Defense Acquisitions

Congress has raised concerns that the Pentagon continues to procure an increasing number of tank-killing weapons at a time when potential adversaries are using smaller armored forces. Congress has also questioned whether current antiarmor acquisition plans are appropriate and has directed the Defense Department (DOD) to develop an antiarmor munitions master plan. The plan should identify the projected armored threat and the projected quantity of all antiarmor weapons, whether fielded or in development, with the goal of eliminating excess antiarmor forces. The plan was sent to Congress in August 1999. This report reviews the plan to determine whether it provides the data and analyses needed to (1) identify excess antiarmor weapons now in the inventory or under development and (2) support current acquisition plans.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD's Antiarmor Master Plan did not identify any excess antiarmor weapons or provide the data and analyses needed to identify such excesses; (2) instead of identifying the types and quantities of antiarmor weapons needed to meet requirements under current planning scenarios, the plan only described the types of antiarmor weapons in the inventory and under development and identified the number and types of armored systems possessed by nine countries it considered potentially hostile to the United States; (3) the total capabilities and quantities of the armored systems possessed by these countries substantially exceeds those in the current two-regional conflict threat scenario; (4) the plan acknowledged that the tank threat from the countries identified in that scenario is low, but the plan did not identify potential excesses in antiarmor weapons resulting from major reductions in the armor threat since 1990; (5) further, the modeling practices the services used to identify individual antiarmor weapons quantity requirements routinely generated excessive requirements; (6) specifically, GAO found that: (a) the Air Force added more targets to the model than it is responsible for; (b) the services added large quantities of weapons to their models to allow for uncertainties; (c) the services projected the use of sophisticated and expensive antiarmor guided weapons against unarmored targets; and (d) the Marine Corps and the Army did not always accept their model's results and used manual calculations to support higher antiarmor weapon requirements; (7) the plan provided little data and analyses to support the services' plans to spend about $17.9 billion on 15 antiarmor weapon acquisition programs; (8) in support of acquiring the new systems, the plan described various types of improvements and technological advances in the designs of armored systems and noted the potential proliferation of armored systems with these advanced designs; (9) the plan also described the capabilities of individual antiarmor weapons that were being acquired by the services and noted that the new weapons would provide improved lethality and effectiveness; (10) however, the plan also indicated that the existing antiarmor weapon inventory is more than adequate to defeat the threat as defined in the Secretary of Defense's planning guidance; and (11) further, the plan did not assess the effects of combined joint service capabilities and changes in war-fighting strategies on the requirements for these weapons.

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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