Navy ships deploy with large inventories of spare parts, but because of poor record keeping, they lack about half the parts needed to maintain and repair onboard equipment and weapon systems, say congressional auditors.
The General Accounting Office, in the latest (GAO-03-887) in a series of reports on parts availability throughout the military, said a review of 132,000 parts requisitions from ships in six Atlantic and Pacific battle groups showed only 54% could be filled from shipboard inventories.
The Navy's goal of having 65% of needed parts on board ship has not been met in more than 20 years, the GAO said.
Readiness suffers from the shortfalls because parts not found on board take an average of about 18 days to reach the ship, triple the Navy's wait-time goal of less than 6 days.
The process of sending replacement parts to ships at sea, or to nearby ports, is costly. Ships also end up wasting millions of dollars stocking parts they cannot use. Auditors found two major causes for the parts problem.
One reason is that ship configuration records, which identify the types of equipment and weapons on board, are not kept current. When systems are upgraded, the GAO said, the Navy has a bad habit of not updating ship configuration records in a timely way. Therefore, ships can continue to stock parts for equipment no longer on board and fail to upgrade inventories to maintain newer gear. To make matters worse, the Navy does not audit its ship configuration records regularly to update supply computers on the types of equipment and weapons on board.
A second reason is that supply personnel do not keep good historical records on spare parts usage. Therefore, when inventories are reviewed or parts restocked, personnel rely on outdated, incomplete, or erroneous usage data to determine what parts were needed during past deployments.
Because of poor record keeping, ships routinely plug inaccurate parts data into computer models to estimate what they need, the GAO said, resulting in ships "not stocking the right parts for the equipment on board or not carrying the right number of parts that may be needed during deployment."
The Navy spends about $750 million a year on ship spare parts, including $200 million for initial spares and the remainder to replenish supply bins. Over a 10-month period, auditors reviewed parts requisitions from six battle groups that deployed in fiscal years 1999 and 2000.
More than 60,000 total requisitions, or 46% of their parts orders, could not be filled from onboard inventories. Of those missing parts, almost 27,000 were on the ships' parts allowances but the Navy had decided not to carry them on board. Another 23,000 were on the parts allowance lists but out of stock, and more than 10,000 parts were not even on the allowance lists.
Carelessness in updating ship configuration records, to reflect equipment or systems actually installed, occurs on both new and older ships, the GAO said. Navy officials conceded they incur "substantial costs" to obtain replacement parts from off-ship supply sources. Meanwhile, the GAO said, the six battle groups audited spent almost $25 million "to maintain large inventories that are not requisitioned during deployments."
Navy supply officials told the GAO they also are concerned about lengthy average wait times, which can be 12-14 days even for critical parts, when parts are not found on board ships.
The full impact on readiness of mismatched parts inventories could not be learned, the GAO said, because auditors found major discrepancies between the number of maintenance work orders deemed "high priority" and the number of casualty reports filed by ships.
Casualty reports, not work orders, show up in a ship's readiness report. Navy officials told the GAO that casualty reports tend to be underreported by ship commanders for fear too many will reflect negatively on their commands.
The GAO urged the Navy to develop plans to:
- Begin to conduct periodic ship configuration audits and to ensure that records are updated and maintained.
- Ensure that parts demand data are entered into ship supply systems promptly and accurately.
- Periodically purge unneeded parts from ship inventories.
- Ensure that casualty reports are issued consistent with high-priority maintenance work orders.
The Department of Defense concurred with the first three recommendations and the intent of the fourth. It disagreed that a casualty report should be filed in every instance of a high-priority work order.