Army National Guard

Officer Candidate Training Should Be Consolidated at One Site Gao ID: NSIAD-94-1 March 22, 1994

The Defense Department funds more than 50 schools to produce officers for the Army National Guard. GAO reviewed the operations of these schools to determine whether the Army National Guard could meet its officer needs more effectively and economically. This report discusses the (1) numbers of officers being produced by the various National Guard commissioning sources, particularly the state officer candidate schools; (2) recent consolidation of portions of the state officer candidate school programs; and (3) potential for increasing economies through further consolidation.

GAO found that: (1) ARNG officer requirements and the number of officers commissioned through state OCS programs have declined by one-third since 1988; (2) state OCS classes are frequently small and most programs graduate fewer than 26 candidates; (3) ARNG plans for state OCS to provide one-third of its officers through 1996 with the Reserve Officer Training Corps and active-duty sources providing the remainder; (4) ARNG has begun consolidating two of the three phases of the state OCS programs at fewer locations, but it still plans to conduct the middle phase of training at weekend sessions throughout the year; (5) some adjacent states with few candidates are considering further consolidating their training to provide more realistic and economical training; (6) consolidating all ARNG officer training phases into one 10-week course at one site could enhance training quality and reduce costs and the attrition rate; (7) the Army has rejected the option of requiring all officer candidates to attend the OCS program at Fort Benning, Georgia, because it believes that Fort Benning has insufficient capacity, candidates would be unwilling to attend a centralized program, and the consolidated program's quality would not be superior to the states' programs; and (8) the Army based its rejection of a consolidated program at Fort Benning on erroneous assumptions.

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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