Summary: GAO reviewed the Army's National Training Center (NTC) to determine whether the Army was: (1) using the information it collected from NTC exercises to analyze deficiencies in unit performance, determine their causes, and initiate solutions; and (2) developing Army-wide lessons learned from exercise results.
NTC objectives are to: (1) provide individual soldiers and units a training environment which closely parallels that of actual warfare; and (2) enable the Army to objectively measure the effectiveness and efficiency of organizations and weapon systems. GAO found that the Army has: (1) achieved its objective of providing training under realistic conditions; (2) been unable to use the objective data it collected for overall assessments of its organizations and weapons systems; and (3) been unable to identify causes of Army-wide problems demonstrated during NTC exercises and initiate solutions. GAO also found that: (1) the Army has not identified the types of data it needs to assess unit performance over the long term; (2) the data that the NTC instrumentation system collected were too unreliable and incomplete for overall analysis because the system was unable to monitor and record battlefield vehicle activities during movement along valleys and trenches; and (3) the Army used some of the data collected as a training aid to provide immediate feedback on unit performance. The Army has awarded a contract to solve its data analysis problems in measuring unit and weapon system effectiveness; however, the loss of battlefield data due to instrumentation shortcomings is a continuing problem. The Army is also developing a new system to identify lessons learned from a number of sources at an estimated cost of $3.4 million through fiscal year (FY) 1991.
