Battlefield Automation: Army's Digital Battlefield Plan Lacks Specific Measurable Goals.

One of the Armys top priorities is a program to digitize the battlefield by creating a vast network of computers, sensors, and communications systems that would provide a common picture of the battlefield from soldier to commander simultaneously. Because of the importance and estimated 4 billion cost of this program, we reviewed the Army Digitization Master Plan to evaluate the Armys efforts to digitize the battlefield, including the Marine Corps participation. We conducted this review under our basic legislative responsibilities and are addressing this report to you because we believe it will be of interest to your committees. The Armys plan to digitize the battlefield is expensive, contains many risks, and lacks specific, measurable goals for the series of large-scale experiments that are to be conducted. The Army is planning to conduct a series of experiments from 1995 to 1997, including a brigade-level experiment in 1997 at a cost of 258 million,1 without having had a successful battalion-level experiment. In fact, a battalion-level experiment in 1994 failed to meet Army expectations. Specific, measurable goals are needed to evaluate the achievements of each experiment, and they should be met before proceeding to the next experiment. Otherwise, the Army is unnecessarily risking additional investments amounting to 397 million for digital systems needed to conduct increasingly larger scale experiments to fiscal year 1999. Based on Army estimates, the investment required to digitize a 10 division Army could be as high as 4 billion. Also, because Congress has directed the Army to include the Marine Corps in its plan, the Department of Defense DoD funding for the Marine Corps needs to be identified and assured to solidify its participation and success. KAR p. 2