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Afloat Prepositioning: Not All Equipment Meets the Army's Readiness Goal

NSIAD-97-169 Published: Jul 23, 1997. Publicly Released: Jul 23, 1997.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the readiness of the Army's war reserve equipment prepositioned afloat, focusing on the: (1) extent to which the brigade set of war reserve equipment, which is prepositioned on ships, meets the Army's readiness goal; and (2) status of the Army's efforts to establish facilities to maintain this brigade set of equipment and develop an information system that accurately measures and reports the readiness condition of war reserve equipment.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense Because of the tendency for equipment to deteriorate while prepositioned aboard ships and the inherent limitations in the Army's ability to conduct maintenance aboard ships, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to ensure that unit sets of equipment that affect the readiness of the brigade set are filled to their authorized levels and that the equipment is maintained at the Army's Technical Manual -10/-20 standards before it is loaded onto prepositioning ships. These actions would increase the probability that the Army's goal of 90-percent full mission capability is achieved.
Closed – Implemented
In commenting on the draft of this report, DOD concurred with this recommendation. DOD stated that is improving the readiness of Army equipment prepositioned afloat. In NSIAD 99-6, GAO reported that the readiness of the afloat stocks is improving as equipment is offloaded and reloaded in fully mission capable condition.
War Reserve Support Command To improve the quality of Army equipment status reporting, the War Reserve Support Command, along with intended users of the Warfighter Equipment Status Reports, should establish more accurate designations for the status of non-mission capable equipment. These designations should differentiate among items that can be repaired aboard ship, items that are to be repaired by the logistics support team upon download before deployment, and items that may not be readily repaired and should be replaced.
Closed – Implemented
In commenting on the draft of this report, DOD concurred with this recommendation.

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Topics

Combat readinessDefense contingency planningEquipment maintenanceInventory control systemsLogisticsMilitary facility constructionMilitary inventoriesMilitary materielMilitary vesselsSystems design