Special Inspector General for 

Afghanistan Reconstruction

/1

3.....

SIGAR 17-40 Audit Report

Afghan National Defense and Security Forces: 

DOD Needs to Improve Management and 

Oversight of Uniforms and Equipment

SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment

SIGAR

APRIL

2017
For more information, contact SIGAR Public Affairs at (703) 545-5974 or sigar.pentagon.ccr.mbx.public-affairs@mail.mil.

WHAT SIGAR REVIEWED

Developing Afghanistan’s security forces into a 

strong, sustainable force is a top priority for the 

U.S. government. To support this effort, from 

fiscal years (FY) 2002 through 2016, Congress 

appropriated approximately $64 billion to the 

Department of Defense (DOD) to train and 

equip the Afghan National Defense and Security 

Forces (ANDSF), which consists primarily of the 

Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan 

National Police (ANP). These efforts included

providing organizational clothing and individual 

equipment (OCIE) to the ANDSF. OCIE includes 

items such as uniforms, helmets, body armor, 

boots, and sleeping bags. From 2010 through

2014, DOD spent more than $415 million to 

purchase these items. Within the U.S. 

government, the Combined Security Transition 

Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) is the DOD 

entity responsible for overseeing U.S. efforts to 

supply the ANDSF with clothing and equipment.

CSTC-A provided clothing and equipment

through three methods: (1) local acquisition, 

which involves contracting with Afghan vendors 

to help strengthen the local economy; (2) direct 

assistance, in which CSTC-A reimburses the 

Afghan Ministries of Defense (MOD) and Interior 

(MOI) for the clothing and equipment contracts 

they execute; and (3) the “pseudo” Foreign 

Military Sales (FMS) program, where CSTC-A 

uses appropriated funds to purchase items 

through the DOD supply chain on behalf of the 

Afghan government. CSTC-A planned to turn 

over responsibility for buying clothing and 

equipment for the ANDSF to the Afghan 

government by the end of 2014. However, 

CSTC-A still remains involved in providing 

clothing and equipment.

The objectives of this audit were to assess the 

extent to which DOD (1) developed and 

validated clothing and equipment requirements 

for the ANDSF; (2) provided clothing and 

equipment in accordance with ANDSF needs; 

and (3) provided oversight and accountability 

for clothing, equipment, and funds transferred 

to the Afghan government. 

WHAT SIGAR FOUND

CSTC-A’s ability to develop and validate clothing and equipment requirements for the 

ANDSF is limited by poor data, reliance on questionable assumptions, and a lack of 

clear roles and responsibilities. CSTC-A receives data from the Afghan government on 

ANDSF personnel numbers, consumption rates, and inventory levels, but the command 

acknowledged that this data is often inaccurate and therefore unreliable. Because 

CSTC-A could not rely on the Afghan government for accurate data, it defaulted to using 

problematic assumptions and estimates when calculating the Afghan military’s annual 

clothing and equipment replenishment needs. For example, coalition officials assume 

that the Afghan military is operating at full capacity and consumes all its clothing and 

equipment every year without any extra. Given CSTC-A’s history of delivering large 

shipments of clothing and equipment, the fact that the reported number of soldiers and 

police in the ANDSF is lower than what is authorized, and DOD’s own reports of 

unopened shipping crates with clothes that are not reflected in the ANDSF’s official 

inventories, it is unlikely that the ANDSF is using all of its clothing and equipment every 

year. Even though CSTC-A’s reliance on some assumptions and estimates like this one 

may be necessary given the lack of reliable data, opportunities exist to more accurately 

define the clothing and equipment requirements of the ANDSF.

Furthermore, SIGAR found that CSTC-A did not document roles and responsibilities in 

the acquisition process after the multinational coalition’s combat operations ended in 

2014. At that time, the coalition redistributed clothing and equipment procurement 

functions among several entities, without formally documenting the roles and 

responsibilities of those entities. DOD officials said CSTC-A does not have trained 

logisticians on its staff specializing in clothing and individual equipment, increasing the 

risk of ordering the wrong items at the wrong times. In one case, a DOD official noted 

that confusion about who should be ordering uniforms became so severe that U.S. 

Special Forces had to execute an emergency order for the Afghan Special Forces 

because no other coalition organization knew that there was a shortage.

SIGAR found that each of CSTC-A’s three methods for acquiring clothing and 

equipment—local acquisition, direct assistance, and pseudo FMS—had mixed results 

that led to shortages and disruptions in the supply chain. CSTC-A provided clothing and 

equipment primarily through local acquisitions between 2008 and 2012, and through 

direct assistance between 2012 and 2013. The command supplemented these 

acquisitions with pseudo FMS orders, a method it has used continuously since 2003. 

DOD officials who formerly worked within or in support of CSTC-A said they saw several 

problems with the quality of the goods local Afghan vendors provided. SIGAR was able 

to identify 187 contract actions issued since January 1, 2010. Of these 187 contract 

actions, Army Contracting Command-Rock Island could provide contract files for only 

113. Of the 113, SIGAR analyzed files for only the 97 that involved financial 

transactions. For these 97 files, SIGAR found evidence that some vendors supplied 

poor-quality goods and did not meet scheduled delivery dates. Poor record keeping was 

evident from the beginning of the analysis because it took multiple steps to develop a 

list of local acquisition contracts. When asked about the 74 files not provided, the 

Closeout Office at Rock Island said DOD’s contingency contracting offices might not 

have sent them, some could have been destroyed in Afghanistan, and others could 

SIGAR

Special Inspector General for 

Afghanistan Reconstruction

SIGAR 17-40 AUDIT REPORT

 

 

 

April 2017

Afghan National Defense and Security Forces: DOD Needs to Improve 

Management and Oversight of Uniforms and Equipment 
For more information, contact SIGAR Public Affairs at (703) 545-5974 or sigar.pentagon.ccr.mbx.public-affairs@mail.mil.

have been lost in transit. In several cases, SIGAR found memos stating that some documents were stored electronically on local 

servers in Afghanistan or were set aside with the intent to upload them to the global online systems. However, Army Contacting 

Command staff said they did not receive any electronic records for the contracting actions SIGAR reviewed. Despite the poor state of 

the local acquisition contract records, SIGAR found documents indicating instances in which CSTC-A encountered problems getting 

well-made items on time. For example, 9 of the 97 contract actions we reviewed were terminated for convenience or cancelled. In 2

of the 9, SIGAR found documentation stating the “contractor had performance issues throughout the span of the contract, and 

stopped performing.” In a third case, the termination officer wrote that the contractor did not deliver items in conformance with the 

contract specifications and delivered fewer items than ordered. 

In 2012, CSTC-A began providing direct assistance to the MOD and MOI to purchase clothing and equipment, with the goal of 

shifting all ordering responsibility to the ministries by the end of 2014. However, less than a year later, the ANDSF faced critical 

shortages of uniform shirts, uniform pants, cold-weather coats, and other clothing. One coalition official said that in anticipation of 

the transition to the Resolute Support Mission in 2014, the coalition transferred many systems and responsibilities to the MOD and 

MOI before the Afghans were ready to handle them. Although a September 2013 CSTC-A memorandum judged direct assistance for 

clothing and equipment a success, other evidence indicated that problems had already surfaced. For example, a December 5, 

2012, memorandum from the Special Operations Joint Task Force for Afghanistan to CSTC-A stated that the MOI did not place 

orders for critically needed Afghan Local Police field jackets, despite coalition advisors’ urging it to do so. According to coalition 

officials, the Afghan government tended to favor the cheapest contracts, even when they resulted in items that did not meet 

minimum quality standards.

In 2013, the Afghan government cancelled all of its clothing and equipment contracts because it did not award these contracts in 

time to avoid changes to U.S. law stating that any textile components used to make Afghan uniforms funded by DOD must be 

produced in the United States. Although the Afghan government requested a waiver for contracts that had already gone through the 

bidding process, CSTC-A officials told us they were legally required to deny the ministries’ requests for waivers. According to coalition 

advisors, the ministries’ mass cancellation of its contracts compounded ongoing clothing shortages. As of summer 2013, the gap 

between the ANDSF’s estimated need and existing inventories appeared to be substantial. According to Essential Function 5 (EF-5), 

the organization responsible for determining ANA and ANP clothing and equipment requirements and submitting orders, the ANP 

“had gone without proper uniforms for two years” and were “approaching [their] third winter without proper uniforms.” At that time, 

the ANP had only 21,951 uniform shirts and pants in stock, instead of its estimated annual need of 137,766, and 26,207 coldweather coats, instead of its estimated annual need of 88,331. 

Beginning in June 2013, CSTC-A shifted from direct assistance back to procuring all ANDSF clothing and equipment through pseudo 

FMS orders. However, CSTC-A was caught unprepared because its local acquisition office had been dissolved following the shift to 

direct assistance. Without the local acquisition office’s institutional knowledge, coalition officials wasted several months searching 

through old records in an attempt to recreate the ANDSF’s uniform specifications. Because CSTC-A could not get uniforms and 

winter clothing to the ANDSF on time, shortages that occurred during the 2012–2013 phase of direct assistance continued or 

intensified. For example, SIGAR found that winter clothes continued to be in short supply in 2015. In September 2015, SIGAR sent 

an alert letter to DOD notifying officials there that they had not shipped any winter clothes for the ANA in the past 2 years. For the 

ANP, SIGAR found that although CSTC-A had ordered some winter items, such as wool sweaters and underwear, it did not order 

enough to meet annual replenishment requirements. In response to the alert letter, DOD recognized the shortages of cold-weather 

clothing and said it would begin delivering winter clothing in late 2015. DOD later told us that these items had been ordered and 

began arriving in December 2015.

Additional problems occurred because CSTC-A’s attempts to address the shortages led to over-ordering and inventory surpluses. 

According to EF-5’s forecasting models, pieces of clothing and equipment need to be replaced every 1 to 2 years. However, rather 

than delivering annual replenishment rates in anticipation of requirements based on these forecasting models, CTSC-A has been 

reacting to emergency shortages for many of these items. For example, 34,500 helmets for the ANP were due to arrive in 2016, 

more than 10 times what EF-5’s forecasting models indicate the ANP needs annually, and, as already discussed, these forecasting 

models may be overestimating needs. Similarly, 252,172 ANA cold-weather coats are set to be delivered in 2017, more than 

enough to provide one to each of the 171,428 troops reported to be in the ANA. The remaining 80,744 jackets would create a 47 

percent inventory surplus. 

Coalition advisors and DOD officials offered three potential reasons why CSTC-A has ordered too few items in some cases and 

ordered too many items in others. First, the Afghan government’s unreliable personnel, inventory, and consumption reporting makes 

it difficult for coalition advisors to forecast how much clothing and equipment the ANA and ANP needs in any given year. Second, no 

one organization is a proponent for the ANA and ANP, and the coalition lacks trained logisticians with experience in clothing and 
For more information, contact SIGAR Public Affairs at (703) 545-5974 or sigar.pentagon.ccr.mbx.public-affairs@mail.mil.

WHAT SIGAR RECOMMENDS 

SIGAR is making five recommendations in this report. Specifically, SIGAR recommends that the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy 

direct the Commander of U.S. Central Command to direct the Commander of CSTC-A to:

1. Develop and implement corrective action plans within 90 days to improve clothing and equipment requirements 

forecasting models to better reflect ANA and ANP personnel, inventories, and consumption rates. 

2. Document and implement guidance clarifying the roles and responsibilities for the coalition and Afghan government 

organizations involved in the clothing and equipment supply process, and clarifying the individual training required for 

identifying, assessing, reviewing, and validating requirements for acquiring clothing and equipment. 

3. Assess projected delivery dates for all active pseudo FMS orders and orders from other sources of clothing and 

equipment, and adjust these orders when necessary to avoid under- or oversupplying items.

4. Complete, as soon as possible, the transition of archived receipt and title transfer records from paper to electronic,

consistently document these records electronically in the future, and develop a system to automatically update the 

Security Cooperation Information Portal verifying when FMS orders have been received in Afghanistan. 

5. Develop and implement enforcement mechanisms so that the command holds the MOD and MOI accountable for 

supporting and keeping personnel and inventory databases up to date under pseudo FMS, or direct assistance, if the 

coalition returns to this acquisition approach.

DOD concurred with all five recommendations and noted that it has started taking steps to address the deficiencies SIGAR 

identified. 

equipment acquisitions. Because coalition officials lack familiarity with pseudo FMS timelines and costs, they are not aware of timeand cost-saving options available to them, such as using excess defense articles. Furthermore, clothing and equipment frequently 

goes unordered until the Afghan government reports acute shortages. In those cases, because FMS can take more than a year from 

order to delivery, waiting until the last minute to order items often exacerbates these shortages. Third, although CSTC-A officials are 

responsible for tracking incoming shipments and receipts of clothing and equipment, no one conducts routine analyses of the data to 

look for potential surpluses or shortfalls. Without such analyses, CSTC-A is missing an opportunity to adjust its shipment schedules so 

that clothing and equipment shipments both meet the Afghan government’s needs and arrive at a pace that does not overwhelm their 

system. 

Finally, SIGAR found that CSTC-A did not demonstrate that it conducted effective oversight and accountability of clothing, equipment,

and funds transferred to the Afghan government. CSTC-A is required to document the dates of all receipts and title transfers of clothing 

and equipment shipments in the Security Cooperation Information Portal, an online platform for coordinating FMS case information 

across U.S. military departments and with their international customers. However, based on a judgmental sample of 4940 shipments 

between April 2015 and October 2016 containing 5,047,824 discrete pieces of clothing and equipment, SIGAR found that CSTC-A 

confirmed receipt and title transfer for only 1,680,486, or about 33 percent, of those items. CSTC-A is also required to retain signed 

forms showing that the command received, inspected, and transferred the titles of clothing and equipment to the MOD and MOI. 

SIGAR reviewed a random sample of 65 clothing and equipment shipments purchased through the pseudo FMS system from 2012 to 

2015, and found that CSTC-A was able to provide this documentation for 41 shipments, or 63 percent. Coalition officials attributed 

their inability to provide the required documentation to poor organization and delays in transferring paper records to electronic 

records, stating that they may have physical copies of the forms but could not find them. Without readily accessible documentation, 

CSTC-A cannot determine whether the Afghan government received the clothing and equipment shipped to it by the U.S. government.

Finally, SIGAR found that the Afghan government could not track clothing and equipment purchased using direct assistance from 

2012 to 2013. Because CSTC-A did not enforce the conditions established in commitment letters requiring the MOD and MOI to use 

electronic systems to track clothing and equipment purchases, the command cannot say how much clothing and equipment the 

ministries bought with U.S. money. CSTC-A officials said they chose not to enforce these requirements because the mission to fully 

equip the ANDSF superseded their mission to improve the ministries’ financial reporting practices. As a result, CSTC-A did not properly 

oversee the money given to the Afghan government for clothing and equipment.
April 25, 2017

The Honorable Jim Mattis

Secretary of Defense 

The Honorable Theresa Whelan

Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

General Joseph L. Votel

Commander, U.S. Central Command

General John W. Nicholson, Jr.

Commander, U.S. Forces–Afghanistan and

 Commander, Resolute Support

Major General Richard G. Kaiser

Commander, Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan

This report discusses the results of SIGAR’s audit of the Department of Defense’s efforts to provide 

organizational clothing and individual equipment to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, which 

consists of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP). The report focuses on 

obligations made from 2010 through 2015.

We are making five recommendations to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Specifically, we 

recommend that the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy direct the Commander of U.S. Central Command 

to direct the Commander of the Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) to: (1)

develop and implement corrective action plans within 90 days to improve clothing and equipment 

requirements forecasting models to better reflect ANA and ANP personnel, inventories, and consumption 

rates; (2) document and implement guidance clarifying the roles and responsibilities for the coalition and 

Afghan government organizations involved in the clothing and equipment supply process, and clarifying the 

individual training required for identifying, assessing, reviewing, and validating requirements for acquiring 

clothing and equipment; (3) assess projected delivery dates for all active pseudo Foreign Military Sales (FMS)

orders and orders from other sources of clothing and equipment, and adjust these orders when necessary to 

avoid under- or oversupplying items. We also recommend that the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy 

direct the Commander of U.S. Central Command to direct the Commander of CSTC-A to: (4) complete, as 

soon as possible, the transition of archived receipt and title transfer records from paper to electronic, 

consistently document these records electronically in the future, and develop a system to automatically 

update the Security Cooperation Information Portal verifying when FMS orders have been received in 

Afghanistan; and (5) develop and implement enforcement mechanisms so that the command holds the 

Ministries of Defense and Interior accountable for supporting and keeping personnel and inventory 

databases up-to-date under pseudo FMS, or direct assistance, if the coalition returns to this acquisition 

approach. 

We received written comments from the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, which we have reproduced in 

appendix II. DOD concurred with all five recommendations and noted that it has started taking steps to 

address the deficiencies we identified. Additionally, DOD provided technical comments, which we 

incorporated into this report as appropriate. 
SIGAR conducted this work under the authority of Public Law No. 110‐181, as amended, and the Inspector 

General Act of 1978, as amended; and in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards.

John F. Sopko

Special Inspector General

 for Afghanistan Reconstruction
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Background.................................................................................................................................................................. 2

CSTC-A’s Ability to Develop and Validate OCIE Requirements Has Been Limited by Inaccurate Data, Reliance on 

Questionable Assumptions, and a Lack of Clear Roles and Responsibilities .......................................................... 5

CSTC-A Had Limited Success in Providing OCIE to Meet the ANDSF’s Needs ......................................................... 8

CSTC-A Could Not Fully Account for OCIE and Direct Assistance Provided to the ANDSF.....................................13

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................................................14

Recommendations ....................................................................................................................................................15

Agency Comments .....................................................................................................................................................16

Appendix I - Scope and Methodology .......................................................................................................................17

Appendix II - Comments from the Department of Defense .....................................................................................19

Appendix III - Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................................................23

FIGURES

Figure 1 - DOD’s ANDSF OCIE Acquisition Methods Since 2003.............................................................................. 3

Figure 2 - Pseudo FMS Deliveries for ANA and ANP Coats Compared with Annual Replenishment Requirements

....................................................................................................................................................................................12

PHOTOS

Photo 1 - Defective Boots Supplied by an Afghan Vendor ......................................................................................10

Photo 2 - CSTC-A Officials Inspect the Afghan Vendor’s Factory in Spring 2010 ..................................................10
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page vii

ABBREVIATIONS

AFMIS Afghanistan Financial Management Information System

ANA Afghan National Army

ANDSF Afghan National Defense and Security Forces

ANP Afghan National Police

C-JTSCC

U.S. Central Command Joint Theater Support Contracting 

Command

Core-IMS Core Inventory Management System

CSTC-A Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan

DOD Department of Defense

EF Essential Function

FMS Foreign Military Sales

FY fiscal year

MOD Ministry of Defense

MOI Ministry of Interior

OCIE organizational clothing and individual equipment
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 1

Developing Afghanistan’s military and police into a capable, sustainable force that is able to provide security in 

the country has been a top priority for the U.S. government. To support this effort, from fiscal year (FY) 2002 to 

FY 2016, Congress appropriated approximately $64 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) to train and 

equip the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Between 2010 and 2014, DOD spent more 

than $415 million of those funds on organizational clothing and individual equipment (OCIE), which includes 

items such as helmets, body armor, uniforms, ammunition pouches, socks, boots, and sleeping bags.1 A lack of 

these items could adversely affect the ANDSF’s effectiveness and degrade its operational capabilities.

Following the completion of the coalition’s combat role in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, the multinational 

coalition launched the Resolute Support Mission on January 1, 2015, to provide further training, advice, and 

assistance for the ANDSF and the Afghan Ministries of Defense (MOD) and Interior (MOI). Under the Resolute 

Support Mission, the U.S. Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) is responsible for 

overseeing U.S. efforts and funding to equip and train the ANDSF, which includes providing OCIE.

On September 16, 2015, we wrote a letter to the Secretary of Defense expressing our concern over a potential 

critical shortage of cold-weather gear for the ANDSF in 2015 and 2016.2 Our letter stated that a lack of coldweather clothing could adversely affect the overall effectiveness of the ANDSF and degrade their operational 

capabilities during the winter months. Based on this concern, we suggested that the Resolute Support Mission 

and CSTC-A, in coordination with the MOD and MOI: (1) determine the number of cold-weather clothing items 

that the ANDSF currently has in stock and on order, as well as the anticipated dates any such items are to be 

delivered; (2) evaluate the extent of potential shortages; and (3) to the extent feasible, ensure that the ANDSF 

has an adequate number of cold-weather clothing items to issue to existing personnel and new recruits. In its 

response, DOD confirmed our analysis and detailed the actions it planned to take to mitigate the shortages of 

cold-weather clothing for the ANDSF. For example, DOD stated that it would order field jackets, boots, and 

winter fleeces and begin deliveries in October 2015, and later provided documentation showing that these 

items had been ordered and shipped to Afghanistan.

The objectives of this audit were to assess the extent to which DOD (1) developed and validated OCIE

requirements for the ANDSF; (2) provided OCIE in accordance with ANDSF needs; and (3) provided oversight 

and accountability for OCIE and funds transferred to the Afghan government.

To accomplish these objectives, we reviewed contracts, task orders, purchase orders, inspection reports, and 

other contract documents, as well as DOD policies and records that affected OCIE supply processes from 2010 

through 2015. We analyzed CSTC-A’s (1) documentation in the DOD Management Information System using a 

judgmental sample of 4,940 OCIE shipments shipped between April 2015 and October 2016; (2) retention of 

inspection and title transfer forms for OCIE shipments using a random sample of 65 shipments from a 

population of 1,630 shipments shipped between 2012 and 2015; and (3) retention of contracts for the 

acquisition of OCIE from local Afghan vendors from 2010 to 2012. We interviewed officials from DOD and the 

Resolute Support Mission, as well as former coalition advisors who were responsible for OCIE acquisitions. We 

conducted our work in Kabul, Afghanistan; Rock Island, Illinois; and Washington, D.C., from April 2015 through

April 2017, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. A more detailed discussion 

of our scope and methodology is in appendix I. 

 

1 DOD did not provide amounts spent on OCIE in 2015 and 2016 despite our multiple requests.

2 SIGAR, Alert Letter: ANDSF Cold Weather Gear, SIGAR 15-86-AL, September 16, 2015. 
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 2

BACKGROUND

Several Organizations Are Involved in Funding, Purchasing, Delivering, and 

Accounting for the ANDSF’s OCIE

Equipping the ANDSF involves more than a dozen Afghan, U.S., and international organizations. The ANDSF

consists primarily of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP). The ANA is organized 

and funded under the MOD, and the ANP is organized and funded under the MOI. The Afghan Ministry of 

Finance budgets and funds Afghan ministries, and oversees and approves the expenditures they make. Under 

the Resolute Support Mission, CSTC-A is responsible for overseeing U.S. efforts and funding to equip and train 

the ANA and ANP. It is responsible for validating ANDSF requirements and existing supply levels, and ensuring 

that the Afghan government appropriately uses and accounts for U.S. funds provided through the Afghanistan

Security Forces Fund. CSTC-A’s organization includes several elements, called essential functions (EF),3 of the 

Resolute Support Mission, including: 

• EF-1 – “Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution”: Establishing a base of knowledge in the 

key fundamental skills needed to raise and sustain effective Afghan security institutions, such as the 

MOD and MOI.

• EF-2 – “Transparency, Accountability, and Oversight”: Ensuring civilian governance of the Afghan 

security institutions, to include rule of law institutions, and restoring trust and confidence in a 

government that serves and protects its people.

• EF-5 – “Sustainment”: Ensuring that today’s gains in Afghanistan are lasting and that the ANDSF is

properly equipped to meet challenges.4

According to CSTC-A, the U.S. Central Command Joint Theater Support Contracting Command (C-JTSCC) 

administered and issued contracts with local Afghan vendors to acquire OCIE on CSTC-A’s behalf.

DOD Used Three Different Methods to Acquire OCIE

DOD has provided OCIE to the ANDSF through three methods:

1. “Pseudo” Foreign Military Sales (FMS), which can be used both for purchasing new supplies from DOD 

vendors and transferring excess items from the U.S. military to foreign customers;5

2. Local acquisitions, or purchases from Afghan vendors via U.S. contracts awarded by C-JTSCC; and

3. Providing U.S. funds to the MOD and MOI as direct assistance to enable the procurement of OCIE

through Afghan government contracts.

Currently, CSTC-A and other coalition organizations provide the requirements, oversight, and accountability for 

pseudo FMS and local acquisition contracts, while the MOD and MOI manage direct assistance with oversight 

 

3 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Resolute Support Mission is organized along eight EFs deemed critical for the 

ANDSF to become a self-sustaining force that is capable of securing Afghanistan. The EFs were conceived as functionally

based advising organizations that would consolidate advising activities previously scattered among coalition units. In 

addition to the three EFs listed in the text, the remaining EFs are as follows: EF-3 – Civilian Governance of the ANDSF; EF-4 

– Force Generation; EF-6 – Strategy, Policy Planning, Resourcing, and Execution; EF-7 – Intelligence; and EF-8 – Strategic 

Communication. 

4 “CSTC-A Area of Responsibility,” Resolute Support Mission, accessed October 17, 2016, 

http://www.rs.nato.int/subordinate-commands/cstc-a/index.php.

5 FMS is a program DOD uses to provide security assistance to other countries. Typically, FMS is funded by the client 

country, and the client country is responsible for developing and validating requirements. In pseudo FMS, the U.S. 

government provides the funding and, in some cases, helps the client country--in this case the Afghan government--develop 

and validate requirements. Other elements of DOD refer to pseudo FMS as the “Building Partnership Capacity” program, 

but we use pseudo FMS because that is how CSTC-A referred to these acquisitions. 
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 3

from the Ministry of Finance. CSTC-A also oversees the ministries’ use of direct assistance through its

commitment letters with the ministries. Figure 1 illustrates the timeline for DOD’s use of each acquisition 

method.

Figure 1 - DOD’s ANDSF OCIE Acquisition Methods Since 2003

Source: SIGAR analysis of DOD documents

Note: CSTC-A did not exist prior to 2006. Before 2006, other DOD organizations ordered OCIE for the ANDSF. Pseudo 

FMS is shown as a continuous timeline because CSTC-A used this method to supplement OCIE procured through local 

acquisitions and direct assistance.

Pseudo FMS

In 2003, DOD started using the pseudo FMS method to purchase OCIE for the ANDSF through DOD’s supply 

chain. The pseudo FMS method is similar to the traditional FMS method with the key difference being that in 

the pseudo FMS process, the U.S. government is directly responsible for developing and validating

requirements. In traditional FMS, which is funded either by the client country or by the U.S. government 

through Title 22 funding, the client country is responsible for developing and validating requirements.6

Under pseudo FMS, the U.S. government maintains custody and ownership of OCIE shipments until they arrive 

in Afghanistan. After arrival, the Afghan Union Transportation and Logistics Company—a CSTC-A contractor—

inventories the items electronically and transfers ownership of them to the Afghan government. At this point, 

the ANA and ANP pick up the shipments and move them to their warehouses, where the items are to be 

processed and logged into the Core Inventory Management System (Core-IMS), a web-based system that CSTCA bought for the MOD and MOI in 2006 to improve their ability to track stocks of OCIE, weapons, ammunition, 

vehicle spare parts, and other property throughout ANDSF’s warehouse network.

Local Acquisitions

In 2008, under the Afghan First effort, CSTC-A began to acquire OCIE from local vendors. According to a former 

CSTC-A official who worked on OCIE acquisitions during this period, in 2010 CSTC-A opened an acquisition 

office in Kabul to better oversee acquisitions from those vendors. The goal of these and other Afghan First 

acquisitions was to use coalition contracts to build a local manufacturing base in Afghanistan and to eventually 

shift responsibility for these types of contracts from the coalition to the Afghan government. The officer said

that between 2010 and 2012, CSTC-A procured OCIE primarily through Afghan vendors and supplemented

those procurements with pseudo FMS orders. In a 2012 internal planning document, CSTC-A required local

vendors to be Afghan-owned, employ no fewer than 51 percent Afghan citizens, and manufacture all their 

goods in Afghanistan.

CSTC-A officials told us they worked with the Afghan government to forecast and generate requirements, 

evaluate prospective vendors, create statements of work, inspect production facilities and products, and 

manage title transfers of items from the U.S. government to the Afghan government. CSTC-A officials stated 

that they allocated funds to purchase OCIE locally, and C-JTSCC and several other organizations awarded the 

contracts on CSTC-A’s behalf. 

 

6 Congress appropriates Title 22 funds to the Department of State to provide security assistance to other countries. The 

Department of State often transfers these funds to DOD, which in turn manages and executes most security assistance 

programs, including FMS. See RAND Corporation, Security Cooperation Organization in the Country Team: Options for 

Success, 2010.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 4

After the local acquisitions office closed in 2013, C-JTSCC did not sign any new OCIE contracts with Afghan 

vendors. According to DOD policy, the Army Contracting Command—Rock Island Closeout Office is responsible 

for de-obligating excess funds from and keeping records for the closed C-JTSCC contracts.

Direct Assistance

In 2012, CSTC-A moved OCIE to direct assistance and provided Afghanistan Security Forces Fund funds directly 

to the Afghan government, so the MOD and MOI could manage their own purchases and assume responsibility 

for equipping and sustaining the ANA and ANP, respectively. In addition, CSTC-A stopped ordering OCIE through 

pseudo FMS and its local acquisitions office, though deliveries of existing orders purchased under these 

methods continued through 2013. In 2013, CSTC-A began signing annual commitment letters with the MOD 

and MOI that explained what each organization was responsible for, including the total amount of money CSTCA intended to obligate and the circumstances in which it would not reimburse the ministries. CSTC-A officials 

told us that because the letters are nonbinding, the command is not legally required to enforce penalties for 

noncompliance as outlined in the letters. After signing these letters with CSTC-A, the ministries were supposed 

to then submit procurement and spending plans to CSTC-A that included the projected requirements they 

expected to fulfill for the following year. 

Once CSTC-A approved these documents, the ministries were supposed to proceed to award and manage 

contracts, with coalition advisors assisting throughout the process. The Ministry of Finance was responsible for 

validating the payments on these contracts through its electronic Afghanistan Financial Management 

Information System (AFMIS). The ministry gives CSTC-A access to the system for oversight purposes. 

U.S. Law, Regulations, Policies, and Guidance Govern the Procurement, Supply, 

Accountability, and Oversight of U.S.-Funded OCIE

A series of statutes, regulations, and agency policies govern DOD’s acquisitions of OCIE for the ANDSF. These 

include:

• DOD Instruction 5010.40, “Managers’ Internal Control Program Procedures.” This requires DOD

organizations to implement a comprehensive system of internal controls that provides reasonable 

assurance that programs are operating as intended. Organizations with acquisition responsibilities 

are expected to implement policies and procedures that clarify roles and responsibilities, facilitate 

coordination, and provide training so acquisition employees can do their jobs adequately and 

effectively. Such organizations are also expected to solicit input and data from end-users—and 

check those data for timeliness and accuracy—when developing requirements, so they can meet 

the end-users’ needs more effectively.

• Section 1225 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010. This required the Secretary 

of Defense to “establish and carry out a program to provide for the registration and end-use 

monitoring of defense articles and defense services” transferred to Afghanistan.7 The registration 

and end-use monitoring requirements of section 1225 included “a detailed record of the origin, 

shipping, and distribution of all defense articles” transferred to the Afghan government.8

• In February 2011, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy issued a policy memorandum 

requiring CSTC-A to: (1) monitor direct assistance contract awards down to the subcontractor level 

to guard against conflicts of interest or unintended consequences, and (2) develop standards to 

demonstrate the impact direct assistance contributions had on the ANA and ANP’s ability to 

conduct independent security operations. CSTC-A subsequently developed its own standard 

operating procedures for direct assistance. 

 

7 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-84, § 1225, 123 Stat. 2190, 2523 (2009).

8 Id.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 5

In addition to the requirements described above, DOD organizations have issued manuals and other guidance 

that relate to OCIE acquisitions. For example, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s Security Assistance 

Management Manual describes the functions organizations, such as CSTC-A, are expected to perform during 

the pseudo FMS process.

Most recently, the Senate Committee on Appropriations has also expressed its concern about reports that 

Afghanistan Security Forces Fund “procurements made on behalf of the [ANDSF] may be exceeding the 

ANDSF’s current needs and not meeting other requirements identified by the Afghans.”9 The committee also 

expressed concern “about a lack of insight into the cost benefit analysis of procuring new equipment instead of 

refurbishing excess equipment.”10 The Committee encouraged DOD to address concerns about the ANDSF’s 

ability to absorb excess equipment, either by reducing procurements or by providing training and advice to 

ensure that items are fully utilized.11 The Committee also directed the CSTC-A commander “to provide to the 

congressional defense committees, a cost-benefit analysis of purchasing new equipment for the ANDSF 

instead of refurbishing excess defense articles.”12

CSTC-A’S ABILITY TO DEVELOP AND VALIDATE OCIE REQUIREMENTS HAS BEEN 

LIMITED BY INACCURATE DATA, RELIANCE ON QUESTIONABLE ASSUMPTIONS, 

AND A LACK OF CLEAR ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

CSTC-A is responsible for validating annual OCIE requirements, budgeting funds from the Afghanistan Security 

Forces Fund to procure OCIE, and placing orders to be fulfilled by other DOD components that either contract 

for new procurements or provide items as sales from existing supplies of DOD equipment.13 However, we 

found that because data CSTC-A receives from the Afghan government are often unreliable, the command has 

used questionable assumptions and estimates to set OCIE requirements, rather than relying on actual

personnel, consumption, and inventory data. We also found that CSTC-A has not documented the process for 

determining ANA and ANP requirements, meaning that roles and responsibilities both among coalition 

organizations and within the Afghan government are left unclear.

Coalition Officials Do Not Use Valid Assumptions or Best Available Data in 

Estimating OCIE Requirements

Coalition advisors from EF-5, the CSTC-A organization accountable for developing and validating ANDSF OCIE

requirements, stated that in 2015, the coalition developed new forecasting models to estimate OCIE

requirements for both the ANA and ANP. These models use estimates and assumptions about personnel levels, 

inventories of OCIE, and consumption rates because the coalition cannot rely on the Afghan government to 

provide accurate data on these items. 

According to DOD officials, supplies should ideally be tracked through a “demand-based” inventory 

management system. Such a system would alert Afghan logistics officers and their coalition counterparts when 

stocks of a given item dropped below a certain level. However, a lack of accurate data about ANA and ANP 

inventories and consumption has been widely reported by us and other oversight organizations, and this lack 

of data makes a demand-based inventory management system unworkable. For example, DOD’s Office of 

 

9 Senate Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, 2017, S. Rep. No. 114-263, p. 229 

(2017). 

10 Id.

11 Id.

12 Id.

13 CSTC-A does not have the authority to award OCIE contracts.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 6

Inspector General reported in 2009 that CSTC-A could not individually account for vehicles and radios supplied 

to the ANA because the Afghans were not consistently logging inventories in Core-IMS, the web-based system 

CSTC-A purchased for the ANDSF to manage its inventories. The office recommended that CSTC-A require a 

“wall-to-wall physical inventory” of all vehicles and radios at several ANA storage sites.14 In 2014, the Office of 

the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics reported that the ANDSF was unable 

to identify consumption data from prior years, affecting its ability to forecast future needs.15 That same year, 

DOD’s Office of Inspector General reported that the Afghan military was not fully using and could not support 

logistics information management systems, including Core-IMS, resulting in the use of manual processes that 

did not provide effective accountability over inventory.16 In addition, in 2015 a joint team of Afghan auditors 

and EF-2 officials found that not all supplies at a central supply depot were entered into Core-IMS.17

Data about ANA and ANP personnel levels are also deficient. In 2015, we reported that ANA and ANP 

personnel and payroll processes had extensive internal control deficiencies, such as a lack of data 

reconciliation and verification procedures.18 We also found that the Afghan Human Resource Information 

System, which CSTC-A developed for the Afghan government in 2010, lacked important electronic data system 

functions and controls, such as the ability to differentiate between active and inactive personnel, and track 

employees by position and identification number.

During a discussion of our audit findings in November 2016, DOD officials told us that recently CSTC-A made

significant improvements to Core-IMS through both software and hardware upgrades intended to improve the 

functionality of the platform, but they did not elaborate on the extent of these changes. They said these 

improvements would allow the coalition and ANDSF to better project OCIE requirements. Given Core-IMS’s 

current data reliability issues, however, EF-5 officials said that for the near future they are trying to predict the 

ANDSF’s restock and replenishment needs using assumptions and estimates about the Afghans’ personnel, 

inventories, and consumption of OCIE. For example, they assume that the ANDSF: 

• uses uniforms at roughly the same rates as U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan, if not slightly faster 

due to a general lack of laundering facilities; 

• reuses body armor and helmets; 

• needs to purchase uniforms for personnel levels authorized in the Afghan budget, rather than using 

assigned personnel levels; and 

• has no inventory of perishable OCIE, such as uniforms and field jackets. 

The use of these assumptions and estimates may be the best available methodology for now, but other 

sources are available that may provide better results. For example, reported personnel numbers, still 

considered higher than the actual number of ANDSF personnel, can provide a more accurate estimate than 

authorized levels. In May 2016, DOD reported that actual ANA troop levels were 171,428, which is 23,572 less

than the authorized number of 195,000, and ANP personnel levels were 148,167, which is 8,833 less than 

the authorized number of 157,000. As we reported in our July 2016 quarterly report to Congress, CSTC-A told 

us it is implementing a biometric identification system to prevent ANA and ANP officers from reporting “ghost” 

 

14 DOD Officer of Inspector General, Afghanistan Security Forces Fund Phase III – Accountability for Equipment Purchases 

for the Afghanistan National Army, D-2009-099, August 12, 2009.

15 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Support to CSTC-A /ISAF EF5.0: 

Developing a Demand-Based Supply and Life Cycle Management Process for the Afghan National Security Forces.

16 DOD Office of Inspector General, Assessment of U.S. Government and Coalition Efforts to Develop the Logistics 

Sustainment Capability of the Afghan National Army, 2015-047, December 19, 2014.

17 EF-2 and MOD Office of Inspector General, Inspection Report on Accountability and Control of Materiel at the Central 

Supply Depot, May 11, 2015.

18 SIGAR, Afghan National Police: More than $300 Million in Annual, U.S.-funded Salary Payments Is Based on Partially 

Verified or Reconciled Data, SIGAR 15-26-AR, January 7, 2015; and SIGAR, Afghan National Army: Millions of Dollars at 

Risk Due to Minimal Oversight of Personnel and Payroll Data, SIGAR 15-54-AR, April 23, 2015.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 7

personnel to obtain salary payments for troops that exist only on paper. By providing OCIE only to verified ANA 

and ANP personnel, rather than providing OCIE to every troop authorized in Afghanistan’s budget, CSTC-A 

would also decrease the risk of providing uniforms for nonexistent soldiers and police officers.19

In addition, the assumption that the Afghan military has no inventory of perishable OCIE is not correct. In fact, 

in a letter to SIGAR dated October 28, 2015, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy noted 

that CSTC-A personnel recently discovered containers at the ANA central warehouse containing uniform items 

that had not yet been inventoried. If CSTC-A continues to assume that the ANDSF is completely using up 

perishable OCIE every year, it will likely waste funds and create a surplus of inventory.

CSTC-A Did Not Document the Roles and Responsibilities of Each Organization 

Involved in the OCIE Acquisition Process

DOD Instruction 5010.40, “Managers’ Internal Control Program Procedures,” issued on May 30, 2013, 

requires DOD organizations to implement a comprehensive system of internal controls that provides 

reasonable assurance that programs are operating as intended. It states that the “Guidance on the 

Assessment of Acquisition Functions under Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-123” applies in 

conducting internal control reviews of DOD instructions.20 According to this memorandum, organizations such 

as CSTC-A should be able to answer critical questions about their processes and internal controls, such as:

• What are the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in the agency’s acquisition process?

• Are roles and responsibilities defined clearly and followed throughout the requirements planning 

and development process?

DOD and coalition officials we interviewed could not answer these questions. Specifically, CSTC-A did not have 

an official document designating EF-5’s roles and responsibilities as the lead organization for developing 

Afghan OCIE requirements. DOD and coalition officials said this lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities 

has created problems in identifying accurate requirements. For example, one EF-5 advisor said that while other 

coalition organizations can submit pseudo FMS requests to CSTC-A, neither CSTC-A nor the requesting 

organization are required to discuss requirements with EF-5 when they order OCIE. Because it is unclear 

whether EF-5’s role is limited only to communicating the ANA and ANP’s requirements to CSTC-A, or whether it 

is also responsible for communicating requirements for other ANDSF service branches such as the Special 

Forces and Local Police, there is a risk that EF-5 will either order excess OCIE for an ANDSF element that has 

already been supported by another coalition organization, or not order OCIE for a service that has not 

otherwise been supported. For example, one DOD official said the confusion about who should be ordering 

uniforms became so severe in one case that U.S. Special Forces had to execute an emergency order to provide 

uniforms to its partners in the Afghan Special Forces because no other coalition organization knew there was a 

shortage.

The Management of Security Cooperation Manual, which provides guidance for FMS program officers, states 

that the FMS process normally begins with the customer—in this case, the MOD and MOI—submitting a letter of 

request defining its requirements. According to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s Security Assistance 

Management Manual, under the pseudo FMS process CSTC-A and other coalition organizations can submit the 

letters on behalf of the ministries, but the manual recommends that the Afghan government “provide details of 

their existing capabilities, capacity, and security requirements to enable identification and prioritization of 

[pseudo FMS] requirements.”21 However, DOD officials said the MOD and MOI lack the capacity to submit 

accurate requirements. As a result, EF-5 often has to develop these requirements for the ministries. According 

 19 SIGAR, Quarterly Report to the United States Congress, July 30, 2016.

20 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, “Guidance on the Assessment of 

Acquisition Functions under Office of Management and Budget, Circular No. A-123,” April 6, 2009.

21 Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Security Assistance Management Manual, “Chapter 15: Building Partner Capacity 

Programs,” updated April 30, 2012. 
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 8

to DOD officials, efforts are under way to modify the current pseudo FMS process to allow the two ministries to 

have more input and control over what CSTC-A procures through the FMS process.

DOD officials, including those from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said that before the 

Resolute Support Mission began in 2014, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Training Mission-Afghanistan 

managed OCIE requirements and supplies for the ANDSF. However, upon creation of the Resolute Support 

Mission, this organization was eliminated, and its functions were redistributed to various offices based on 

function. The officials said this left the ANA and ANP without a clear proponent within the coalition.

Furthermore, DOD and coalition officials said CSTC-A and Resolute Support Mission personnel have a basic 

understanding of what OCIE the ANDSF needs but generally do not understand the pseudo FMS process, U.S. 

procurement laws and regulations, and best practices for large-scale OCIE acquisition planning. According to 

DOD officials, CSTC-A does not have a trained logistician on staff with expertise in OCIE acquisitions, which 

increases the risk that EF-5 will order the wrong items at the wrong times.

Without formal, documented roles and responsibilities, CSTC-A risks wasting resources through duplication of 

effort and allowing gaps to develop in OCIE acquisition and inventory levels. Additionally, CSTC-A cannot 

manage the acquisition cycle effectively and maintain institutional knowledge for future coalition personnel. 

CSTC-A HAD LIMITED SUCCESS IN PROVIDING OCIE TO MEET THE ANDSF’S 

NEEDS

Between 2010 and 2014, CSTC-A’s use of multiple approaches to provide OCIE to the ANDSF had limited 

success, often resulting in shortages for some items and surplus inventory in others. In addition, weaknesses 

in each of the three methods CSTC-A used to purchase OCIE led to disruptions in the supply chain. For local 

acquisitions, Afghan vendors had problems fulfilling OCIE contract requirements. However, CSTC-A’s poor 

record keeping prevents it from assessing the overall performance of those vendors. Direct assistance was 

problematic because coalition officials said the Afghan government was not yet ready to handle the increased 

responsibility; as a result, critical shortages in OCIE developed. Additionally, DOD and coalition officials said 

CSTC-A’s use of pseudo FMS is considered a temporary fix, and CSTC-A has fallen into a pattern of executing 

emergency orders for OCIE, in some cases ordering more than the ANDSF needs.

Afghan Vendors Did Not Meet Contract Requirements, but the Full Extent of These 

Problems Is Unknown Due to Poor Record Keeping

Between 2008 and 2012, the U.S. Central Command Joint Theater Support Contracting Command (C-JTSCC)

issued OCIE contracts and task orders to Afghan vendors on CSTC-A’s behalf. DOD officials who formerly 

worked within or in support of CSTC-A during this time said they saw several problems with the quality of the 

goods local vendors provided. Of the 187 contract actions we identified, we reviewed 97 and found evidence of 

poor quality and late deliveries.22 However, because DOD could not give us complete contract files for all of the 

contract actions, we could not determine how extensive these problems were or whether CSTC-A was able to 

successfully equip the ANA and ANP using contracts with local vendors.

Contract Files Were Missing or Incomplete

The full extent of Afghan vendor issues is unknown due to poor record keeping. To evaluate the extent to which 

CSTC-A’s local acquisitions method met the ANA and ANP’s needs, we attempted to identify all OCIE contracts

awarded as part of the local acquisition program. However, we were able to identify only 187 contract actions 

issued since January 1, 2010. Poor record keeping was evident from the beginning of our analysis, as we went 

 

22 For the purposes of this report, we define a “contract action” as a contract, task order, or blanket purchase agreement 

call order that had a monetary amount associated with it.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 9

through multiple steps to develop a list of local acquisition contracts for OCIE. We started by asking CSTC-A for 

all local acquisition contracts for OCIE, and the command produced a list of 69 contract actions. We then 

conducted an independent search of the Electronic Document Access database and found 116 additional 

actions.23 After reviewing the list we developed, the Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, which maintains 

C-JTSCC contract records, found two more, bringing the total number of contract actions to 187.

When we asked for the files for the 187 contract actions, the Closeout Office at Rock Island provided files for 

only 113, or 60 percent, of the actions. When asked about the remaining 74 files, the staff said C-JTSCC might 

not have sent them, some could have been destroyed in Afghanistan, and others could have been lost in 

transit. In several cases, we found memos stating that C-JTSCC stored some documents electronically on its 

local servers in Afghanistan or set them aside with the intent to upload them to global online systems. 

However, Army Contracting Command staff said they did not receive the electronic records from C-JTSCC. 

Of the 113 files we received, we eliminated 16 because they did not involve financial transactions, leaving us 

with a total of 97 contract actions to review. We identified several gaps in documentation among these 97 

remaining files. According to C-JTSCC Standard Operating Procedures 12-01.R1, archived contract files should 

“contain all documentation associated with the award and administration of the contract,” including the signed 

contract, invoices, and receipt forms. However, we found that 60 contract files were missing at least one of 

these three documents. Specifically: 

• 14 files did not have a signed contract,24

• 37 files did not have any invoices, and 

• 46 files did not have any receiving forms. 

Additionally, 81 of the 97 contract files we reviewed referred to supplementary materials, such as 

attachments, that were not included. For example, when we examined the file for one contract with the Afghan 

Vision Group, we found that the contractor received 27 orders for OCIE. However, we found that 23 of these 27 

orders lacked critical information about what CSTC-A was ordering. Of the 23 orders:

• 20 did not document the item purchased, 

• 23 did not document the quantities purchased, and 

• 23 referred the reader to an attachment with more detailed order information, but only 3 had a copy 

of the attachment. 

Without this information, it is impossible to determine from the contract file what CSTC-A ordered and received.

CSTC-A and C-JTSCC also did not fully document their quality control and oversight processes for these contract 

actions. According to Federal Acquisition Regulation 46.104, a contract file should contain records reflecting 

(1) the nature of contract quality assurance actions, including, when appropriate, the number of observations 

made and the number and type of defects, and (2) decisions regarding the acceptability of the products and 

actions taken to correct defects. We found that although 22 of the 97 contract files required vendors to 

provide samples for testing, only 1 had evidence showing that these tests took place. In a “Termination Show 

Cause” memorandum, C-JTSCC wrote that the contractor “failed to provide a sample from a local 

manufacturing facility owned and operated . . . in Afghanistan” as required by the contract, yet C-JTSCC issued 

two additional task orders under this contract that it later had to cancel because of problems with the 

contractor’s performance. 

 

23 The Electronic Document Access database is a web-based storage system maintained by the Defense Logistics Agency.

24 The 14 files missing a signed contract are: W91B4M-08-D-0039-0003, W91B4M-09-D-0042-0004, W91B4M-10-A0027-0017, W91B4M-10-A-0027-0018, W91B4M-10-A-0027-0023, W91B4M-10-A-0027-0029, W91B4M-10-A-0027-

0030, W91B4M-10-A-0027-0031, W91B4M-10-A-0033-0002, W91B4M-10-D-0002, W56KJD-12-D-0006-0002, W91B4M10-D-0009-0001, W91B4M-10-D-0013-0003, and W91B4M-12-C-0005.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 10

Some Local Vendors Did Not Deliver Well-Made Items on Time 

We found instances in which CSTC-A and C-JTSCC encountered problems getting well-made items on time. Nine 

of the 97 contract files we reviewed were terminated for convenience or cancelled. In two of the nine, we found 

C-JTSCC documentation stating the “contractor had performance issues throughout the span of the contract, 

and stopped performing.” In a third case, the termination officer wrote that the contractor did not deliver items 

in conformance with the contract specifications and delivered fewer items than ordered. 

Apart from the cancelled contracts, we found in the “Correspondence” folder at the back of one contract file emails between contracting officers discussing an issue with the quality of a vendor’s boots. According to 

documentation provided to us separately by a former CSTC-A official, CSTC-A cancelled the order, conducted a 

30-day wear test, and intervened directly to improve the vendor’s manufacturing operations, as shown in 

photos 1 and 2. However, none of these corrective actions was documented in the contract file as required by 

Federal Acquisition Regulation 46.104. 

Photo 1 - Defective Boots Supplied by an 

Afghan Vendor

Photo 2 - CSTC-A Officials Inspect the Afghan 

Vendor’s Factory in Spring 2010

Source: Former CSTC-A official Source: Former CSTC-A official

We also found that for at least seven contract actions, the vendors did not deliver items on schedule. In three 

of these, C-JTSCC amended the contract actions to extend the delivery date or reduce the number of items 

ordered because of the delay. 

The Afghan Government’s Inability to Handle Direct Assistance Led to Critical 

Uniform Shortages

CSTC-A began providing direct assistance to the MOD and MOI to purchase OCIE in 2012 with the goal of 

shifting full responsibility for acquiring OCIE to the ministries by 2014. However, critical shortages of uniform 

shirts, uniform pants, cold-weather coats, and other clothing occurred within less than a year of the shift to 

direct assistance resulting in CSTC-A reverting to using pseudo FMS to acquire OCIE. One coalition official said 

that in anticipation of the transition to the Resolute Support Mission in 2014, the coalition transferred many

systems and responsibilities to the MOD and MOI—such as AFMIS, Core-IMS, and acquisitions of commodities 

like OCIE—before the Afghans were ready to handle them. 

As noted in a September 2013 memorandum, CSTC-A judged direct assistance for OCIE a success. However,

other evidence indicated that problems had already surfaced. For example, a December 5, 2012,

memorandum written by the Special Operations Joint Task Force for Afghanistan and sent to CSTC-A, stated 

that the MOI did not place orders for critically needed Afghan Local Police field jackets even though coalition 

advisors highlighted the shortages to them. According to coalition officials, the Afghan government tended to 

favor the cheapest contracts, even when they resulted in items that did not meet minimum quality standards. 
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 11

Furthermore, Afghan vendors associated with CSTC-A’s local acquisitions method complained that once 

funding switched to direct assistance, Afghan government officials dropped them in favor of cheaper suppliers 

that provided poorer quality goods from China and Pakistan. 

In 2013, the Afghan government cancelled OCIE contracts because the contracts were not awarded in 

compliance with section 826 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2013, which required that textile 

components supplied by DOD to the ANDSF for the purpose of production of uniforms be produced in the 

United States.25 In April and July 2013, CSTC-A sent the Afghan government several memos raising concerns 

that the MOI had spent $12,659,970 and MOD $27,933,223 on uniform purchases that did not comply with 

section 826 and informed the ministries that they would not be reimbursed for these purchases. The ministries 

asked CSTC-A for a waiver for contracts that had been competed in the fall of 2012, before section 826 went 

into effect. They argued that re-competing the contracts would take too much time, given the time-sensitive 

nature of the procurements. CSTC-A officials told us that in order to comply with section 826 they were 

required to deny the ministries’ requests for waivers because the contracts were awarded after January 2013. 

In response, the ministries cancelled the contracts.

According to coalition advisors, the ministries’ mass cancellation of OCIE contracts compounded ongoing 

clothing shortages. As of summer 2013, the gap between the ANDSF’s estimated need and existing inventories 

was potentially substantial, given the known problems with Afghan requirement setting and inventory 

management. According to an EF-5 document analyzing the extent to which CSTC-A’s assistance had met the 

ANP’s projected OCIE needs, at that point the police “had gone without proper uniforms for two years” and 

were “approaching [their] third winter without proper uniforms.”26 At that time, the ANP had only 21,951 

uniform shirts and pants in stock instead of its estimated annual need of 137,766, and 26,207 cold-weather 

coats instead of its estimated annual need of 88,331.

We analyzed reports compiled by DOD from the Security Cooperation Information Portal—an online DOD 

platform for coordinating pseudo FMS case information across U.S. military departments and with their 

international customers—and found that of the 121,766 field jackets, 278,069 shirts, and 341,832 trousers 

requisitioned in 2013, none was scheduled for delivery until after May 2014. E-mail traffic between the 

Defense Logistics Agency and CSTC-A indicates that the first field jackets arrived in Afghanistan in mid-January 

2014, but only 5,500 had been shipped as of March 2014 and were in the inventory pipeline. According to the

EF-5 official responsible for managing OCIE during this timeframe, most of the 121,766 field jackets did not 

arrive until after April 2014, and CSTC-A continued to receive shipments of these items through the summer, 

when the ANDSF least needed them. 

CTSC-A’s Return to the Pseudo FMS Method Further Disrupted the OCIE Supply 

Chain

Beginning in June 2013, CSTC-A shifted from direct assistance back to procuring all OCIE directly from U.S. 

providers through pseudo FMS. However, CSTC-A was caught unprepared because its local acquisition office 

had been dissolved following the shift to direct assistance. Without the local acquisition office’s institutional 

knowledge, coalition officials wasted several months searching through old records in order to recreate the 

ANDSF’s uniform specifications. As a result, the OCIE shortages that began during the phase of direct

assistance continued or got worse. Additional problems occurred because CSTC-A’s attempts to address the 

shortages led to over-ordering and inventory surpluses.

For example, we found that winter clothes were in very short supply. In September 2015, we sent an alert letter 

to DOD notifying officials there that they had not shipped any winter clothes for the ANA in the past 2 years.27

 

25 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, Pub. L. 112-239, § 826, 126 Stat. 1632, 1833. 

26 Resolute Support Mission EF-5, Pseudo FMS Timeline and Rationale, May 2015.

27 SIGAR, ANDSF Cold Weather Gear, 15-86-AL.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 12

For the ANP, we found that although CSTC-A had ordered some winter items, such as wool sweaters and 

underwear, it did not order enough to meet annual replenishment requirements. CSTC-A ordered only 14,234 

wool sweaters for 2015 and 2016, far fewer than the 410,328 they said would be needed to provide one to 

each newly recruited ANP police officer and replace sweaters for current officers. Similarly, according to 

coalition estimates, as of July 2015, CSTC-A had ordered only 29,700 undershirts for the ANP instead of the 

410,328 CSTC-A said they needed, and delivered none. In response to our alert letter, DOD recognized the 

shortages of cold-weather clothing and said it would begin delivering winter clothing in late 2015. DOD later 

told us these items had been ordered and began arriving in December 2015.

According to EF-5’s forecasting models, many OCIE items need to be replaced every 1 to 2 years. However, 

rather than delivering annual replenishment rates in anticipation of requirements based on these forecasting 

models, CTSC-A has been reacting to emergency shortages for many of these items. For example, 34,500 

helmets for the ANP were due to arrive in 2016, which is more than 10 times what EF-5’s forecasting models 

indicate the ANP needs annually, and, as discussed earlier in this report, these forecasting models may be 

overestimating needs. Similarly, 252,172 ANA cold-weather coats are set to be delivered in 2017, which is 

more than enough to provide one to each of the 171,428 troops reported to be in the ANA. The remaining 

80,744 jackets would create a 47 percent surplus inventory. However, none of these items will be delivered in 

time to mitigate the shortages experienced in the winter of 2015-2016. Figure 2 contrasts delivery data for 

cold-weather coats with EF-5’s annual replenishment requirements.

Figure 2 - Pseudo FMS Deliveries for ANA and ANP Coats Compared with Annual Replenishment 

Requirements 

Source: SIGAR analysis of shipment data in the Security Cooperation Information Portal, April 2016

Note: Figures for 2016, 2017, and 2018 are projections based on due out dates logged in the Security Cooperation 

Information Portal.

Additionally, officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy expressed concern that CSTCA is not taking advantage of excess defense articles as much as it could be. According to the Office for the 

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, between 2010 and 2011, CSTC-A saved more than $45 million by 

repurposing U.S. Army surplus uniforms. However, since 2011, CSTC-A has not used excess defense articles 

any further. Officials suggested that CSTC-A could be saving more money by looking for additional opportunities 

to use excess defense articles. 

Coalition advisors and DOD officials offered three potential reasons why CSTC-A has ordered too few items in 

some cases, ordered too many items in others, and underused excess defense articles. First, the Afghan 

government’s unreliable personnel, inventory, and consumption reporting makes it difficult for coalition 

advisors to forecast how much OCIE the ANA and ANP needs in any given year. Second, no one organization is 

a proponent for the ANA and ANP, and the coalition lacks trained logisticians with experience in OCIE

acquisitions. Because coalition officials are not familiar with FMS timelines and costs, they are not aware of 

time- and cost-saving options available to them, such as using excess defense articles. Furthermore, OCIE

frequently goes unordered until the Afghan government reports acute shortages. In those cases, because FMS 
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 13

can take more than a year from order to delivery, waiting until the last minute to order items often exacerbates 

these shortages. Third, although CSTC-A officials are responsible for tracking incoming shipments and receipts 

of OCIE, no one conducts routine analyses of the data to look for potential surpluses or shortfalls. Without 

conducting such analyses, CSTC-A is missing an opportunity to adjust its shipment schedules so that OCIE both 

meets the Afghan government’s needs and arrives at a pace it can handle.

Shortages and surpluses caused by disruptions in the OCIE inventory pipeline present different problems for 

the ANDSF. On one hand, a shortage of critical OCIE—such as uniforms, boots, helmets, and cold-weather 

coats—could hurt the overall effectiveness of the ANDSF. On the other hand, if CSTC-A orders more OCIE than 

the ANDSF wants or needs, it could put stress on logistics networks, exacerbate data reliability problems with 

Core-IMS, and ultimately lead to funds going to waste. CSTC-A may be wasting additional funds by continuing to 

provide OCIE exclusively through orders of newly manufactured items rather than repurposing excess defense 

articles. 

CSTC-A COULD NOT FULLY ACCOUNT FOR OCIE AND DIRECT ASSISTANCE

PROVIDED TO THE ANDSF

Section 1225 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010 required DOD to establish a program for 

maintaining a detailed record of the origin, shipping, and distribution of all defense articles transferred to the 

Afghan government.28 CSTC-A has further defined these requirements with standard operation procedures 

covering areas such as receipts, title transfers, and end-use monitoring. 

For pseudo FMS acquisitions, CSTC-A officials told us that a contractor, the Afghan Union Transportation and 

Logistics Company, is expected to inventory all incoming shipments; document their arrival in Core-IMS, the 

ANDSF’s inventory management system; and sign title transfer forms on CSTC-A’s behalf. The contractor is 

then expected to scan the forms and send them electronically to CSTC-A. Finally, CSTC-A is to verify in the 

Security Cooperation Information Portal that the ANDSF has received the items. 

We found that CSTC-A has not consistently used the Security Cooperation Information Portal to document 

receipts and title transfers of OCIE shipped through the pseudo FMS system. We reviewed a judgmental 

sample of 7,798 OCIE shipments between April 2015 and October 2016, which contained 5,047,824 discrete 

OCIE items. We found that CSTC-A confirmed title transfer in the portal for only 1,680,486 of those items, or 

about 33 percent In one case, 78,427 watch caps were shipped during this period, but CSTC-A did not confirm 

receipt or title transfer for any of them. In another case, 78,427 neck scarves shipped during this period, but

CSTC-A confirmed receipt and title transfer for only 3,900, or 5 percent.

In addition to reporting receipt and transfers in the Security Cooperation Information Portal, CSTC-A is also 

required to fill out and sign DOD Form 250 to verify receipt and MOD/MOI Form 9 to document title transfer. To 

test whether CSTC-A had signed and maintained these records, we drew a random sample of 65 OCIE

shipments from a population of 1,630 shipments documented in the portal that were provided between 2012 

and 2015.29 We then asked CSTC-A whether it could provide any internal documentation for these 65 

shipments showing that they were received and transferred to the Afghan government. CSTC-A was able to 

provide paper records documenting the receipt and transfer of 41 shipments, or 63 percent. 

Coalition officials attributed their inability to provide this required documentation to poor organization and 

delays in converting paper records to electronic records, stating that they may have physical copies of the 

forms but cannot find them. They said CSTC-A is working to correct this shortcoming by piloting a feature 

whereby items that are logged into Core-IMS will be automatically logged into the Security Cooperation 

Information Portal as well. CSTC-A sent us a spreadsheet that they said showed a successful transfer of receipt 

 

28 Pub. L. No. 111-84, § 1225.

29 We drew this probability sample from 1,630 shipments recorded in the Security Cooperation Information Portal as of 

March 2016. Our sample size is based on a 90 percent confidence level and 10 percent margin of error.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 14

data between Core-IMS and the Security Cooperation Information Portal for the month of October 2016. We 

could not verify how comprehensive this data transfer was because we did not have access to the underlying 

data. Although this solution could be an improvement over the current system, without readily accessible 

documentation for historical data, CSTC-A would still not be able to demonstrate that it received all the items 

purchased and shipped over the past several years, or confirm that they were transferred to the Afghan 

government. 

For direct assistance, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy issued guidance in February 2011 requiring 

CSTC-A to provide oversight of contracts awarded by the MOD and MOI to ensure that U.S. funds contributed to 

the ANDSF’s ability to conduct independent security operations. In compliance with this guidance, CSTC-A 

established conditions in nonbinding commitment letters—which it signed with the MOD, MOI, and the Ministry

of Finance—requiring the ministries to use AFMIS, the Afghan financial management system, for all contracts. 

According to the letters, “Any contract awarded and payment made outside of [AFMIS] WILL NOT be funded.”

EF-1 officials said they used both receipt forms logged in AFMIS and inventory reports from Core-IMS to track 

the items the Afghan government purchased. However, they said the Afghan government has not abided by the 

requirement to use AFMIS consistently, and the coalition has not enforced those requirements. We asked 

coalition officials why, and they said CSTC-A’s mission to fully equip the ANA and ANP generally supersedes its 

mission to improve the Afghan government’s financial reporting practices. We did not conduct a similar review 

of receipt records for OCIE purchased using direct assistance because EF-1 officials told us the MOD and MOI 

have not used the management information system consistently. As a result, the officials could not provide us 

with forms documenting receipt of items.

Because CSTC-A has not enforced the commitment letters, EF-1 cannot rely on AFMIS and Core-IMS to 

determine who the Afghan government contracted with or what it bought in 2013, the last year CSTC-A 

authorized direct assistance for OCIE. As a result, EF-1 cannot be certain that the U.S. funds given to the 

Afghan government for OCIE at that time actually were used to purchase the authorized items. Furthermore, 

CSTC-A’s, the MOD’s, and MOI’s inefficient use of management information systems reduces accountability for 

inventory and adversely affects the development of a sustainable logistics system for OCIE. 

CONCLUSION

CSTC-A’s efforts to provide the ANDSF with the necessary OCIE to accomplish its mission have experienced 

difficulties. All three of CSTC-A’s acquisition methods—local acquisition, direct assistance, and pseudo FMS—

have resulted in disruptions to the OCIE supply chain. These disruptions have led to critical shortages of OCIE, 

including winter clothes, and could adversely affect the ANDSF’s ability to conduct operations. These 

disruptions are likely to continue until CSTC-A addresses three weaknesses in its management of the OCIE 

supply chain. 

First, CSTC-A relies on questionable assumptions in its forecasting models for OCIE requirements. For example, 

it assumes that the ANA and ANP have no OCIE in their warehouses when there is evidence that these 

warehouses contain OCIE stockpiles that are not reflected in official inventory records, and assumes that the 

ANA and ANP are at full capacity when in reality their personnel numbers are a fraction of what has been 

authorized. These assumptions increase the risk that CSTC-A is overcompensating for current shortages by 

creating future surpluses in OCIE inventories. Several opportunities exist for CSTC-A to refine OCIE assumptions 

without significantly increasing the risk of shortages.

Second, CSTC-A has not clearly defined roles and responsibilities for determining OCIE requirements, ordering 

supplies, and tracking the status of those orders. Because there is confusion about which coalition 

organizations are responsible for ordering OCIE for the various ANDSF service branches, and since no one unit 

is a consistent advocate for the ANA or ANP in particular, OCIE often goes unordered until critical shortages 

develop. Furthermore, because coalition officials are not familiar with FMS timelines and costs, they are not 

aware of time- and cost-saving options available to them, such as using excess defense articles.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 15

Finally, CSTC-A’s poor record-keeping prevents it from fully accounting for OCIE purchased for and by the 

ANDSF. The coalition’s local acquisition contract records are so incomplete that we could not determine what 

kinds of and how much OCIE CSTC-A ordered, much less what it received. CSTC-A has also not maintained 

complete records of pseudo FMS shipment receipts and title transfers, making it difficult to assess how much 

OCIE was successfully delivered through FMS. Furthermore, CSTC-A has not enforced its commitment letters 

requiring the MOD and MOI to provide the command with financial transaction data. As a result, we cannot be 

certain that the money given to the Afghan government for OCIE actually was used to purchase the authorized 

items. Without a current and accurate record of what was provided to the Afghan government in the past, 

CSTC-A greatly increases the risk that it will under-order some OCIE items and over-order others in the future. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

To ensure that an adequate, appropriate amount of clothing and equipment is purchased for the ANDSF so it 

can operate effectively, SIGAR recommends that the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy direct the

Commander of U.S. Central Command to direct the Commander of CSTC-A to:

1. Develop and implement corrective action plans within 90 days to improve clothing and equipment 

requirements forecasting models to better reflect ANA and ANP personnel, inventories, and 

consumption rates. 

2. Document and implement guidance clarifying the roles and responsibilities for the coalition and 

Afghan government organizations involved in the clothing and equipment supply process, and 

clarifying the individual training required for identifying, assessing, reviewing, and validating 

requirements for acquiring clothing and equipment. 

3. Assess projected delivery dates for all active pseudo FMS orders and orders from other sources of 

clothing and equipment and adjust these orders when necessary to avoid under- or oversupplying 

items. 

4. Complete, as soon as possible, the transition of archived receipt and title transfer records from paper 

to electronic, consistently document these records electronically in the future, and develop a system 

to automatically update the Security Cooperation Information Portal verifying when FMS orders have 

been received in Afghanistan. 

5. Develop and implement enforcement mechanisms so that CSTC-A holds the MOD and MOI 

accountable for keeping personnel and inventory databases up to date under pseudo FMS, or direct 

assistance, if the coalition returns to this acquisition approach. 
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 16

AGENCY COMMENTS

We provided a draft of this report to DOD for comment. DOD, through the Office of Under Secretary of Defense 

for Policy, provided written comments, which are reproduced in appendix II. Additionally, DOD provided 

technical comments, which we have incorporated into this report, as appropriate. 

In its comments, DOD concurred with all five recommendations, stated that our audit identified necessary 

improvements to the OCIE acquisition and management process, and described actions it is taking to 

implement these improvements. DOD also acknowledged that some over- and under-ordering of clothing 

occurred due to unreliable inventory and personnel data. 

For recommendation 1, DOD stated that CSTC-A is working to improve the accuracy of the Afghan 

government’s inventory and personnel data by making improvements to systems such as Core-IMS and would 

provide an updated forecasting model within 90 days.

Regarding recommendation 2, DOD stated that within 90 days, it would provide SIGAR a document clarifying 

organizational roles, responsibilities, and training requirements for ordering OCIE. Furthermore, DOD stated 

that the department plans to bring in OCIE experts to help develop an OCIE “road map” to address the 

problems we identified.

In response to recommendation 3, DOD plans to assess existing orders of OCIE and will hold excess clothing to 

avoid overwhelming the ANA’s and ANP’s logistical networks. DOD noted that CSTC-A is working to improve the 

accuracy of the Afghan government’s inventory data so that under- and oversupplying OCIE will happen less

often in the future. 

For recommendation 4, DOD plans to provide SIGAR with updates every 60 days on its progress toward 

converting paper receipt and title records into electronic form until fully implemented.

With respect to recommendation 5, DOD stated that CSTC-A implemented several efforts to improve its 

accountability over the Afghan government’s personnel and inventory databases, and CSTC-A routinely 

provides updates on these efforts in response to SIGAR requests for information in support of SIGAR’s

Quarterly Report to Congress. 

We are encouraged by DOD’s initial actions to improve its OCIE acquisition and management process and will 

continue to monitor the department’s progress through our recommendation follow-up process.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 17

APPENDIX I - SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY

This report examines U.S. efforts to equip and sustain the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ 

(ANDSF) organizational clothing and individual equipment (OCIE) between 2010 and 2015.30 Our objectives 

were to assess the extent to which the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) (1) 

developed and validated OCIE requirements for the ANDSF; (2) provided OCIE in accordance with ANDSF 

needs; and (3) provided oversight and accountability for OCIE and funds transferred to the Afghan government.

To assess the extent to which CSTC-A developed and validated OCIE requirements for the ANDSF, we reviewed 

CSTC-A standard operating procedures and the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Security Assistance 

Management Manual. We interviewed former and current officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of 

Defense for Policy; the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command; CSTC-A; and Essential Functions (EF) 1, 2, and 

5 for information about how CSTC-A developed and validated requirements before 2015.31 We reviewed past 

audit and DOD reports on requirements processes, Afghan logistics systems, and personnel data. We analyzed 

the requirements calculator that CSTC-A developed in 2015 to determine the reliability of the data used, and 

we checked the assumptions for personnel numbers, OCIE inventory, and usage rates to determine the 

accuracy of these assumptions. 

To assess the extent to which CSTC-A provided OCIE in accordance with ANDSF needs, we conducted analyses 

of CSTC-A’s OCIE purchases under each of three methods: (1) local acquisitions, (2) direct assistance, and (3) 

pseudo Foreign Military Sales (FMS). We interviewed former and current officials in the Office of the Under

Secretary of Defense for Policy, CSTC-A, the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command, Army Contracting 

Command-Rock Island, and EFs 1, 2, and 5 about the extent to which CSTC-A met the Afghan government’s 

OCIE needs between 2010 and 2015. For local acquisitions, we identified 187 contract actions for OCIE and 

asked the U.S. Central Command Joint Security Transition Contracting Command (C-JSTCC) to provide complete 

files for these contract actions. We went to Army Contracting Command-Rock Island in November 2015 and 

April 2016 to review these contracts for information about OCIE orders and deliveries. For direct assistance, we 

reviewed CSTC-A memorandums, correspondence, and analysis. For pseudo FMS, we totaled the amount of

OCIE marked as delivered or scheduled for delivery in the Security Cooperation Information Portal and 

compared these totals to the annual replenishment needs that EF-5 calculated.

To assess the extent to which CSTC-A provided oversight and accountability for OCIE and funds transferred to 

the Afghan government, we reviewed records from the Security Cooperation Information Portal, CSTC-A’s 

internal audits of Afghan OCIE contracts, and U.S.-Afghan bilateral commitment letters for U.S. direct 

assistance to the Afghan government for OCIE. We reviewed CSTC-A’s (1) documentation in the Security 

Cooperation Information Portal using a judgmental sample of 7,798 shipments shipped between April 2015 

and October 2016; (2) retention of inspection and title transfer forms for OCIE shipments using a random 

sample of 65 shipments from a population of 1,630 shipments shipped between 2012 and 2015; and (3) 

retention of files of contracts for local acquisition from 2010 to 2013. We interviewed former and current 

officials in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, CSTC-A, the U.S. Army Security Assistance 

Command, and EFs 1, 2, and 5 about how they provided oversight for OCIE and direct funds provided to the 

Afghan government between 2010 and 2015. To assess CSTC-A’s oversight of OCIE provided through pseudo 

FMS, we randomly selected 65 shipments of OCIE from a population of 1,630 between fiscal year (FY) 2012 

and FY 2015 to determine how many items were procured and shipped from the United States and 

 

30 We reviewed the OCIE procurement and inventory process from 2010 through 2015 because in 2009, the DOD Office of 

Inspector General completed two larger reviews of ANDSF equipment that included assessments of OCIE. See DOD Office 

of Inspector General, Report on the Assessment of U.S. and Coalition Plans to Train, Equip, and Field the Afghan National 

Security Forces, SPO-2009-07, September 30, 2009; and Afghanistan Security Forces Fund Phase III - Accountability for 

Equipment Purchased for the Afghanistan National Army, D-2009-099, August 12, 2009.

31 These three EFs are: EF-1 – Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution; EF-2 – Transparency, Accountability, and 

Oversight; and EF-5 – Force Sustainment.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 18

documented as received in Afghanistan.32 We then asked CSTC-A to provide confirmation of receipt and title 

transfer for all 65 shipments. To assess CSTC-A’s oversight of direct assistance, we asked for copies of all 

Afghan-awarded OCIE contracts and receipt forms for FY 2013. 

We relied on computer processed data from DOD to identify pseudo FMS cases of OCIE purchased for and 

shipped to Afghanistan from FY 2010 through FY 2015. Because SIGAR has previously identified data 

reliability problems with the Security Cooperation Information Portal, we took steps to verify this data by 

comparing it to documentary records.33 The results of our analysis are included in our findings. We also 

reviewed data from Afghan databases including the Core Inventory Management System. However, we did not 

use the data to make statistical projections and determined that they were not significant to our findings. We 

assessed internal controls to determine the extent to which CSTC-A had systems in place to track and report on 

its efforts supporting the supplying and oversight of the OCIE provided. The results of our assessment are 

included in the body of the report.

We conducted our audit work in Kabul, Afghanistan; Rock Island, Illinois; and Washington, D.C., from April 

2015 to April 2017, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards 

require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable 

basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. This audit was 

performed by SIGAR under the authority of Public Law No. 110-181, as amended, and the Inspector General 

Act of 1978, as amended. 

 

32 As of February 3, 2016, there were 4,167 OCIE shipments between FY 2012 and FY 2015. Only 1,630 had been shipped 

or were scheduled to be shipped.

33 See SIGAR, Afghan National Security Forces: Actions Needed to Improve Weapons Accountability, SIGAR 14-84-AR, July 

18, 2014.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 19

APPENDIX II - COMMENTS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 20
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 21
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 22

SIGAR Comment: 

DOD combines 

recommendations 4 

and 5 in its 

response.
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 23

APPENDIX III - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Jeffrey Brown, Senior Audit Manager

Zachary Rosenfeld, Analyst-in-Charge

Kyu Sin, Senior Auditor

Lisa Williams, Senior Auditor
SIGAR 17-40-AR/ANDSF Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment Page 24

This performance audit was conducted 

under project code SIGAR-106A.
Obtaining Copies of SIGAR 

Reports and Testimonies

To Report Fraud, Waste, and 

Abuse in Afghanistan 

Reconstruction Programs

Public Affairs

SIGAR’s Mission

The mission of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan 

Reconstruction (SIGAR) is to enhance oversight of programs for the 

reconstruction of Afghanistan by conducting independent and 

objective audits, inspections, and investigations on the use of 

taxpayer dollars and related funds. SIGAR works to provide accurate 

and balanced information, evaluations, analysis, and 

recommendations to help the U.S. Congress, U.S. agencies, and 

other decision-makers to make informed oversight, policy, and 

funding decisions to: 

• improve effectiveness of the overall reconstruction 

strategy and its component programs; 

• improve management and accountability over funds 

administered by U.S. and Afghan agencies and their 

contractors; 

• improve contracting and contract management 

processes; 

• prevent fraud, waste, and abuse; and 

• advance U.S. interests in reconstructing Afghanistan. 

To obtain copies of SIGAR documents at no cost, go to SIGAR’s Web 

site (www.sigar.mil). SIGAR posts all publicly released reports, 

testimonies, and correspondence on its Web site. 

To help prevent fraud, waste, and abuse by reporting allegations of 

fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and reprisal, contact SIGAR’s 

hotline:

• Web: www.sigar.mil/fraud 

• Email: sigar.pentagon.inv.mbx.hotline@mail.mil 

• Phone Afghanistan: +93 (0) 700-10-7300 

• Phone DSN Afghanistan: 318-237-3912 ext. 7303 

• Phone International: +1-866-329-8893 

• Phone DSN International: 312-664-0378 

• U.S. fax: +1-703-601-4065 

Public Affairs Officer

• Phone: 703-545-5974

• Email: sigar.pentagon.ccr.mbx.public-affairs@mail.mil

• Mail: SIGAR Public Affairs

2530 Crystal Drive

Arlington, VA 22202