Defense Logistics

Opportunities to Improve the Army's and Navy's Decision-making Process for Weapons Systems Support Gao ID: GAO-02-306 February 28, 2002

The armed services have significantly reduced their procurement of new weapons systems and are keeping their existing systems longer than originally anticipated. The Department of Defense (DOD) estimates that it is spending $59 billion a year on logistics support to operate and sustain weapons systems, but DOD believes that better logistics support practices could reduce these costs by as much as 20 percent. To cut costs and improve efficiency, the military services have begun implementing logistics support strategies that rely on the private sector. DOD Regulation 5000.2-R expresses a preference for using long-term contractor logistics support but requires that an analysis be done first to determine how logistics support work is to be allocated to public or private entities. It is impossible to determine whether initial cost-effectiveness estimates for proposed contractor-logistics-support approaches are being achieved because the Army and Navy lack the required data. Consequently, the services may be adopting support approaches without knowing whether expected readiness improvements and cost-reduction goals are being met, where adjustments are needed, or the conditions under which the various support approaches are likely to achieve the most cost-effective results. Comparisons of the same or similar work done by military and private facilities are not possible or were inconclusive in determining which is more cost-effective. No comparisons were possible for the Army because, as a matter of policy, it does not divide its depot-level maintenance work for the same items between Army and contractor facilities. Only four comparisons of aircraft systems were possible in the Navy, and these showed mixed results. Although contractors have provided some logistics support needs, major Army and Navy commands have concerns about widespread contractor logistics support. However, the DOD's and the services' actions so far do not fully address these concerns, or the issues have not been fully resolved.

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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