Army agrees with IG's recommendations on improving procedures for prepositioned stocks in Europe

The Army has agreed to a set of recommendations laid out in a new Defense Department inspector general report which found that the maintenance processes needed to better track the mission capability rates of prepositioned stocks in Europe and that there must be better coordination between units deploying the equipment.

The report, released Monday, was conducted to evaluate how well Army Sustainment Command and the 405th Army Field Support Brigade maintained prepositioned stocks of equipment at APS-2 in Germany. It comes one year after the Army began issuing equipment to an armored brigade combat team supporting NATO’s deterrence efforts toward Russia after the country invaded Ukraine.

The report found that from Feb. 27 to March 24, 2022, the AFSB moved equipment to the Armored Brigade Combat Team “in a timely manner,” but that some vehicles were not fully mission capable to support rapid deployment. It also found that less than 90% of the equipment the ABCT received was fully mission capable, which was below the Army maintenance standard.

The IG report also outlines “coordination shortfalls” between the ABCT and AFSB, and states that the AFSB “did not follow existing procedures or plan for sufficient personnel to issue equipment to the 1 ABCT at the handover area.” This lack of coordination slowed the issuance of some pieces of equipment such as M1 Abrams tanks, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and M88 recovery vehicles, the evaluation found.

The IG report issued four recommendations, which were:

• For Army Materiel Command to review whether an update to the maintenance processes is required to include and track the mission capability rates of prepositioned stocks.
• For the 405 AFSB to implement ways of testing APS-2 equipment, and to build a test track.
• For the 405 AFSB to create a “procedures checklist” to help deploying units coordinate their efforts with Army field support battalion workforces during rapid deployments.
• Update Army regulations so that prepositioned stocks are configured for transport at the APS storage site and configured for combat at the handover area.

The Army stated that it concurred with all four recommendations in its response, but the recommendations remain “open,” meaning that the service must provide evidence that it has implemented them.