From the Aug. 20, 2013 Government Accountability Office report on Next Generation Jammer.
The Department of Defense (DOD) has assessed whether the planned Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) program is duplicative using a variety of means, but none of them address all of the system’s planned roles or take into account the military services’ evolving airborne electronic attack investment plans.
DOD analyses support its conclusion that the NGJ meets a valid need and is not duplicative of existing capabilities in its primary role—suppressing enemy air defenses from outside the range of known surface-to-air missiles.
However, these analyses do not address all planned NGJ roles, such as communications jamming in irregular warfare environments, or take into account the military services’ evolving airborne electronic attack investment plans.
According to GAO’s analysis, none of the systems that have emerged since DOD completed its NGJ analyses duplicate its planned capabilities; however there is some overlap in the roles they are intended to perform.
Redundancy in some of these areas may, in fact, be desirable. However, pursuing multiple acquisition efforts to develop similar capabilities can result in the same capability gap being filled twice or more, lead to inefficient use of resources, and contribute to other warfighting needs going unfilled. Therefore, continued examination of potential overlap and duplication among these investments may be warranted.
