Navy and Marine Corps tactical aviation units do not have enough
ordnance to meet their training and exercise requirements, according
to a report by a government watchdog agency.
The General Accounting Office said that Navy units are experiencing
shortages in inert laser guided training rounds and guided bombs,
while the Marines are short on supplies of both advanced training
ordnance and common ordnance, such as live bombs. The agency’s
report was released in July.
A former Navy ammunition program manager, who spoke under condition
of anonymity, said that these shortfalls in ammunition could be
attributed in part to high-level decisions by the Navy to shift
funds from ammo accounts to shore up force-protection initiatives.
The demands for naval force protection increased dramatically since
the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. Top officials
at the Pentagon are “extremely interested in force protection,
as rightly they should be,” said the source. But the source
cautioned that the money to pay for the additional force protection
may have cut too deeply into other priorities, such as ammunition.
“That results in not buying training rounds and combat rounds,”
the source said.
In its report, GAO noted that the Navy assigned a low funding priority
to ordnance, but also pointed out two other reasons that led to
the aviation munitions shortage—an ineffective process for
determining annual ordnance needs and an allocation system that
does not put the ordnance where it is needed for training.
A 1997 Defense Department directive, entitled “Capability-Based
Munition Requirements Process,” gave guidance to the military
services on developing their ammunition requirements. The undersecretary
of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics has the responsibility
for implementing the directive, which aims to ensure that ordnance
requirements address the operational objectives of the regional
commanders in chief.
According to the Pentagon’s policy, the calculation of the
total munitions requirement is not supposed to be shaped by anticipated
funding shortfalls.
Last May, the House Armed Services Committee asked the service
chiefs to provide a list of their unfunded priorities. The list,
which was submitted in July, did not include aviation ordnance,
said Richard Palaschek, head of the munitions industrial base task
force, which represents ammunition manufacturers. The Navy did,
however, ask for $123 million for live-fire training ordnance and
another $213 million for war-reserve, precision-guided ammunition.
According to GAO, many Navy and Marine ordnance requests submitted
between fiscal years 1998 and 2001—particularly requests for
inert laser-guided training rounds and guided bombs—were well
below training requirements. “This occurs because Navy ordnance
managers are not provided sufficient guidance to determine training
ordnance requirements, including ordnance for Navy exercises,”
said the report.
For some types of live ordnance, Navy stockpiles are currently
at about 40 to 65 percent of the Navy’s requirement, according
to GAO.
For Navy ground training, said the former Navy program manager,
two types of ammuntion, particularly, are running low, the 5-inch
54-caliber rounds and the 76 mm ammunition. Given the expected closing
of the live-firing range on Vieques Island, in Puerto Rico, the
Navy could “squeeze off some more 5-inch 54 ammunition,”
the source said.
The Navy’s training organizations had to buy training ammunition
with money that was recouped from sales of ammunition to foreign
countries, said the source. The reason was, “because resource
sponsors at the Pentagon did not put enough money in the budget.”
The Navy, the source said, could completely run out of the two
main types of ground training ammunition by 2005. But the source
said mechanisms are in place to avoid running entirely out of ammo.
“There is a healing process that causes the system to not
become totally broken. If year after year, the fleet cannot get
issued to them enough ammunition, then the issue goes to [regional
commanders] CINCs who will put pressure on the Pentagon. And if
there is enough pressure, they [the Pentagon] will put money in
the budget.”
Once the money is allocated in the budget, it takes another two
to two and a half years to get the ordnance, the source said. “There
is a period of time when things get very scary.”
The Navy comptroller generally does not allow long-term advance
purchases of ammunition, except in special circumstances, such as
when a manufacturer is going out of business. The source explained
that the acquisition office works under a funded-delivery period,
which allows for acquisition lead-time, plus the lead-time for the
production of the ordered ammunition. Delivery usually takes an
additional 12 months, said the source.
Pentagon resource sponsors also have allowed “procurement
holidays,” said the source, when they would only buy ammunition
every other year. “You would have producers of ammunition
who would get cold for a year, and then their products would get
more expensive.”
The GAO report also noted that the Navy’s training ordnance
allocation process does not make the most efficient use of the available
training munitions. “Marine units normally maintain a higher
year-round readiness than comparable Navy units,” GAO reported.
“[They] have higher training ordnance requirements. However,
the Marine Corps is not allocated any additional ordnance to reflect
this higher requirement.”
Also, GAO said it identified instances when the Atlantic Naval
Air Forces received more ordnance than they needed, while the Pacific
Naval Air Forces received less than they needed of the same ordnance
required to meet their training needs.
“These disparate allocations occur, because fleet ordnance
requests are not validated against training requirements at the
Department of Navy level,” said the report.
Ordnance Requirements
Overall, GAO noted, Naval Air Forces Atlantic requested less ordnance
than required to meet training requirements for 25 percent of its
requests during the period between 1998 and 2001. “Most notably,
it requested less than 50 percent of its required laser-guided training
rounds and less than 15 percent of its flare requirement in fiscal
years 1998 to 2000,” the report said.
GAO said that some units told investigators that they did not know
how to use the training instructions to determine their annual needs,
because the instructions did not provide enough guidance. Other
units said there were times when they did not request ordnance,
because they believed it was either in short supply, or because
they were not confident they could use it during the year.
“The result was often the use of current and previous year’s
expenditures—which were usually well below requirements—as
the basis for future year’s requirements,” the report
explained.
GAO pointed out that the most significant shortcoming in the Navy’s
guidance is that it does not include ordnance requirements for exercises.
Training ordnance for the Navy includes a variety of live and practice
non-guided general-purpose bombs, live and practice precision guided
ordnance, cartridges, missiles, chaff and flares. There are two
basic types of training ammo. One is totally inert and has the same
aerodynamics as a combat round, so troops can train for accuracy.
When it hits its target it just sticks in the dirt. The other type
is a projectile with a color-burst unit that serves as a simulated
explosive.
The most common general-purpose bombs are the MK-80 series weapons,
which weigh between 500 and 2,000 pounds.
Precision-guided ordnance includes laser-guided bombs, which require
an operator to illuminate a target with a laser designator and then
the munition is guided to a spot of laser energy reflected from
the target. Television-guided or infrared-guided systems have a
data link in the bomb’s tail section that sends guidance updates
to a control aircraft. An operator guides the bomb by remote control
to the target.
Retired Navy Adm. Donald Pilling said that the Navy should make
the real munitions more available for training. “Every air
crew should have dropped laser-guided weapons in training before
they go [into combat],” said Pilling. “But the Navy
historically has not funded that requirement.” He said that
this becomes a problem when commanders have to decide who in the
squadron gets to train with a laser-guided missile.
Based on his experience, said Pilling, in a squadron of 15 aviators,
only three would get to train with missiles. “So the new pilots
in the squadron would get to drop it, whereas ideally every one
in the squadron should get to drop it,” said Pilling. The
training laser-guided bomb has all the devices to help the aircrew
go through the process of launching the bomb, but it does not give
them the feeling of what it is like to actually drop it, said Pilling.
But Pilling also conceded that laser-guided bombs are expensive
and using them for training could stress the Navy financially. “If
every year, every pilot gets to train with them, we are talking
about expenditures of tens of millions of dollars,” said Pilling.
The GAO made a series of recommendations to the Navy, to help avoid
a deterioration in training as a result of the ammunition shortages.
One of the recommendations is for the service to update both the
Navy and the Marine Corps training readiness instructions, so that
they are comprehensive and identify the ordnance needed for pre-deployment
exercises.
The Defense Department responded to the recommendations and agreed
with the suggestion that the requirements should include ordnance
needed for collective pre-deployment exercises. However, the Defense
Department said that, “since each battle group and readiness
group has a unique training cycle, there must be sufficient flexibility
in the exercise ordnance requirement determination and allocation
process to preclude perpetual revision of training instruction.”
The Pentagon did not agree with the GAO’s recommendation
to develop a standardized methodology for determining training ordnance
requirements. A letter signed by then acting deputy undersecretary
of defense for readiness, Joseph J. Angello Jr., said, “The
Navy and Marine Corps training and readiness instructions provide
perhaps the best examples in the Department of Defense of well-defined
event based training programs. These instructions include training
ordnance requirements that are fleet driven and validated by Fleet
Type Commanders.”
The secretary of the Navy, GAO said, should require Marine and
Navy carrier wings to detail the reasons for requests that differ
substantially from the ordnance requirements identified in the training
instructions.
According to the Defense Department, efforts to more accurately
measure the readiness of Marine Corps air wings and Navy battle
groups across the Inter-Deployment Training Cycle are already underway.
“One expected outcome is better visibility into the unique
training and resource requirements for each Marine Corps air wing/group
and Navy battle group,” wrote Angello.
The Defense Department agreed with several other GAO recommendations
that include suggestions to have the secretary of the Navy allocate
ordnance on the basis of the documented training requirements identified
in the Navy and Marine Corps instructions.
The Navy and Marine Corps should identify the amount of ordnance
requested for the war reserve stockpile and the amount that would
go for training, said GAO. If the amount requested for training
is less than the training requirement, both services should explain
how training readiness would be maintained without the specific
munitions.