Summary

This report evaluates the process that the Army used to identify Army National Guard and Army Reserve units found on the Pentagon's March 1992 force reduction list. GAO (1) documents the process that was used and determines the key entities involved in developing the Army's portion of the list and (2) determines the criteria used to select specific units for inactivation and evaluates whether these criteria were applied consistently.

GAO found that: (1) officials at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), Army Headquarters, the National Guard Bureau (NGB), and the Office of the Chief Army Reserve (OCAR) played prominent roles in developing the Army's reserve force reduction plans; (2) the March 1992 force reduction list included the units the Army identified for inactivation or reduction in previous downsizing plans; (3) the U.S. Forces Command and the U.S. Army Reserve Command (USARC) did not fully participate in developing the March 1992 list, but did participate in developing previous force reduction plans; (4) Army staff provided general guidance on criteria used to make unit selections, but NGB and OCAR separately identified criteria to guide their decisions; (5) criteria for force inactivation included units' chronic readiness problems, locations that were far from their training sites, and associations with other inactive units; and (6) reserve components identified units for inactivation separately, but this approach may not result in the most effective forces being retained.