Defense Budget

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the costs and funding of contingency operations in the Balkans and Southwest Asia during fiscal year (FY) 1999 and 2000.

GAO noted that: (1) the Department of Defense (DOD) reported $5.9 billion in incremental costs for contingency in FY 1999; (2) Army costs accounted for about half of reported costs; Air Force costs accounted for about one-third; and the Navy, Marine Corps, and other parts of DOD, such as the Special Operations Command, accounted for the remainder; (3) most of the funds used, 91 percent, were from the operation and maintenance appropriations account, and the bulk of these costs were for what is termed operating support, which includes flying aircraft, steaming ships, operating ground vehicles, and building and operating facilities for deployed forces; (4) from the inception of both the Balkans and Southwest Asia operations in 1992 and 1991, respectively, through September 1999, DOD has reported about $19 billion in incremental costs; (5) to develop budget estimates, DOD had to make assumptions about the number of personnel that would be involved in contingency operations, the level of activity of these operations, and their duration; (6) in a number of instances, FY 1999 estimates exceeded reported costs because of changes in the size and duration of operations, particularly the Kosovo bombing campaign; (7) to prepare for deployment to the Balkans, Army units conduct mission rehearsal exercises; (8) when a unit is notified that it will deploy, it revises its annual training plan; (9) for example, to prepare for its August 1999 deployment to Bosnia, the Army's 10th Mountain Division cancelled some of its planned training, such as training in a jungle environment, and substituted specific training geared to the type of tasks it would perform in Bosnia; (10) this training included an exercise designed to practice the tasks the division will perform in Bosnia, which involved 6,405 people from the division and associated units at a cost of $9.9 million; (11) DOD spent $239,000 between FY 1999 and FY 2000 to date in support of the Southeastern Europe Defense Ministerial initiative; and (12) these funds were drawn from funds used to facilitate DOD's participation in the Partnership for Peace program.