Army Maintenance

With the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Army must develop effective combat and support strategies to meet new threats to the nation's security. GAO doubts, however, that the Army's general support maintenance strategies will be effective in future conflicts. The strategy does not reflect the changed threat environment, existing military maintenance capabilities, and actual maintenance practices used in past conflicts. Specifically, the strategy relies on military units for general support maintenance, while in practice the Army uses civilian maintenance workers to do this work, as was the case in the Persian Gulf War. The Army's strategy does not consider using civilians to do general support maintenance during wartime. Of particular concern is the strategy's failure to address regional conflict scenarios in which civilians could likely be used. As a result, the Army must make ad hoc general support maintenance arrangements. Although the Army had enough warning time to arrange for essential repairs during the Persian Gulf War, the timing may not be as favorable during the next conflict and maintenance support operations could be jeopardized. The Army is considering changing its approach for general support maintenance during various conflict scenarios, but none of the proposals being reviewed addresses how to effectively incorporate both military maintenance forces and civilians or how to "mix and match" these forces with the conflict scenarios being considered.

GAO found that: (1) although civilians regularly perform GS maintenance in peacetime, the Army expects its maintenance units to perform maintenance services during wartime; (2) the Army's GS maintenance strategy is ineffective, since it does not reflect the changed threat environment, existing military maintenance capabilities, and maintenance practices used during past conflicts; (3) the Army does not sufficiently train its military maintenance units during peacetime to perform repairs on some equipment; (4) although the Army has attempted to improve its maintenance capability, it had difficulty providing adequate training for its reserve units, since they have limited training time and access to repair mission-essential equipment; (5) most military GS units performed nonmaintenance tasks during the Persian Gulf war due to changes in deployment plans and theater priorities; (6) civilians significantly contributed to successful equipment maintenance during the Persian Gulf war, but the Army had problems with some civilians because it did not adequately screen for medical, physical, and emotional problems and there was some confusion over leave permission; and (7) the Army needs to revise its maintenance strategy to determine in which conflict situations experienced civilian maintenance personnel can be useful and integrated with military maintenance units.

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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