Army Reserve Readiness

Allegations of Degraded Readiness of the 5th Battalion/159th Aviation Regiment Gao ID: NSIAD-90-265 August 30, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the readiness of an Army Reserve aviation unit.

GAO found that: (1) from December 1987 through December 1988, the battalion received, without conducting the required acceptance inspection, 12 CH-47C helicopters from the active forces, and at that time considered 11 of the 12 aircraft to be in flyable condition; (2) a significant number of unexpected maintenance problems with the aircraft resulted in the unit being out of service for prolonged periods; (3) battalion officials did not know the unit's current wartime mission, and as a result the battalion did not train for a specific wartime mission; (4) the battalion has had its full complement of three instructor pilots since April 1988 and its full complement of two aviation safety officers since March 1989; (5) active-force Army aviation units reported higher readiness ratings than did Army Reserve and National Guard aviation units; and (6) the battalion's overall posture was typical of the posture of all CH-47C units.



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