Army Training

Of the $3.6 million allocated in fiscal years 1993 and 1994 for military training to keep U.S. forces in the United States and Europe at a high level of combat readiness, the Army diverted nearly one-third for other purposes, including base operations, property maintenance, and peacekeeping operations. At the same time, outdated assumptions and the failure to consider units' ability to train at their home stations resulted in Army budget submissions to Congress that overestimated the funding needed to conduct training exercises.

GAO found that: (1) in fiscal years 1993 and 1994, the Army used about 33 percent of its budgeted training funds for purposes other than training; (2) the Army used some of the diverted funds for base operations, real property maintenance, and contingency operations; (3) the Army did not report the diversions to Congress because the operating tempo funding requests were not separately reported amounts in the budget submission and fund movements within the same budget activity did not require congressional approval; (4) Congress has directed that such diversions be reported beginning in fiscal year (FY) 1996; (5) the requested training funds have exceeded the amounts needed to achieve readiness objectives; (6) in general, the combat units reviewed by GAO have maintained their readiness at lower-than-budgeted training levels, but some have reported degraded readiness during the last quarter of FY 1994 due to insufficient funding; (7) budget requests have exceeded amounts needed for training because the model the Army used to determine the amount of training funds needed contained outdated assumptions and failed to consider certain factors; and (8) the Army is updating its model to improve its funding estimates to better reflect its current training requirements.