Army Medium Trucks: Acquisition Plans Need Safeguards
NSIAD-99-28
Published: Nov 19, 1998. Publicly Released: Dec 04, 1998.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army's Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) program.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | To improve management of the FMTV program under the current and follow-on contracts, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to fund a data collection effort to determine whether fielded FMTV trucks are performing satisfactorily and to direct government inspectors at the FMTV truck plant to return to 100-percent final acceptance inspection of FMTV trucks until the contractor demonstrates its production processes are under statistical process control. |
Closed – Implemented
The Army is establishing a sample data collection effort for the trucks. The data will be collected three times--the first within the quarter, the second 6 months later, and the third 12 months after the second. Some of the soldiers in the field do not like the new trucks and the Army hopes to identify and correct the causes of this dislike. As far as the 100 percent inspection is concerned, the Army believes that its system of sampling for truck inspections is working because it is catching discrepancies and does not plan to change its inspection procedures.
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| Department of Defense | To provide a safeguard on the follow-on contracts that could preclude the type of problems that occurred under the current contract, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to include a clause in the follow-on production contracts that would delay the start of production until the new FMTV model trucks demonstrate that they meet FMTV performance and reliability, availability, and maintainability requirements. |
Closed – Implemented
The Army included the standard test statement in its new production contract. The statement says the contractor will not be allowed to start assembly of production vehicles until the production verification test vehicles have successfully completed the 12,000-mile reliability test. However, the Army recently made the decision to enter full-rate production before the new trucks completed the testing. An Army official said that the Army was certain that the new trucks would successfully complete testing.
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| Department of Defense | To ensure that the Army considers all its options before it starts to develop a second source for the FMTV, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army to delay the Army's plans for developing a second source to produce FMTV trucks until the Army completes an analysis that compares the costs and benefits of its plans with those of other alternatives and to pursue the alternative that is most beneficial to the government. |
Closed – Implemented
In the fiscal year 2000 Defense authorization act, Congress required the Secretary of the Army to use competitive procedures to award any future FMTV production contracts and not to award any new contracts to establish a second source for the FMTV. The act became law on October 5, 1999. As a result of the law, DOD removed all second source funding from the program.
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ConcurrencyCost effectiveness analysisDepartment of Defense contractorsMilitary cost controlMilitary land vehiclesMilitary procurementQuality assuranceQuality controlWeapons systemsTrucks