The friendly fire casualties and equipment losses suffered during Operation Desert Storm reilluminated an old problem, fratricide, and underscored the need for more effective means of identifying friendly and hostile forces, and neutrals and noncombatants on the battlefield (i.e., combat identification). Studies and incidents subsequent to Operation Desert Storm, such as the friendly forces shootdown of two Blackhawk helicopters over Iraq during Operation Provide Comfort, have reiterated the need for improved combat identification. Combat identification has been defined as “the means to positively identify friendly, hostile and neutral platforms in order to reduce fratricide due to mis-identification and to maximize the effective use of weapon systems.” The services are pursuing a number of solutions to provide combat identification. They believe the solution will involve a “system of systems,” one component of which will be cooperative IFF Q&A systems. In March 1992, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council approved a mission need statement for combat identification. That mission need statement requires positive, timely, and reliable identification of hostiles, friendlies, and neutrals; classification of foes by platform, class/type, and nationality; interoperability between services; and interoperability with minimum civil air traffic control system requirements. It states that the primary constraint is affordability. A cooperative IFF Q&A identification is accomplished when a shooter/observer queries a target and the target answers with a reply identifying itself as a friend. A Defense Acquisition Board review conducted on August 14, 1992, and subsequent approval from the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, gave (1) the Army the lead in battlefield combat identification (BCI) efforts, including cooperative systems for ground-to-ground and air-to-ground identification, and (2) the Navy the lead for air-to-air and ground-to-air cooperative identification systems. The Navy was charged with coordinating these efforts. Figures 1 and 2 depict the current breakdown of responsibility for cooperative IFF Q&A systems development. To enhance force warfighting capability and minimize fratricide in the future, the Army has been pursuing a BCI program to improve situational awareness and provide immediate, positive target identification. In 1991, the Army started implementing a five-phased program to develop and field battlefield identification techniques through fiscal year 2000. The Army is actively into the third phase of the program, the near-term phase, whose objective is to integrate a battlefield combat identification system (BCIS) into selected ground vehicles and helicopters. A millimeter wave cooperative IFF Q&A system was selected for BCIS as the near-term technology. The near-term cooperative IFF Q&A system is currently in engineering and manufacturing development (EMD). The Army is acquiring 45 EMD models and is planning to acquire another 115 in fiscal year 1996 to be demonstrated during the fiscal year 1997 digitized brigade experiment known as Task Force XXI. The Army currently estimates the cost of providing the near-term BCIS to 6,400 selected platforms of Force Package I at between $250 million and $300 million. The ultimate cost of BCIS would be substantially higher if all Army divisions were to be equipped. The Army is just beginning the mid- and long-term phases of its BCI efforts with the development of a COEA to identify affordable and promising alternatives. The objectives of the mid- and long-term phases are to integrate situational awareness and target identification and to have an automated correlation and display of situational awareness and target identification information. The mid- and long-term cooperative IFF Q&A system may be different than the near-term technology. As the lead for cooperative aircraft identification development, the Navy has been working on its Cooperative Aircraft Identification (CAI) effort to address deficiencies in the currently used aircraft identification system, Mark XII. The CAI effort is to provide a system to replace or upgrade the Mark XII system for use in air-to-air and ground-to-air identification. Navy officials have estimated that a Mark XII follow-on system could cost more than $3.5 billion. In addition to providing reliable, secure identification of friends, any Mark XII follow-on system will have to ensure future civil aviation air traffic control compatibility. Mode S is a civil aviation air traffic control capability started by the United States and now planned for international use. Eurocontrol, the European aviation authority, has mandated Mode S usage by January 1, 1999. Mark XII transponders, however, do not currently incorporate Mode S. Without this capability, U.S. military aircraft may face delays in the use of civil airspace or may even be excluded from certain regions during peacetime. In June 1994, the Naval Research Laboratory completed and published a draft COEA for the CAI effort. That COEA was not approved because some Navy officials believe it did not consider subsequently proposed alternatives that should be considered. Additionally, the Navy provided only about half of the funding required for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 to accomplish a 1997 scheduled decision on whether to move the CAI effort forward to the next phase of the acquisition process—demonstration and validation. The services’ current management plan and structure for cooperative IFF Q&A systems, which reflect the division of responsibility between the Army and the Navy, lack needed cohesiveness. While the Army and the Navy have worked to coordinate their efforts, the separation of responsibility between the two services may result in the selection of suboptimal solutions, unnecessary program delays, and the acquisition of systems that may not be interoperable across the services. The services defined the management structure for their efforts to combat fratricide in a December 1992 memorandum of agreement on combat identification. In its capacity as lead for the services’ cooperative IFF Q&A systems development, the Navy led the development of the management section of DOD’s September 1993 Joint Master Plan for Cooperative Aircraft and Battlefield Combat Identification. The plan provides a management approach that is intended to coordinate cooperative identification requirements development and management mechanisms to ensure development, procurement, and integration of interoperable surface and air identification systems. As shown in figure 3, the management structure identified in the plan uses the organizations defined in the services’ memorandum of agreement on combat identification. The principal coordinating bodies identified in the plan are the General Officers’ Steering Committee for Combat Identification, the Joint Combat Identification Office, the Service Acquisition Executive Council, and the Senior Advisory Group. The General Officers’ Steering Committee for Combat Identification provides senior level review and coordination of all Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps combat identification requirements, development and procurement efforts, product improvements, and related technologies. The Joint Combat Identification Office provides action officer level coordination and functions as the primary information center for all combat identification issues, programs, requirements, and technologies. The Senior Acquisition Executive Council was established to provide the highest level of service coordination, while the Senior Advisory Group is to provide program manager level coordination. The separation of responsibility for the development of cooperative IFF Q&A systems between the Army and the Navy is not conducive to looking for and finding common technological solutions. For example, a DOD official informed us that a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally has demonstrated a laser interrogation and D-band response system for ground-to-ground identification. Since the Mark XII system operates in the D-band, the adoption of a D-band ground-to-ground system, if feasible, could be a cost-effective solution providing interoperability among the services. The Army, however, has not considered that D-band system or one like it for ground-to-ground identification. Even absent the identification of a common technology, the current management plan and structure have allowed the services to pursue systems without fully considering how and if those systems can cost effectively be made interoperable. For example, the Navy’s COEA could not fully consider the equipment that would be needed to unify the Army’s mid- and long-term approach with the Navy’s CAI system because that approach has not been defined. Since a Mark XII follow-on wave form has not been identified for CAI, the Army will have similar difficulties. While the Army and the Navy have worked to coordinate their efforts, the current management structure and plan perpetuate the stovepipe development of cooperative IFF Q&A systems. In commenting on an earlier draft of the management plan, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition stated “. . . I am concerned that the ‘stovepipe’ management scheme shown . . . will not enable possible equipment interoperability and commonality to be realized between aircraft and battlefield systems.” A Navy official informed us that the plan’s developers added the Senior Acquisition Executive Council and Joint Senior Advisory Group to the plan’s organizational chart to address this criticism. However, these organizations were already defined in the draft plan because they were included in the services’ memorandum of agreement on combat identification. Furthermore, the delays in developing a new air-to-air and ground-to-air cooperative IFF Q&A system combined with the recent Army start of its mid- and long-term efforts provide an opportunity to address the Under Secretary’s concerns through joint management of the Army’s and Navy’s efforts. The current management structure also risks unnecessary delays in the development and fielding of a set of systems planned to help prevent future fratricide by allowing the services to prioritize their efforts differently. For example, while DOD has made development of combat identification systems a high priority, the Navy, through its funding process, did not make CAI a high priority.