Far-flung War on Terror operations and the drone program they spawned led to a unique type of illicit waste, as the Pentagon scrambled throughout the past 14 years to acquire satellite communications technology.
Offering a new analysis of a long-running problem in the wake of 9/11, the Government Accountability Office this week published a report detailing how the Defense Department’s many agencies have individually sought to satisfy their growing demand for SATCOM capabilities in the private sector—a violation of federal regulations.
The GAO specifically cited the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq, and the deployment of “new weapons systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles and other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms” as fueling the trend.
The combination of technological improvements and wartime pressures caused the Pentagon to tolerate acquisitions that violated federal rules, the watchdog concluded—a move that has seen the Defense Department overpay for a significant portion of the $875 million it collectively spends on satellite communications services. Because of the Pentagon’s massive impact on the market as whole, rules require all Defense agency requests for SATCOM services to go through the Defense Information Systems Agency—a centralized entity that is legally obligated to solicit bids in a competitive market. The decision to ignore those guidelines, the GAO noted, has cost American taxpayers at least $280 million—a 16 percent mark-up.
Loose contracting rules also have non-fiscal problems associated with them, the report found.
“The piecemeal approach to commercial SATCOM acquisition has “resulted in commanders having limited situational awareness, control, and oversight of the commercial SATCOM resources,” the agency claimed.
The watchdog has for over a decade notified the department of its control SATCOM acquisition control deficiencies.
“DOD is still challenged by a fragmented and inefficient process, similar to our 2003 findings, as the process has been overwhelmed by the demands of recent military operations, among other factors,” the report stated.
In the War on Terror purchases it examined, GAO found that one-third of the Defense Department’s SATCOM procurements did not go through DISA.
