Foreign Military Sales

This is the second in a series of reports on the foreign military sales program. GAO focuses on the Department of Defense's (DOD) implementation of end-use monitoring requirements of the Arms Export Control Act. GAO discusses DOD's efforts to (1) observe and report on defense articles and services transferred under the program, (2) perform end-use checks, and (3) satisfy requirements of end-use monitoring. GAO found that DOD has not effectively implemented any of its monitoring and reporting requirements under amendments to the Arms Export Control Act. GAO makes recommendations to correct program weaknesses.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD has not effectively implemented the requirement that its field personnel observe and report on foreign governments' use of U.S. defense articles and services transferred through the Foreign Military Sales program; (2) because the extent of observation needed to verify that defense articles and services are being used appropriately will vary from country to country, DOD has not issued guidance specifying what monitoring is required; (3) as a result, field personnel interpret the requirements and the activities that they should perform differently; (4) DOD has not effectively implemented requirements for its field personnel to perform end-use checks in response to specific standards or for selected weapon systems; (5) for example, field personnel responsible for performing checks are not receiving the needed information from Defense or Department of State officials; (6) as a result, GAO identified 16 countries where end-use checks were not performed in fiscal years 1997-1999, even though one of the standards was met; (7) in addition, specific requirements have been established to conduct end-use checks for selected weapon systems such as Stinger missiles; (8) for some other weapon systems, such as Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, sales agreements allow U.S. personnel to conduct end-use checks; (9) for both of these weapon systems, the U.S. relies on host country records to maintain accountability; (10) however, the reliability of such records varies from country to country; (11) for example, after performing a worldwide inventory of Stinger missiles, DOD identified discrepancies in some countries' records, which left some missiles unaccounted for; (12) further, according to GAO's survey and field visits, no end-use checks of Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles have ever been performed by U.S. personnel; (13) DOD has not complied with the reporting requirements of the end-use monitoring amendment to the Arms Export Control Act because it does not collect the information needed to do so; (14) the amendment requires DOD to report annually to Congress on actions taken to implement the end-use monitoring program; (15) this report is to include a detailed accounting of the cost and number of personnel associated with its program; and (16) field personnel are currently not required to track the resources they use in performing end-use monitoring activities and only routinely report on the number of Stinger missile inspections conducted.

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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