Army Acquisition Planning for Depot Maintenance

Audit Objective. The audit objective was to determine the adequacy of the Services' acquisition planning for fielding of weapon systems. Specifically, the audit determined whether acquisition managers adequately developed and implemented plans to ensure the effective transition of weapon systems to the user. At the end of the audit survey phase, the audit scope was modified to include only Army major weapon systems that were in engineering, manufacturing, and development or production phases (Appendix A). We further modified the objective to evaluate planning for depot support. Audit Results. Army combat units receiving new or upgraded weapon systems were generally satisfied with the overall handoff of the systems. When deficiencies occurred, program managers had established plans to resolve the deficiencies (Appendix C). However, we reviewed 19 systems that required depot support. For 12 of the 19 systems, planning for depot maintenance assignment was generally inadequate. Program managers did not give the DoD Joint Depot Maintenance Analysis Group data needed to conduct source of repair analyses. As a result, the Army may be unnecessarily incurring costs in technical data, plant, and support equipment. Although DoD policy is to increase depot maintenance outsourcing in the future, a systematic process for choosing the best support option for each weapon system needs to be maintained.