The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force’s Basing Decision Processes Are Comprehensive, but the Navy’s Process Lacks Guidance in Some Areas

The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force basing decision processes include  all of the key elements, associated factors, and management control  standards that we identified as necessary in a comprehensive process and  that when incorporated in the process, increase its transparency,  repeatability and defendability. Specifically, we found that some of the Navy’s guidance  documents do not provide detailed information about how certain types of  analyses will be completed and who is responsible for completing them. Without comprehensive and clear  guidance of the Navy’s overall basing decision process, the Navy may lack  the completeness and management control to ensure that its basing  decisions can facilitate external stakeholders’ examination and scrutiny or  ensure effective implementation of Navy’s basing process. However, Navy  guidance does not provide a clear explanation for how all of these  guidance documents are linked together in the process. However, the Strategic Dispersal Flow Chart does  not describe in any detail how the analysis is to be conducted and who is  to conduct it. OSD Does Not Have a Clear Process to Exercise Management Control over the Services’ Basing Decision Processes

The Secretary of Defense has not set a policy or assigned an office a clear  role for providing management control of the services’ basing decision  processes within the United States and not made under the BRAC  legislation, and as a consequence may lack reasonable assurance that  certain DOD-wide initiatives will be fully supported in service basing  decisions. Without implementing a DOD-wide policy that  includes guidance and oversight of the military services’ basing processes  and assigns an OSD office with authority and responsibility for providing  this oversight, the Secretary of Defense lacks reasonable assurance that  DOD plans for sharing facilities among the services, possible impacts on  global basing and operations, or other departmentwide issues are  adequately considered by the services in their basing decision making. 2. Establish guidance for the services to ensure that they fully consider  joint use of DOD facilities, impacts to global operations, and other  departmentwide initiatives during the course of their basing processes. DOD concurred with our recommendation that the Secretary of Defense  direct the Secretary of the Navy to describe the link between its five  guidance documents—the Chief of Naval Operations Organization Change  Manual; Strategic Laydown Flow Chart; Strategic Dispersal Flow Chart;  the Secretary of the Navy’s environmental planning document; and the  Chief of Naval Operations environmental planning document—used to  implement the Navy’s overall basing decision process. We used the  services’ guidance documents and other pertinent documents, interviews  with the service officials, and officials’ comments regarding our analyses  of the services’ processes to determine the extent to which the services  have comprehensive basing decision processes in place that are designed  to result in well-informed basing decisions within the United States that  are not made under BRAC legislation. To determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense exercises  management control, such as providing DOD-wide guidance and oversight  of the services’ basing decision processes, we reviewed DOD and military  service guidance, policies, instructions, regulations, and orders and  relevant law to identify whether an office within OSD has been clearly  assigned a role and responsibilities over the services’ basing processes.
Why GAO Did This Study

Decisions by the military services on where to base their force structure can have significant strategic, socioeconomic, and cost implications for the Department of Defense (DOD) and the communities surrounding the bases. Each service uses its own process to make basing decisions. The House Committee on Armed Services directed GAO to review the services' basing decision processes. GAO examined the extent to which (1) the services have comprehensive processes in place that are designed to result in well-informed basing decisions and (2) DOD exercises management control of these processes. GAO reviewed and analyzed DOD and service guidance, studies, and relevant documents on implementation and oversight of the services' basing processes.

What GAO Found

The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force basing decision processes fully incorporate the key elements, associated factors, and management control standards that GAO identified as necessary in a comprehensive process; however, the Navy needs additional guidance for its process to be complete. GAO found that while the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force each have issued comprehensive guidance for their basing possesses that describes the organizational roles and responsibilities within the service, establishes links among all of the service's strategic and environmental guidance documents, and identifies the service's basing criteria, some of the Navy's guidance documents lacked detailed information about specific actions taken during the process and defined responsibility for completing certain types of analyses. For example, the Navy's Strategic Dispersal Flow Chart--one of the five guidance documents used to implement the Navy's process--shows that some types of analyses are conducted to review a range of considerations, such as access to training areas, sailor and family quality of life, and ship size, for a particular basing decision. But the document does not describe in any detail how and by whom these analyses will be conducted. Additionally, Navy guidance does not provide a clear explanation of how its five guidance documents are linked together in implementing the Navy's overall basing process. Without comprehensive and clear guidance on all aspects of the Navy's overall basing decision process, the Navy may lack the completeness and management control to ensure that Navy basing decisions can facilitate external stakeholders' examination and scrutiny or ensure effective implementation of the Navy's basing process. The Secretary of Defense has not set a policy or assigned an office a clear role for providing management control of the services' basing decision processes within the United States, and as a consequence may lack reasonable assurance that certain departmentwide initiatives will be fully supported in the services' basing decisions. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) officials said that OSD is promoting joint sharing of DOD facilities and seeking to ensure that domestic basing decisions support global operations. However, OSD has not fully promoted service consideration of the joint sharing, global operations, and potentially other initiatives because the Secretary of Defense has neither provided a comprehensive policy for, nor clearly assigned an office within OSD to oversee domestic service basing processes. Without OSD guidance and an office to provide effective oversight of military service basing decision processes, the Secretary of Defense lacks reasonable assurance that departmentwide initiatives are adequately considered by the services in their domestic basing decision making.