Army Training

Various Factors Create Uncertainty About Need for More Land Gao ID: NSIAD-91-103 April 22, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army's training land acquisition plans and procedures, focusing on: (1) existing maneuver training deficiencies, and the extent to which land shortfalls caused them; (2) how land shortages affected training and readiness; (3) the effects of the Army's future training plans on land needs; (4) whether the Army could develop a training land requirement standard; and (5) whether combat training centers could compensate for limited home-station land.

GAO found that a number of factors created uncertainty regarding the Army's need for more training land, including: (1) training deficiencies for which the lack of land did not appear to be the principal cause; (2) the need for a greater focus on less land-intensive small-unit training; (3) resource constraints that often limited the amount and scope of training at existing installations; (4) commanders' assessments indicating that most maneuver units were highly trained and ready to perform their missions; (5) the Army's stated plan to place greater reliance on computer simulations; and (6) impending force reductions. GAO also found that: (1) such subjective factors made it difficult to establish a practical uniform standard for specifying training land needs; and (2) the Army's combat training centers provided an important complement to home-station training and helped to offset home-station training limitations.

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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