The report states, for example, that an engineering study of the Biological Detection System was made at Dugway between 1999 and 2001. "The study concluded that the system wasn't expected to meet the decontaminability and hardness requirements . . . and recommend configuration changes and corrective actions," it said.

However, inspectors wrote, the higher-up U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Center recommended release of the system anyway — saying its survivability is "generally equivalent to that of other wheeled vehicle systems." Inspectors noted that "program managers had no plans to conduct follow up survivability testing for this system."

Inspectors noted that engineering studies of the Stryker and FOX also showed they failed to meet criteria for ease of decontamination and hardness against penetration by nuclear, germ or chemical agents.

It said Dugway was planning to test the Stryker family's nuclear, biological and chemical reconnaissance variant for its ability to detect such contaminants — "but no tests were planned to assess system survivability."

Inspectors complained that the Army had never truly evaluated the survivability of the other three major systems it looked at: the Apache and Comanche helicopters and the Future Combat Systems family of weapons under development.

The major problem, according to the inspectors, is the Army never developed firm and measurable criteria to evaluate survivability.

Instead, they "typically stated that systems must be nuclear-, biological- and chemical-survivable without further explanation or reference," the report said.

Inspectors also complained that "the Army didn't fully test its mission-essential systems against live agents or simulants," relying instead on computer modeling and engineering studies when any evaluation was made at all.

They added, "The Army built a test facility at the West Deseret Test Center and Dugway Proving Ground, which it completed in September 1997 at a cost of about $24.6 million. The Army has not used the facility to conduct tests of a complete system. Instead, engineering studies and analyses were used almost exclusively to assess the survivability of systems in contaminated environments."

Inspectors made several recommendations to rectify problems, but commands overseeing the Army systems evaluated sometimes disagreed with them or proposed alternates. A letter from the Army Audit Agency said the Army is reviewing them before adopting a final, formal Army position on them.

For example, inspectors called for system overseers to make survivability from nuclear, biological and chemical contamination "a key threshold performance requirement for all mission-essential systems" that must be met before they are put in the field or mass produced.

But the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology did not agree. It proposed a somewhat less rigorous requirement that it be just a "threshold requirement," omitting the words "key" and "performance."

Inspectors also called for program officers to periodically report the status of survivability of major programs, but the assistant secretary again disagreed saying that "would impose additional bureaucratic requirements."

Inspectors also called for development of more clear and measurable requirements to ensure survivability, and to centrally track test results for survivability of all major systems, which the assistant secretary also labeled as another level of unnecessary review.

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com