Defense Critical Infrastructure: Actions Needed to Improve the Identification and Management of Electrical Power Risks and Vulnerabilities to DOD Critical Assets

United States. Government Accountability Office.

United States. Government Accountability Office.

关键词: Government accountability -- United States.;    national defense;    homeland security;    defense critical infrastructure;    letter report;   

RP-ID  :  GAO-10-147
RP-ID  :  297189

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) relies on a global network of defense critical infrastructure so essential that the incapacitation, exploitation, or destruction of an asset within this network could severely affect DOD's ability to deploy, support, and sustain its forces and operations worldwide and to implement its core missions, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its homeland defense and strategic missions. In October 2008, DOD identified its 34 most critical assets in this network--assets of such extraordinary importance to DOD operations that according to DOD, their incapacitation or destruction would have a very serious, debilitating effect on the ability of the department to fulfill its missions. Located both within the United States and abroad, DOD's most critical assets include both DOD- and non-DOD-owned assets. DOD relies overwhelmingly on commercial electrical power grids for secure, uninterrupted electrical power supplies to support its critical assets. DOD is the single largest consumer of energy in the United States, as we have noted in previous work. According to a 2008 report by the Defense Science Board Task Force on DOD's Energy Strategy, DOD has traditionally assumed that commercial electrical power grids are highly reliable and subject to only infrequent (generally weather-related), short-term disruptions. For backup supplies of electricity, DOD has depended primarily on diesel generators with short-term fuel supplies. In 2008, however, the Defense Science Board reported that "[c]ritical national security and homeland defense missions are at an unacceptably high risk of extended outage from failure of the [commercial electrical power] grid" upon which DOD overwhelmingly relies for its electrical power supplies. Specifically, the reliability and security of commercial electrical power grids are increasingly threatened by a convergence of challenges, including increased user demand, an aging electrical power infrastructure, increased reliance on automated control systems that are susceptible to cyberattack, the attractiveness of electrical power infrastructure for terrorist attacks, long lead times for replacing key electrical power equipment, and more frequent interruptions in fuel supplies to electricity-generating plants. As a result, commercial electrical power grids have become increasingly fragile and vulnerable to extended disruptions that could severely impact DOD's most critical assets, their supporting infrastructure, and ultimately the missions they support."