Summary: The Army's CAPSTONE program has tried to improve readiness by aligning active and reserve units with wartime commands and by identifying units' anticipated wartime missions. These alignments are meant to serve mainly as a basis for peacetime training. GAO reported a decade ago that wartime commands did not always provide mission guidance to some of their subordinate units. Consequently, some of these units had no idea what missions would be expected of them during wartime. Moreover, the extent of this problem could not be determined because the Army lacked an adequate information system. Because of inadequate controls over the CAPSTONE program, the Army still lacks an effective way of identifying units that are not aligned with a wartime command. As a result, the Army was unaware that, since 1989, at least 116 active and reserve units did not have a CAPSTONE alignment. This report details the Army's controls to: (1) align active and reserve units with a wartime command; (2) identify unaligned units and take appropriate action; (3) provide aligned units with wartime mission guidance; and (4) monitor CAPSTONE's effectiveness.
