Summary
Department of Defense (DOD) officials have identified an increasing likelihood that an adversary will use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces. Therefore, GAO sought to determine (1) if DOD has a sufficient number of protective suits to meet its stated wartime requirement and (2) if DOD's acquisition approach has affected the risk associated with having insufficient suits.
DOD does not have a sufficient number of protective suits to meet its official wartime requirement. This requirement will likely increase to include counterterrorism, force protection, and homeland defense contingencies. Calculating the shortage accurately is complicated by DOD's reliance on outdated assumptions to determine wartime consumption rates. Despite recent increases in new suit production, other factors--such as the ongoing expiration of older suits and the consumption of suits during Operation Iraqi Freedom--reduced the available supply of suits, thereby widening the difference between the number of suits required and those on hand. Although DOD is taking action to improve the management of its suit inventory, DOD's existing systems are still unable to provide an accurate accounting, which adversely affects the ability to determine the number of new suits required. DOD's current acquisition approach increases the risk of not having sufficient suits to meet wartime needs. This is occurring because: (1) inconsistent and unpredictable annual funding for suits tends to perpetuate the current cycle of large numbers of suits expiring in some future years; (2) reliance on sole-source, foreign-based suppliers for critical suit components potentially threatens the supply of these components; (3) the ability of suit manufacturers to sustain surge production levels is unclear; (4) in the event of a major conflict, a delay will likely occur between the time current inventories are exhausted and suit manufacturers can surge production sufficiently to meet wartime needs, creating a suit shortage that could adversely affect military operations; and (5) DOD does not maintain a stockpile of the critical suit components.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change
from "In process" to "Implemented" or "Not implemented" based on our follow up work.
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Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To facilitate DOD's ability to decide how many chemical and biological protective suits to purchase to address current shortages, and an acceptable risk level to maintain, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Joint Staff to determine the wartime strategy to use as the basis for suit acquisition and funding decisions.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: In our report entitled "Chemical and Biological Defense: U.S. Ability to Meet Protective Suit Inventory Requirements Faces Risk" (GAO-03-889C), we recommended that DOD decide the wartime strategy that should be used as the basis for future suit acquisition and funding decisions. As we pointed out at the time, DOD cannot make well-informed decisions about how many chemical and biological protective suits to have in inventory and how much risk to accept by acquiring less than that number without a wartime strategy. Since the time of our report, DOD has reevaluated its wartime strategy, reporting in both its 2005 and 2006 Annual Reports to the Congress on the Chemical and Biological Defense Program that chemical and biological (as well as nuclear and radiological) defense equipment requirements to include protective suits are based on supporting the 1-4-2-1 force planning construct. DOD's decision to base its chemical and biological protective suit requirements on the 1-4-2-1 scenario satisfies the intent of our recommendation.
Recommendation: To facilitate DOD's ability to decide how many chemical and biological protective suits to purchase to address current shortages, and an acceptable risk level to maintain, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Joint Staff to expedite the approval of illustrative planning scenarios and assumptions about the number of suits consumed during a conflict in order to derive wartime consumption rates for protective suits.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: In our report entitled "Chemical and Biological Defense: U.S. Ability to Meet Protective Suit Requirements Faces Risk" (GAO-03-889C/GAO-04-290), we recommended that DOD expedite approval of illustrative planning scenarios and assumptions about the number of suits consumed during a conflict to derive wartime consumption rates for protective suits. As we pointed out, DOD's ability to determine its protective suit requirements--and therefore the number of suits it needed to acquire--was based on outdated assumptions from 1997 data to support a hypothetical two major theater war scenario in the year 2006. Since the time of our report, the Joint Staff conducted the Chemical and Biological Expendable Equipment Combat Consumption (E2C2) rate study to derive consumption rates for chemical and biological equipment under the approved North East Asia Defense Planning Scenario. According to a March 22, 2007, memorandum signed by LTG Sharp, the Director of the Joint Staff, the E2C2 rate study was conducted with the most recent approved scenarios and assumptions and addresses the GAO recommendation. DOD's action satisfies the intent of our recommendation.
Recommendation: To enable DOD to accurately determine its inventory of chemical and biological protective suits and calculate the additional number of suits needed to meet requirements, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense to establish a deadline to select an inventory management approach that is acceptable to all of the military services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense and compatible with the system chosen by the Defense Logistics Agency.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: In our report entitled "Chemical and Biological Defense: U.S. Ability to Meet Protective Suit Requirements Faces Risk" (GAO-03-889C/GAO-04-290), we recommended that the Secretary of Defense direct the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense to establish a deadline to select an inventory management approach that is acceptable to all of the military services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense and compatible with the system chose by the Defense Logistics Agency. As we pointed out, DOD's ability to determine how many suits it needs to meet requirements is not possible until a DOD-wide inventory management system is implemented. DOD concurred with our recommendation, and in its 2007 Annual Report to Congress on its Chemical and Biological Defense Program, cited GAO's report recommendations as rationale for standardizing individual protective equipment (IPE) inventory management across the services. Accordingly, in March 2006, DOD completed an initial feasibility study and business case analysis under its IPE Strategic Inventory Management (SIM) project, and actions are ongoing to define the next phase that will include implementation and funding. We believe that establishing the IPE SIM project, that has standardizing IPE inventory management across the services as an objective, satisfies the intent of our recommendation. (GAO Accomplishment Report No. GAO-07-1919A)
Recommendation: To reduce the risk of DOD being unable to obtain sufficient quantities of chemical and biological protective suits, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to identify specific steps DOD could take to increase the consistency and predictability of funding. These could include efforts to stabilize military service suit purchases using operations and maintenance funding, and exploring (1) methods for obligating procurement funds for suit contracts over a 3-year period and (2) contracting options for spreading suit deliveries over longer periods of time.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: In our report entitled "Chemical and Biological Defense: U.S. Ability to Meet Protective Suit Inventory Requirements Faces Risk" (GAO-03-889C/GAO-04-290), we recommended that DOD identify specific steps it could take to increase the consistency and predictability of funding for Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JSLIST) chemical and biological protective suits. In August 2006, DOD reported that since we issued our report it (1) has implemented a Production Plan that has allowed for the stable procurement of between 100,000 and 125,000 JSLIST suits per month; (2) intends to centrally manage all JSLIST requirements to consolidate operations and maintenance funding requirements; and (3) is using the Joint Total Asset Visibility Reporting Warehouse (JTAVRW) initiative to track individual protective equipment (including JSLIST suits), all of which together will reduce production and funding requirements. These DOD initiatives satisfy the intent of our recommendation to identify steps that could increase the consistency and predictability of JSLIST suit funding.
Recommendation: To reduce the risk of DOD being unable to obtain sufficient quantities of chemical and biological protective suits, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to provide manufacturers with guidance on how to prepare surge plans to ensure that the plans address surge production sustainability.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: In our report entitled "Chemical and Biological Defense: U.S. Ability to Meet Protective Suit Inventory Requirements Faces Risk" (GAO-03-889C/GAO-04-290), we recommended that DOD provide Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JSLIST) suit manufacturers with guidance on how to prepare surge plans to ensure that these plans address surge production sustainability. In our report, we provided a matrix of factors that, if addressed by manufacturers in their surge plans, would enable DOD to make more informed production-related decisions. These factors included the availability of floor space, labor, equipment, and raw materials; required training; and incurred costs. In May 2005, DOD reported that the five JSLIST suit manufacturers had completed surge plans that addressed our matrix of factors.
Recommendation: To reduce the risk of DOD being unable to obtain sufficient quantities of chemical and biological protective suits, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to verify that other JSLIST suit manufacturers have the capacity to compensate if unexpected lost production should occur at the National Center for the Employment of the Disabled and speed with which such compensation in production could be accomplished.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: In our report entitled "Chemical and Biological Defense: U.S. Ability to Meet Protective Suit Inventory Requirements Faces Risk" (GAO-03-889C/GAO-04-290), we recommended that DOD verify that other Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JSLIST) suit manufacturers have the capacity to compensate if unexpected lost production should occur at the National Center for the Employment of the Disabled and the speed with which such compensation in production could be accomplished. At the time of our review, the National Center produced 64 percent of the JSLIST suits. In June 2004, DOD reported that it had validated that the current domestic suit manufacturing capacity was sufficient to compensate for any unexpected lost production at the National Center. In May 2005, DOD further reported that the other JSLIST manufacturers had demonstrated their ability to surge production by fifty percent or more over the last three years. As the result of these actions, DOD has satisfied the intent of our recommendation.
Recommendation: To reduce the risk of DOD being unable to obtain sufficient quantities of chemical and biological protective suits, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to determine whether carbon beads and filter fabric when stored separately retain their protective capabilities over an extended period of time to better decided whether to establish stockpile of these supplies.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: This recommendation was intended to provide assistance in mitigating the risk of the interruption of the foreign supply source for carbon beads. Since we issued our report, DOD has taken alternative measures to mitigate risk. Specifically, DOD has identified a domestic source of supply and/or moved the foreign source of supply to the U.S. Consequently, DOD no longer considers a stockpile of carbon beads as being necessary to meet potential wartime requirements. By establishing additional sources of carbon beads domestically, DOD has satisfied the intent of our recommendation.
Recommendation: To reduce the risk of DOD being unable to obtain sufficient quantities of chemical and biological protective suits, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, if a domestic source of suit materials is not identified during 2003, to reconsider establishing a stockpile of carbon beads, filter fabric, or a combination of the two to reduce the potential delay between inventory exhaustion and suit resupply during a conflict.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Implemented
Comments: This recommendation was intended to reduce the risk of DOD being unable to obtain sufficient quantities of chemical and biological protective suits. Since we issued our report, DOD has taken alternative measures to mitigate risk. Specifically, DOD has identified a domestic source of supply of carbon beads and moved the foreign source of supply to the U.S. Consequently, DOD no longer considers a stockpile of carbon beads or filter fabric as being necessary to meet potential protective suit wartime requirements.
