. Under section 426 of title 10 of the U.S. Code, DOD is required to establish an ISR Integration Council to serve as a forum for the services and the defense intelligence agencies to discuss their ISR integration efforts in order to ensure unity of effort and preclude unnecessary duplication of effort. Led by the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the council is statutorily made up of senior intelligence officers from each of the armed services and U.S. Special Operations Command, the directors of the defense intelligence agencies, and the Joint Staff Director for Operations. DOD is also required under section 426 to develop a comprehensive plan— known as the ISR Integration Roadmap—to guide the development and integration of DOD ISR capabilities from 2004 through 2018. DOD published the first iteration of the ISR Integration Roadmap in May 2005 and updated the Roadmap in January 2007. The details of the ISR Integration Roadmap are classified, but the management issues and initiatives it contains are not classified. Over the past few years, DOD has taken some important steps to enable it to take a department-wide view of ISR capabilities. These steps are important in DOD’s efforts to formulate a strategy for meeting future ISR requirements in a more integrated manner by considering how existing and future assets will fit together to provide needed information to support combatant commanders and national decision makers. Specifically, DOD has developed and is updating a statutorily required ISR Integration Roadmap that charts current programs and has begun testing portfolio management principles to manage the requirements for future ISR capabilities. However, these two initiatives are in the early stages of implementation and have some limitations, and it is unclear whether these initiatives will be enough to improve integration of DOD ISR assets and guide DOD ISR investment decisions. DOD’s ISR Integration Roadmap is a noteworthy step for DOD in examining the ISR capabilities that DOD currently has available and in development, although the Roadmap does not represent a comprehensive vision for the ISR enterprise or define strategy to guide future investments. First published in May 2005 in response to a statutory requirement and updated in January 2007, DOD’s ISR Integration Roadmap comprises a catalogue of detailed information on all the ISR assets being used and developed across DOD, including ISR capabilities related to collection, communication, exploitation, and analysis. DOD’s recent update took the ISR Integration Roadmap a step farther than its 2005 version because it incorporated information from the QDR and the National Intelligence Strategy. For example, the updated version includes a list of the ISR- related QDR decisions aimed at achieving future joint force characteristics and building on progress to date, such as increasing investment in unmanned aircraft systems and balancing air- and space-borne ISR capabilities. In addition, the recent ISR Integration Roadmap included changes in funding and ISR program information driven by the fiscal year 2007 President’s Budget. We believe that, given the vast scope of ISR capabilities, which operate in a variety of mediums and encompass a range of intelligence disciplines, the ISR Integration Roadmap represents a significant step toward providing DOD leadership and the Congress with the information needed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current ISR capabilities. However, while the Roadmap sets out some strategic goals objectives for the defense ISR enterprise, such as recapitalizing ISR capabilities, it does not yet constitute an enterprise-level architecture or represent an investment strategy. The Roadmap does not clearly show how the ISR systems—existing and future—will fit together in a vision for common architecture to most efficiently meet priority ISR requirements or provide a basis for making trade-offs among competing programs. Specifically, the Roadmap does not (1) identify overall ISR requirements and how DOD plans to achieve them, (2) identify funding priorities, and (3) establish mechanisms to enforce an investment strategy or measure progress. Moreover, the Roadmap does not clarify what requirements for future ISR systems are already filled, or possibly saturated, identify the critical capability gaps that need to be filled by future systems, or identify focus areas for future requirements. For example, although the Roadmap sets the objective of attaining global persistent surveillance, it has not yet defined the requirements for persistent surveillance or how to use current assets to attain it. We have previously testified on the need for better planning for other ISR-related development programs. For example, DOD has continued to request funding to support the services’ plans to develop new unmanned aircraft system capabilities in the absence of overall plans to guide development and investment decisions. DOD officials acknowledged that the ISR Integration Roadmap has limitations and said that these limitations will be addressed in future revisions. As the department moves forward with its ISR Integration Roadmap, we believe it could provide a basis for DOD to determine the mix of future capabilities that provides the best value with regard to their place in an overarching ISR architecture. DOD is attempting to better manage the requirements for future ISR capabilities across DOD by applying a joint capability portfolio management concept to ISR assets. In September 2006, the Deputy Secretary of Defense decided to bring ISR systems across DOD together into a capability portfolio as part of a test case for the joint capability portfolio management concept. The capability portfolio containing these ISR systems is known as the battlespace awareness capability portfolio, and it is one of the four test cases for exploring this management concept. The intent of the ISR portfolio management test case is to enable DOD to develop and manage ISR capabilities across the entire department—rather than by military service or individual program—and by doing so, to improve the interoperability of future capabilities, minimize capability redundancies and gaps, and maximize capability effectiveness. The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence is the lead office for battlespace awareness capability portfolio management. The ISR Integration Council acts as the governance body for the ISR portfolio management effort. In addition, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence works closely with the Battlespace Awareness Functional Capabilities Board, which is a Joint Staff organization that provides analytic support for the Joint Requirements Oversight Council’s discussions and decisions on ISR capability needs, joint concepts, and programmatic issues.