Defense Budget

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the military services' fiscal year (FY) 1989 budget request for ammunition items and the Army's request for ammunition production base support.

GAO found $614 million in potential reductions in the services' budget requests due to inadequate justification for certain items. GAO also found that the: (1) Army overstated its budget request by $249.4 million due to items that would not be delivered during the funding period, two items with unresolved functional problems, items with overstated unit costs, a developmental item that would not be included in the FY 1989 budget, and a lack of necessary components to produce two items; (2) Navy overstated its budget request by $62.6 million because three items had production problems, it prematurely programmed two items for procurement, seven items were unnecessary, it overstated the unit cost for one item that had an optimistic production schedule, and components for one item were already in stock; (3) Air Force overstated its request by $293.6 million, since three items would not be delivered during the funding period, one item required additional testing, it did not need two items, and some items had production problems, overstated unit costs, or optimistic production schedules; and (4) Marine Corps overstated its request by $8.4 million because one item would not be delivered during the FY 1989 funding period, and it overstated the unit cost for an item that had an optimistic production schedule.

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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