DOD Budget Military Personnel Program.

This report was written in response to the Congressional committee on Appropriations, US House of Representatives request to the GAO regarding DOD Budget Military Personnel Program. In response to your request, Evaluation of the Department of Defenses DOD fiscal year 1998 military personnel budget requests, which total over 60 billion was made. Our review focused on the services military personnel strength projections since these projections influence the most significant number of accounts and funds in the budgets-specifically in the pay and allowances accounts. Also, per your request, we reviewed the early retirement accounts that are centrally managed by the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force. Our objective was to determine whether the services personnel budgets should be funded in the amounts requested. In June 1997, we provided your staff with the preliminary results of our work. This report summarizes and updates that information, but does not include all actions that may have been taken by the Committees during their reviews of the services budget requests. We have not acknowledged these committee actions because in some cases House and Senate actions have varied and conference actions are still pending. We identified potential reductions of about 390.1 million in the services military personnel requests 304.4 million in the requests for military pay and allowances and 85.7 million in the request to fund early retirements. We estimate military pay and allowances accounts can be reduced by 255.3 million for the Army, 20.7 million for the Navy, 21.3 million for the Air Force, and 7.1 million for the Marine Corps. The early retirement fund requests can be reduced 48.8 million for the Air Force and 36.9 million for the Army.