DoD Inspector General's Report on US Military Readiness

   More on the DoD's report on the US military readiness.

Department of Defense Office of Inspector General                                The Entire Report (PDF)      January 25,2007

    Finally, Service members stated that, when possible, they used informal procedures to obtain the force-protection equipment they needed to perform missions off base in Iraq and Afghanistan, including borrowing equipment from and trading equipment with other Service members. As a result, information in this report reflects testimonial evidence of those Service members that we interviewed because we were not able to validate testimonial evidence against documentation that either did not exist or was incomplete. 

     Other Audit Coverage. The DoD IG issued an audit report, "The Army Small Arms Program That Relates to Availability, Maintainability, and Reliability of Small Arms to Support the Warfighter," Report No. D-2007-010 on November 2,2006. That report states that the Army equipped its deployed forces in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom with the small arms necessary to meet Combatant commanders' requirements, and this '
report identifies shortages of crew-served weapons for U.S. forces in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

  Management Comments. We issued the draft report on October 30,2006. The Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Program Support), responding for DoD ,* and the Inspector General, U.S. Central Command, responding on behalf of the Commander, U.S. Central Command, concurred with the recommendations. The Director for Capabilities Integration, Prioritization, and Analysis, responding on behalf of the Deputy Chef of Staff for Operations and Plans, Headquarters, Department of the Army, nonconcurred with the recommendations. Specifically, the Director stated that continued implementation of the Mission Essential Equipment Lists will not correct or prevent the equipment shortages, and that the Army will continue to use a combination of the Mission Essential Equipment Lists and the Unit Deploy List formula for determining unit equipment requirements. The Director also stated that it is impossible for any element outside the warfighting chain of command to determine if the equipment list accurately reflects the unit's assigned mission and operational environment, and that validation of the Mission Essential Equipment List serves only as a configuration management functioning support of resource allocation decisions.

  The Army did not explain how using the Unit Deploy List formula in combination with the Mission Essential Equipment List process
will provide unit commanders with authorized and validated equipment requirements in a baseline equipping document.

 

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