Military Training

In Process

DOD's 2011 sustainable ranges report meets the annual reporting requirement, that DOD describe the progress made in implementing its sustainable ranges plan and any additional actions taken, or to be taken, to address training constraints caused by limitations on the use of military lands, marine areas, and airspace. However, opportunities exist to improve future report submissions. DOD's 2011 report provides updates to the following four elements that section 366 required be included in DOD's original submissions in response to section 366. (1) Adequacy of resources: DOD has continued to improve the section of its report that evaluates the adequacy of existing range resources to meet requirements by (1) providing a brief description of the mission for each of DOD's ranges; (2) adding a section on historical information, results, and future projections to the individual range assessments; and (3) providing comments explaining how a range complex's capabilities or encroachment issues are affecting training and any planned actions to remedy the situation. (2) Updates of actions and milestones: The 2011 report includes a common framework of goals and updated actions and milestones for the services to measure past performance and progress toward achieving their training and range sustainability objectives; however, the updates do not fully explain the progress made. We found that there is insufficient information presented in the 2011 report to effectively track and measure the overall progress of each action and related milestones based solely on the information presented for the respective milestone's description and estimated completion date. (3) Projected funding requirements: DOD made continued progress in its 2011 report toward reporting its sustainable range funding requirements, but opportunities exist to improve future report submissions. For example, in its 2009 report DOD used the administration and support of the Army's Compatible Use Buffer program as an example of the type of projects that should be captured in the funding projections for the encroachment category. (4) Planned improvements to DOD's readiness system: DOD has continued to make progress in reporting on its plans to improve the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) by incorporating training range assessment data into the system. According to a senior official in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), additional funding has been received and the planned completion date for full implementation of the range assessment module into DRRS is June 2012. To improve the visibility of progress in achieving DOD's stated sustainability goals and milestones, we are recommending that DOD include a brief narrative in its next report that (1) describes the progress for each action and milestone in the goals, actions, and milestones section of the report; (2) explains the omission of funding associated with the Army's Compatible Use Buffer program; and (3) explains all fluctuations in funding projections greater than 10 percent. In written comments on a draft of this report, DOD concurred with our first recommendation and partially concurred with the remaining two recommendations, as discussed more fully later in this report.

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: Brian J. Lepore Team: Government Accountability Office: Defense Capabilities and Management Phone: (202) 512-4523