Weapon System Sustainment: Various Challenges Affect Ground Vehicles' Availability for Missions , September 25 , 2025
Weapon System Sustainment: Various Challenges Affect Ground Vehicles' Availability for Missions , September 25 , 2025
From the report: "Five of six selected Army ground combat vehicles did not meet mission capable goals in any fiscal year (FY) during the time frame of GAO’s review. In the same time frame, selected Army ground support vehicles achieved mission capable goals about 20 percent of the time. The Marine Corps does not have a mission capable goal for its ground vehicles, though two of seven selected vehicles achieved positive changes in mission capable rates when comparing fiscal years 2015 and 2024.
Nine sustainment challenges have affected the ground vehicle fleets as shown in the figure on the next page. According to Army and Marine Corps officials, two challenges affected all 18 ground vehicles in this review: a lack of parts and materiel and not having current technical data or drawings. Further, other sustainment challenges that affected many ground vehicles included a shortage of trained or skilled maintainers, service-life issues, and unplanned maintenance.
GAO found that the number of overhauls performed by Army depots dropped from 1,278 in FY 2015 to 12 in FY 2024. A senior Army official stated that the Army accepted the risk from the decision to reduce funding for overhauls. Army officials also said reducing overhauls negatively affected the mission capable rates of most vehicles. Further, the Army partially mitigated declining overhauls by harvesting parts from vehicles being phased out of service. Also, the Marine Corps reduced the number of depot overhauls from 725 in FY 2015 to 163 in FY 2024. Marine Corps officials said they have not begun performing overhauls on two recently fielded vehicles and stopped performing overhauls on two others it is phasing out of service."
Authors - Government Accountability Office (GAO)Related Resources
