10 U.S.C. § 193 — Combat support agencies: oversight

(a) Combat Readiness. At least every two years, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must report to the Secretary of Defense and Congress's defense committees on the combat support agencies. Each report must say whether each agency is ready and able to support fighting forces in a war or national security threat, and include any recommendations the Chairman thinks are needed. To write each report, the Chairman must review each agency's support plans for wartime or threats to national security. After talking with the military department secretaries and combatant commanders as appropriate, the Chairman may — with the Secretary of Defense's approval — update those plans as needed. (b) Participation in Joint Training Exercises. The Chairman must make sure the combat support agencies join joint training exercises enough to prove they can do their wartime support jobs. The Chairman must also judge how each agency performs in those exercises and, following the Secretary of Defense's guidelines, push for any changes needed to improve that performance. (c) Readiness Reporting System. Working with each combat support agency's director, the Chairman must build one standard system for reporting each agency's wartime readiness to the Secretary of Defense, the combatant commanders, and the military department secretaries. (d) Review of National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Subsections (a), (b), and (c) apply to the NSA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency too, but only for the combat support work they do for the Defense Department. The Secretary of Defense, after consulting the Director of National Intelligence, must set policies and procedures for how these subsections apply to those two agencies. (e) Combat Support Capabilities of DIA, NSA, and NGA. The Secretary of Defense, working with the Director of National Intelligence, must develop and carry out policies and programs to fix any gaps that the Chairman or other Defense Department officials find in how well the Defense Intelligence Agency, NSA, and NGA can support military combat operations. (f) Definition of Combat Support Agency. In this section, "combat support agency" means: the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Logistics Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and any other Defense Agency the Secretary of Defense names as a combat support agency.