Reserve Forces

Lax Defense Department (DOD) oversight of medical and physical fitness programs for reserve forces allowed the deployment of thousands of Army reservists during the Persian Gulf War who were out of shape or who suffered from serious health problems. DOD's medical policy allows the services to retain nondeployable reservists. As a result, the Army retained more than 22,000 reservists with serious medical conditions, including cancer; heart disease; double kidney failure; and, in one case, a gunshot wound to the head. The Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Navy, on the other hand, do not retain reservists with serious medical problems. The services' physical fitness testing programs assess only general fitness and do not measure reservists' preparedness for specific military missions. The Army, for example, does not test whether reservists can complete a road march. DOD was unaware of these problems because the services failed to report required fitness information. Also, most of the services lacked controls to prevent the alteration of test scores.

GAO found that: (1) DOD has not adequately overseen the services' implementation of its medical and physical fitness programs for reservists; (2) DOD requires reserve forces to be capable of deploying quickly to unexpected military contingencies anywhere in the world; (3) although the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy have adopted more stringent standards and separate their reservists with permanent medical conditions, DOD has allowed the Army to retain more than 22,000 reservists with serious medical conditions that may prevent them from deployment to a contingency; (4) the retention of medically nondeployable reservists is inconsistent with the current military strategy and can adversely affect wartime operations; (5) during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, about 8,000 reserve personnel were called to active duty and later found to be medically nondeployable; (6) the services' physical fitness testing programs assess only general fitness levels instead of reservists' preparedness for specific military missions; and (7) DOD may not be able to identify and prevent physical fitness problems because the services do not report fitness information as required and do not have controls to prevent the alteration of physical fitness test scores.

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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