Warfighting Capability

In response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the United States has changed its national defense strategy. As part of that effort, the military services have been reexamining and restructuring their forces. This report reviews the basis for the Marine Corps' tank requirement and the reasonableness of the Marine Corps' efforts to have the Army transfer tanks to the Marine Corps free of charge.

GAO found that: (1) the Corps reasonably established its requirement for 443 M1A1 tanks based on a force structure of two active tank battalions, three maritime prepositioning force squadrons, two reserve tank battalions, and tanks to sustain the fleet; (2) although the Corps' requirement is basically consistent with the force structure recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense's Bottom-Up Review, the Corps needs an additional 222 tanks to fulfill its requirement; (3) the Corps is not considering buying the additional tanks because of their prohibitive cost; (4) although the Army has agreed to transfer 50 tanks from its force to help the Corps satisfy its requirement, the Corps' efforts to obtain additional tanks have been unsuccessful; (5) the Army could enhance the overall readiness of U.S. forces and help the Corps fulfill its maritime prepositioning squadron requirements by transferring to the Marine Corps 84 of the approximately 1,500 M1A1 tanks destined to be transferred to Army National Guard units; (6) the Marine Corps' sustainment requirement for 40 additional tanks represents a higher-priority transfer than the National Guard transfer; and (7) Marine Corps squadrons would be available for deployment more rapidly than tanks in National Guard 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.

Director: Team: Phone: