Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the military services' fiscal year (FY) 1991 budget requests for ammunition items and the Army's request for ammunition production base support.

GAO found that the: (1) services did not justify $424 million of their $2.2-billion FY 1991 ammunition requests; (2) Army overstated its $1.2-billion FY 1991 request by $343.3 million; (3) Army adequately supported its request for modernizing and expanding the ammunition production base; (4) Army did not need $88,000 of its FY 1989 appropriation and $48.9 million of its FY 1990 appropriation, since it decided not to buy two items; (5) Navy overstated $19.6 million of its $345.7-million FY 1991 budget request and did not need $1 million of its FY 1990 appropriation due to an item's reduced unit cost; (6) Air Force overstated its $417.6-million FY 1991 request by $62.6 million; and (7) Marine Corps did not need $8.5 million of its $284.7-million FY 1991 request, but could use $2.3 million of the unneeded funds to procure two items that were in short supply.