Defense Planning: DOD Needs Specific Measures and Milestones to Gauge Progress of Preparations for Operational Access Challenges

Why GAO Did This Study. According to DOD, its ability to deploy military forces from the United States to a conflict area is being increasingly challenged as potential adversaries pursue capabilities designed to deny access. Access can be denied by either preventing an opposing force from entering an operational area or limiting an opposing force s freedom of action within an operational area. DOD has a joint concept that broadly describes how DOD will operate effectively in such access-denied environments. DOD s initial efforts have emphasized the roles of the Air Force and Navy. GAO was mandated to review the role of the Army and Marine Corps in access-denied areas. This report (1) describes Army and Marine Corps efforts to address operational access challenges and (2) analyzes the extent to which DOD is able to gauge how its efforts support implementation of its concept for future operations in access-denied environments. GAO analyzed DOD, Army, and Marine Corps concepts; reports on service-level exercises; DOD policy and guidance on concept implementation; and documents specifically related to the joint concept. GAO also interviewed cognizant DOD officials. What GAO Recommends. GAO recommends that DOD establish specific measures and milestones in future iterations of the JOAC Implementation Plan to improve DOD s ability to gauge implementation progress. DOD agreed with the importance of assessing the plan and said it is developing measures and milestones and will continue to refine these tracking tools in the future.
Report to Congressional Committees.