Small Arms Ranges at Reserve and Guard Facilities

In recent years, Reserve components have claimed that they need additional funds to enlarge their training centers and armories or to construct new ones. Because of the high costs involved and earlier work that identified unused indoor small arms range space in Reserve components' facilities, GAO reviewed the use of indoor and outdoor small arms ranges in the Sacramento, California, area.

GAO found that: (1) small arms ranges are well suited for use on a regional basis by Reserve personnel who commute to and from their training locations; (2) Department of Defense (DOD) procedures establish the basic policies for sharing small arms ranges (one DOD activity should support another whenever possible); (3) the Air National Guard, Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps Reserves are required to consider ranges in the area before programing and constructing a new range (the Navy Reserve uses Marine Reserve ranges); (4) the Army National Guard builds an indoor range in most new armories without considering the availability of other ranges in the area; (5) where range capacity is sufficient, the Army Reserve is converting indoor range space to other needs; and (6) in Sacramento, the Army National Guard plans to construct an organizational maintenance shop with a range, which will not be used for annual weapons firing or vehicle training, but to meet the need for maintenance space. Since a health and safety evaluation is underway which could make indoor ranges more costly, GAO believes the changes proposed in its report should be considered and made a part of any planning for indoor ranges. The planned change by the Army Guard to delete the requirement to also use indoor range space for vehicle training increases the need for a specfic Army Guard criterion requiring consideration of existing ranges and the possibility of sharing ranges.

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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