Navy Training Safety

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed selected Navy high-risk training courses, focusing on the Navy's efforts to improve training safety.

GAO found that: (1) although the Chief of Naval Education and Training (CNET) took a number of steps to improve internal controls after the death of an airman recruit during a high-risk training course, internal control weaknesses continued to exist in such courses; (2) significant weaknesses existed involving student and instructor screening, processing controls for students with medical problems, trainer evaluations, and the course critique system available to students; (3) most problems resulted from inadequate implementation of CNET policies, rather than inadequacies in such policies; (4) the Navy lacked adequate oversight of high-risk training to ensure student and instructor safety; (5) five of the eight training activities visited lacked adequate mishap reporting systems, and authorities responsible for analyzing such mishaps failed to do so; (6) while the Navy took steps to improve safety reviews and policies, it still conducted unsafe and unapproved training exercises; (7) the Navy established the Training Performance Evaluation Board to systematically monitor and evaluate all high-risk training; (8) the Navy shortened its curriculum at two surface rescue swimmer schools despite strong opposition and concerns that a shortened course would compromise safety and increase the risk of training injuries; and (9) the shortened course resulted in increased attrition due to more demanding schedules and reduced students' ability and proficiency in rescue techniques.

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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