Undersea Surveillance - Navy Continues to Build Ships Designed for Soviet Threat: Nsiad-93-53 (Paperback)

GAO reviewed: (1) how the threat of enemy submarines changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union; and (2) what changes the Navy proposed regarding its Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) program. GAO found that: (1) the Soviet global submarine threat has declined dramatically and is no longer the primary threat to the United States; (2) the focus has shifted to the evolving threat of regional conflict in shallow water; (3) the Navy has not yet developed performance requirements for an undersea surveillance system to counter the shallow water threat; (4) the Navy built SURTASS to counter the Soviet submarine threat in deep water, but it planned to use SURTASS against the shallow water submarine threat; and (5) preliminary test results showed that SURTASS had potential for shallow water submarine detections, but the Navy has not demonstrated SURTASS shallow water capability through developmental and operational tests.