The Army and Marine Corps are undertaking multiple efforts to address operational access challenges—challenges that impede a military force's ability to enter and conduct operations in an area—that impact a broad range of their existing missions. For example, they are incorporating operational access challenges into their wargames and revising their service concepts, which inform their assessm...

The military services and U.S Special Operations Command (SOCOM) have similar water-egress training programs and similar facilities and equipment to teach personnel to escape from helicopters that crash in water, but each organization has specialized training capabilities that it uses to meet specific training needs. For example, Army, Navy, Air Force, and SOCOM training facilities each contain at...

The USS Freedom deployment provided beneficial data on operational support and sustainment concepts for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), but these data have limitations, and the Navy still lacks key data on LCS ships and concepts. The USS Freedom deployed for 10 months with a surface-warfare mission package, and the Navy collected data on items such as systems reliability and crew sleep hours....

GAO analysis of the resources devoted to the Department of Defense's (DOD) functional combatant commands shows substantial increases in authorized positions and costs to support headquarters operations. Specifically, the number of authorized positions across the commands grew from 5,731 in fiscal year 2004 to 10,515 in fiscal year 2013. According to DOD officials, recent and emerging missions...

The Navy did not follow its policy when deciding in 2012 to decommission seven cruisers and two dock-landing ships well prior to the end of their expected service lives. When ships are decommissioned early, the Navy's policy requires a decision memorandum to address why it is in the best interest of the Navy to decommission the ships and mitigation strategies for any resulting capability gaps. GAO...

The 2018 National Defense Strategy called for improving the readiness and lethality of U.S. military forces. Readiness challenges—for example, maintenance delays that keep ships in dry docks or planes on the ground—have reduced the availability of these forces for training and operations. This statement for the congressional record summarizes our 2016-2020 work on Navy and Marine Corps readine...

Since 1995, the Department of Defense's financial management has been on our High Risk List. Thousands of audit findings from DOD's department-wide financial statement audits in 2018 show the extent of improvements needed. Our 2017 recommendation prompted DOD to develop a centralized database that uses real-time data to track audit findings and its progress in addressing them. However, some of the...

The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration is in the middle of a long-term effort to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. DOE's 2021 budget estimate for nuclear modernization activities for FYs 2021-2025 is $81 billion—$15 billion more than its 2020 budget estimate for the same period. Such an increase may require cuts in other national defense programs to keep...

Three Air Force and three Navy aviation depots maintain critical aircraft such as the KC-135 tanker and F/A-18 fighter. Delays at depots can reduce aircraft availability for operations and training. We reviewed depot performance for selected aircraft over 6 years. Air Force depots completed maintenance on-time or early in 5 of 6 years (with aircraft in maintenance 22,572 fewer days than expected...

About 9.6 million beneficiaries are eligible for Defense Department health care from Medical Treatment Facilities and TRICARE civilian providers. DOD issued a plan in February for a required restructure of Medical Treatment Facilities, which called for decreasing capability at 43 of them and closing five. DOD’s restructuring review included required elements, such as assessing the adequacy of n...

Each year, we make more than 1,000 recommendations to help improve the federal government. We alert department heads to the recommendations that would help them save the most money, address issues on our High Risk List, or significantly improve government operations. This report outlines our 81 priority open recommendations for the Department of Defense (DOD), as of May 2020. For example, these...

DOD operates depots nationwide to overhaul, upgrade, and rebuild complex weapons and equipment. These depots are crucial to keeping the military ready to conduct operations and training. While depots have sometimes struggled to meet repair needs in recent years, they reported benefits from sharing best practices and lessons learned with each other. For example, one shared an improvement that redu...

The Department of Defense tries to minimize costs by consolidating some services—such as IT or payroll—used by multiple DOD agencies. The Defense-Wide Working Capital Fund finances 3 agencies within DOD that charge their customers—including the military departments—when providing goods and services. We found the agencies set prices designed to recover their costs and break even. However,...

Army modernization includes updating existing weapons and acquiring new weapons to give the Army an edge over its adversaries. This testimony discusses 3 prior reports assessing the Army's near- and long-term modernization efforts, related budget documents, and acquisition processes for major weapon systems. Those reports had 7 recommendations that may help the Army avoid costly failures, includ...

To adapt to growing threats, the Department of Defense says it must urgently change. We looked at DOD's process for providing senior leaders with the information they need to adjust the size and capabilities of the U.S. military to meet top defense priorities. Senior leaders are not getting the information they need to make these important decisions. Our recommendations address the following cha...