Military Bases

The Defense Department's (DOD) selection process for military base closures and alignments--165 installations have been targeted as of March 1993--is generally sound, but savings estimates were overstated by nearly $1 billion and questions can be raised about the reasonableness of some specific recommendations. For example, (1) because the Navy stressed reducing excess capacity, cases arose in which bases were slated for closure even though other bases were considered of less military value; (2) the Army chose not to recommend a base for closure because of environmental cleanup costs--a reason excluded from calculations of closure costs; (3) existing documentation provides little insight into the reasoning behind some of the Air Force's final decisions, although Air Force officials' oral explanations seemed to make sense; and (4) the Defense Logistics Agency overstated estimated realignment savings. Furthermore, oversight by the Secretary of Defense during the base closure process was weak. The standards used for DOD's cumulative economic impact analyses were not supportable, and DOD continued to ignore government cost implications despite earlier GAO recommendations to the contrary. The effect of DOD's recommendations on federal agencies could be substantial, especially if the military moves out of General Services Administration buildings into new DOD facilities. In addition, hospital closings would also boost government Medicare costs. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Military Bases: Analysis of DOD's Recommendations and Selection Process for Closures and Realignments, by Frank C. Conahan, Assistant Comptroller General for National Security and International Affairs Programs, before the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. GAO/T-NSIAD-93-11, Apr. 19, 1993 (10 pages).

GAO found that: (1) the Secretary of Defense based the recommendations on the Department of Defense's (DOD) selection criteria and a 6-year force structure plan; (2) DOD believed that the recommendations would result in a total net savings of $4 billion between fiscal years 1994 and 1999; (3) the recommended base closures and realignments for 1995 combined with those approved in 1988 and 1991 would reduce the domestic base structure by 15 percent; (4) the Navy's site selection process stressed reduction of excess capacity and recommended base closure even when a base's military value was higher than the bases that remained open; (5) the Army did not recommend one base for closure due to environmental clean-up costs, and did not exclude those costs from its cost-of-closure calculations; (6) the Air Force's documentation did not justify its recommendations for base closures; (7) the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) overstated estimated savings of its realignments; (8) DOD did not provide strong oversight during the selection process which resulted in some technical problems and cost it the opportunity to consider consolidation of maintenance facilities on a DOD-wide basis; and (9) despite GAO recommendations, DOD believes its responsibility is to determine whether its recommendations will result in savings to DOD, without consideration of the effects on other federal agencies.

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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