Department of Defense Can Benefit from Better Management of Training Activities

The Naval Training Equipment Center, which is the focal point for research and development of training devices for all services, may be unable to respond to future training device needs and has, therefore, increasingly resorted to more costly contracting for its research and development efforts.

In 1976, about 60 percent of the Center's funds were provided by the Navy, 37 percent by the Army, and 3 percent by the Air Force and Marine Corps. The Center may be unable to respond to the future training device needs of all of the services because of decreased staffing and increased workload. An Army office at the Center has grown as a result of the Army's increased emphasis on training devices and the Center's inability to meet the Army's needs. More exploratory research and development work is being contracted, which Center officials believe is more expensive than doing the work in-house. Exploratory development work under contract has increased from 40 percent to 62 percent since 1974. The potential for reducing training costs through self-pacing has not been fully realized because of post-course assignment delays. The cost effectiveness of self-pacing is primarily due to shorter student training periods and reduced instructor requirements. The services need to monitor graduates of these courses to insure their prompt assignment and to identify causes for any delays.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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