House authorizers want the Air Force to accelerate the development, procurement and fielding of the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) recapitalization program.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) tactical air and land forces subcommittee said in its mark released Tuesday that it is concerned that a protracted acquisition program will result in a multi-year capabilities gap, which will leave combatant commanders without an acceptable level of ground moving target indicators and battle management command and control (C2) capability. The subcommittee believes the use of existing technology, combined with a commercially-available jet aircraft, can result in a significantly faster acquisition program.
The subcommittee wants the Air Force to pick one radar solution as part of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the program to ensure it doesn’t continue to be delayed. The Air Force intends to consider two radar alternatives from Boeing [BA] and Raytheon [RTN] as part of a technology maturation and risk reduction phase (Defense Daily, January 27). The subcommittee supports this.
But the subcommittee also believes that pursuing multiple radar technologies concurrently within the program of record into the follow-on development phase would be inconsistent with the committee’s acquisition reform initiatives. If the service believes that alternative radar capabilities should be pursued for risk mitigation or capability enhancements in the future, the Air Force should pursue such an approach outside of the program of record with the ability to incrementally integrate in the future, if necessary.
The subcommittee wants the Air Force to properly fund JSTARS Recap in its five-year future years defense program (FYDP) to accelerate the program and eliminate the delay in delivering initial operational capability (IOC), which the subcommittee says is currently planned for FY ’24. The subcommittee also wants a briefing from the Air Force secretary with a pair of plans: one to accelerate IOC to FY ’22 and another to FY ’23.