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By 1992 the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and U.S. Customs were operating three separate Aerostat systems. In 1992 Congress mandated that DoD consolidate and manage the separate programs. The Air Force was designated as the executive agent. The Air Force made the 4700th Operations Support Squadron (OSS), a component of the Air Combat Command (ACC), responsible for the management of the system. The resulting system became known as the Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS).

Immediate problems emerged as USAF accepted the turnover of sites from other agencies. The newly acquired systems had not gone through the normal acquisition process and proper support was not in place. Provisioning problems caused five TARS sites to be nonoperational for up to 28 months. Telephone Hot Line complaints from personnel resulted in a 1994 Department of Defense Inspector General Audit Report that documented the issues and provided guidance for getting the system on track. Issues with the General Electric aerostats dictated a contracting effort to replace the three existing systems with a single standard configuration.