DOD

Anyone connected with the Dept. of Defense previously in life understands the complexity of bureaucracy, acknowledging the military form as being the most virulent. A penchant for Paper and Reports ensures no one can find anything. The GAO attempts repeatedly to bring order to federal agencies, but the Military may be functionally defined as intransigent. The GAO has produced two recent reports, one on military disbursements, and the other on Defense Inventory improvements. They can sound like 'an Accident ready to happen', but actually; things have been improving for years. Here are some profound Quotes from the Reports:

In our prior work on MILPERS budgets, we found that the obligations
reported at the end of the appropriation year were not always disbursed as
reported. In researching some of the differences, we also found that the
services’ obligation reviews for the 5 years after the obligations were made
could not identify the changes at the same level of detail as that used in
the budget request to Congress. Moreover, the reports used for the review
did not provide information on where the funds were moved or an audit
trail to the disbursements.
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Department of Defense (DOD) has worked to achieve full visibility over and accessibility to its spare parts inventory. This initiative, called total asset visibility (TAV), aims to provide timely, accurate information on the location, movement, status, and identity of units, personnel, equipment, and supplies.

While total asset visibility (TAV) has been a goal of DOD’s since the early
1970s, target completion dates of 1980, 1995, and 2004 have not been met.
In fact, DOD’s target date for achieving TAV has slipped by nearly 30 years,
most recently being moved from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2010.

we recently reported that DOD experienced logistics management weaknesses during the build upand early phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom due to inadequate asset visibility. These weaknesses are similar to those experienced during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

as Operation Iraqi Freedom began, a number of asset visibility weaknesses contributed
to a $1.2 billion discrepancy between the material shipped to Army activities in the Iraqi theater and the material acknowledged as received. While Army officials believe that this material was received in theater, lapses in asset visibility, in some instances, resulted in units cannibalizing major equipment items, submitting duplicate requisitions, and circumventing the normal supply systems to obtain needed parts.
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Does the above information frighten? It should not, it is the normal Military procedure of "Situation normal, ...................." What should frighten is the fact there are multiple Warehouses existent, filled with WWI and WWII inventory goods, which the DOD cannot sell for Army salvage because they cannot find the proper paperwork. The DOD finds itself unable to identify all Military property (land) owned in the United States--not foreign. Do not worry about Our troops in the field, though; there are a probable five requisitions for every military item, and generally one or two get filled. lgl