Military Airlift

The Air Force's cargo aircraft flying regular overseas missions during peacetime continue to operate at substantially less than capacity. The Air Force estimates than in fiscal year 1992 the aircraft will fly these routes at an average of about 64 percent full. At the same time, the Pentagon still sends large amounts of lower priority cargo by commercial transportation at great expense. If military air terminals used already existing cargo backlog reports and separated lower priority from high priority cargo, the Defense Department (DOD) could better coordinate cargo with airlift and increase the use of available cargo capacity. This strategy would slash DOD's commercial transportation bills by at least $21 million each year.

GAO found that: (1) Air Force cargo aircraft routinely operate with underfilled cargo capacities, averaging 62 percent; (2) military air cargo terminals do not maintain adequate backlogs of lower priority cargo and inadequately utilize airlift cargo capacity; (3) the Air Force's Air Mobility Command uses an inaccurate cargo allocation formula that understates cargo capacity and reduces the amount of lower priority cargo used to fill departing aircraft; (4) strengthened terminal management in controlling cargo backlogs and priorities could reduce reliance on commercial airlifts while increasing timeliness; (5) improved use of airlift capacity could lower transportation costs by shifting costs away from commercial carriers; and (6) unused capacity levels total 43,000 tons annually and use of this space could save $21 million.

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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