The Army and Marine Corps maintenance depots provide critical support to ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and are heavily involved in efforts to reset the force. The Department of Defense (DOD) has an interest in ensuring that the depots remain operationally effective, efficient, and capable of meeting future maintenance requirements. In 2008, in response to direction by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Army and the Marine Corps each submitted a depot maintenance strategic plan. Our objective was to evaluate the extent to which these plans provide comprehensive strategies for meeting future depot maintenance requirements. GAO determined whether the plans were consistent with the criteria for developing a results-oriented management framework and fully addressed OSD's criteria. GAO is recommending that DOD direct the Army and Marine Corps to update their plans to ensure that they provide a comprehensive results-oriented management framework, fully address the criteria established by OSD, and mitigate and reduce uncertainties in future workload. In its written comments on a draft of this report, DOD concurred with GAO's recommendations.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is required, by law, to maintain a core logistics capability that is government owned and government operated to meet contingency and other emergency requirements. Military depots play a key role in maintaining this 'core capability, ' although in recent years DOD has significantly increased its use of contractors. At the subcommittee's request, GAO examined the extent to which (1) DOD has accurately assessed whether it has the required core capabilities in military depots and (2) DOD is preparing to support future core requirements for new and modified systems. GAO reviewed DOD's biennial process for determining core capability requirements and the associated workloads for fielded systems. GAO also reviewed whether DOD had identified and established core capability in a timely manner for new and modified systems. GAO is making eight recommendations to DOD to improve its core biennial process to provide more comprehensive and accurate assessments, and to improve the timely identification and establishment of core capabilities for new and modified systems.