Army Reserve Components

Several hundred Army Reserve and National Guard units were activated for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, yet some full-time support personnel holding key positions in these units reportedly did not serve with them. GAO found that the Army cannot effectively monitor the full-time support program because it lacks an accurate, complete personnel database and has not adequately defined the information needed for effective program oversight and analyses. As a result, the Army does not know how many full-time support personnel never served with their units during Operation Desert Storm, whether due to medical reasons or personal hardships. Although a program objective is to help Army reserve units shift from peacetime to wartime operations, full-time support personnel are not sufficiently trained on the active Army's personnel and supply systems to provide that essential assistance. An earlier GAO report (GAO/NSIAD-91-263, Sept. 24, 1991) noted that this lack of knowledge had hampered units' transition to wartime operations.

GAO found that: (1) because the Army did not have an accurate or complete database of full-time support personnel and did not adequately define the information that was needed for effective program oversight and analysis, it could not effectively monitor the full-time support program; (2) the Army did not know how many full-time support personnel served with their units during Operation Desert Storm or how many were currently ready to deploy with their units since it did not have accurate data on the mobilization and deployability of its full-time support personnel; (3) some full-time support personnel did not serve with their units, mainly because of medical conditions or personal hardships, but because Desert Storm was only a partial mobilization the Army was able to replace them with full-time support personnel from lower-priority or nondeploying units; (4) the Army did not derive meaningful lessons from the full-time support program's wartime operation since it did not track data on the replacement of full-time support personnel from other units that had not been activated; (5) full-time support personnel are not sufficiently trained in the active Army's supply and personnel systems; and (6) full-time support personnel have not been fully trained in active Army systems because the full-time support program lacks adequate funding.

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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