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GAO-13-802R 1 (2013-09-09)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaahgd0001 and id is 1 raw text is: G A O U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 September 9, 2013 The Honorable Carl Levin Chairman The Honorable John McCain Ranking Member Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate Space: Defense and Civilian Agencies Request Significant Funding for Launch-Related Activities The Department of Defense (DOD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) rely on launch service providers to place payloads into orbit on a recurring basis. DOD and NASA are the nation's two launch agents as identified in the U.S. Space Transportation Policy. The agencies involved in space launch activities request funding each year to develop, procure, and support these activities. This funding represents a significant investment on the part of the government. However, because the agencies involved budget and account for their respective space launch efforts differently, the total governmentwide funding to support these activities is difficult to determine. This report formally transmits the enclosed briefing with information on the launch-related funding that government agencies expect to require from fiscal years 2014 through 2018. We prepared this report as an initial step in addressing your broader request that we provide short- and long-term assessments examining impediments to economical procurement of government launch vehicles and launch services. Specifically, with this report, we address your interest in gaining more detailed knowledge about the amount and types of funding government agencies expect to allocate to launch-related activities and infrastructure for fiscal years 2014 through 2018. This information should help to inform plans to lower launch costs, increase competition, and invest in new programs. To conduct this work, we obtained and analyzed DOD and NASA top-level budget documentation (along with relevant funding from other government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that use either DOD or NASA as the launch agent for their satellites) and aggregated the total amount of funding the agencies expect to require for launch-related activities from fiscal years 2014 through 2018. For purposes of comparison between defense and civilian budget account types, we grouped DOD as well as civilian launch-related funding requests into three budget categories: Procurement; Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E); and Other. The budget category designated as Other' includes DOD operations and maintenance, military construction, and military personnel, as well as NASA operations and support, construction of facilities, and civilian personnel. We discussed this methodology with DOD and NASA officials, who found it reasonable. We conducted our work from June 2013 to September 2013 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the