Peace Operations

Heavy Use of Key Capabilities May Affect Response to Regional Conflicts Gao ID: NSIAD-95-51 March 8, 1995

Increasing U.S. involvement in peace operations, such as those in Somalia and Haiti, heavily stresses some U.S. military capabilities, including such support functions as quartermaster and transportation forces and the use of specialized aircraft. Extended participation in multiple or large-scale peace operations could tax the military's ability to carry out the Defense Department's (DOD) strategy for fighting two nearly simultaneous regional conflicts. Several options exist that could allow DOD to meet the demands of peace operations while responding to its two-conflict strategy. These options include changing the mix of active and reserve forces and making greater use of the reserves and contractors.

GAO found that: (1) peace operations have heavily stressed some U.S. military capabilities, including Army support forces and specialized Air Force aircraft; (2) because there are relatively few support forces in the military's active force, some of these units and personnel have been deployed to consecutive operations, the tempo of operations has increased, and the time available to prepare for combat missions has been reduced; (3) extended participation in multiple or large scale peace operations could impede the services' ability to timely respond to major regional conflicts (MRC); (4) disengaging support units and specialized aircraft from a peace operation and redeploying them to MRC could be more difficult than estimated because some of these units need training and supplies before deploying to another major operation; (5) the options available to DOD to meet the demands of peace operations while maintaining the capability to respond to MRC include changing the mix of active and reserve forces and making greater use of reserves and contractors; and (6) the United States needs to determine the resources it needs and degree of risk it is prepared to take if it wishes to continue participating in sizeable peace operations for extended periods and still maintain the capability needed to rapidly respond to simultaneous MRC.

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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