Military Readiness

In recent years, the Defense Department has tried to improve its readiness assessment system. These improvements include technical enhancements to the unit readiness system as well as establishing formal DOD-wide forums to evaluate current readiness at the joint and strategic levels. GAO believes that these changes represent progress; however, limitations to DOD's unit readiness system remain and may be reflected in DOD's readiness assessments. Moreover, DOD's quarterly reports to Congress provide only a vague description of readiness problems and remedial actions; consequently, they are ineffective as a congressional oversight tool.

GAO noted that: (1) over the last few years, DOD has, on the whole, taken action to improve its readiness assessment system; (2) these improvements include technical enhancements to the unit readiness system as well as the establishment of formal DOD-wide forums for evaluating current readiness at the joint and strategic levels; (3) GAO believes these changes represent progress, however, limitations to DOD's unit readiness systems remain and may be reflected in DOD's readiness assessments; (4) additionally, DOD's quarterly reports to Congress provide only a vague description of readiness problems and remedial actions; consequently, they are not effective as a congressional oversight tool; (5) both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the services have initiated various efforts to improve the technical aspects on the Status of Resources Training System; (6) however, these efforts will not address other known system limitations; (7) further, the Joint Chiefs of Staff currently does not plan to add indicators to the system that were identified by a 1994 DOD-funded study as having potential value for monitoring readiness; (8) the 1994 study did not recommend that the indicators be added to the unit readiness database, and Joint Chiefs of Staff officials said some of the unit indicators were not appropriate for inclusion in this database because they measure the readiness of forces at an aggregate level; (9) DOD recently issued an implementation plan for responding to the new requirements to include additional readiness indicators in the quarterly readiness reports to Congress; (10) the Joint Monthly Readiness Review has added a new dimension to DOD's capability to assess readiness because it goes beyond the traditional unit perspective that was previously the focus of the readiness assessment system; (11) the review also has expanded DOD's readiness assessment capability by following a recurring cycle, adding a joint perspective, incorporating wartime scenarios, and tracking and addressing deficiencies; (12) this review process, however, depends heavily on the judgment of military commanders; (13) DOD's quarterly readiness reports do not fulfill the legislative reporting requirements under 10 U.S.C. 482 because they lack specific detail on deficiencies and remedial actions; (14) as a result, these reports do not provide information needed for effective oversight of military readiness; (15) these reports accurately reflect information from briefings to the Senior Readiness Oversight Council and present a highly aggregated view of readiness; and (16) they are not intended to and do not highlight problems at the individual combatant command or unit level.

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: