DOD Budget
Air Force's Ability to Track F-15 Operating and Support Costs Gao ID: NSIAD-91-81 January 2, 1991Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed: (1) Department of Defense (DOD) and Air Force initiatives to restructure future budget submissions on a forces and mission basis, as the Secretary of Defense recommended; and (2) Air Force accounting systems for accumulating and tracking operating and support (O&S) costs for the F-15 aircraft.
GAO found that: (1) DOD and the Air Force did not initiate or plan to restructure the defense budget on the recommended forces and mission bases; (2) in early 1990, the Secretary of Defense presented a proposal to restructure future budget submissions to the President and Congress, but believed that further DOD action on the proposal depended on whether Congress expressed interest in pursuing it; (3) the Air Force did not have adequate accounting systems in place to accumulate and track all O&S costs applicable to F-15 aircraft necessary for developing cost-based budgets on a forces and mission basis; (4) among the F-15 O&S costs the Air Force did not account for were aircraft fuel, military salaries, and some depot-level maintenance; and (5) the Air Force's centralized O&S cost-data collection system did not accumulate all O&S costs and included some accurate and older data that the Air Force could not use for accounting, cost estimating, or budgeting purposes.