WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Department of Defense manages conventional ammunition that ranges from small arms cartridges to rockets, mortars, artillery shells and tactical missiles, the GAO observed.
According to data provided by military officials, the stockpile was about 529,373 tons as of February 2015, the report said.
“[O]f 36,355 records in the [Army Logistics Modernization Program] database, 2,829 did not have assigned weights as of February.”
The Department of Defense’s internal control standards state that an entity should have controls to ensure that all transactions are complete and accurately recorded.
However, despite the efforts of officials to correct current records with missing data, the number of records without weight data has increased, the GAO noted.
“[A]s of February 2015, the number of records with missing data had increased by more than 600 since 2012.”
The Defense Department estimates that from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2020, it will add an additional 582,789 tons of conventional ammunition to the conventional ammunition awaiting demilitarization and disposal stockpile, it added.
The GAO recommended that the Department of Defense “develop a plan to identify and record missing weight data and develop a systematic means to share information on the stockpile with other government agencies.”
The report noted that the Department of Defense agreed with the offered recommendations.
The US Government Accountability Office is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.
