The first question concerns amounts appropriated by Congress and expended by DoD on repair and spare parts during Fiscal Years 1995-1999. For Fiscal Years 1995 to 1999 DLA obligated more than 99 percent of the budget authority received in the President's Budgets to purchase spare and repair parts. This has allowed DLA to reduce the amount of backorders on these items by more than fourteen percent during that same time period. The second question concerns causes for continued parts shortages. Because of unpredicted failure of weapon systems and unexpected changes to operating tempo, Service demand does not always occur as predicted by our models.
Unforecasted demands result in short term parts shortages and backorders.
Given the range and age of DoD's many weapons and equipment, it is difficult to forecast perfectly the parts that will be required, some of which take a long time to place the contracts and manufacture. Many of the spare and repair parts that DLA manages are not used in commercial industry, but are instead unique to the Military Services. Through our benchmarking efforts, we have found that the commercial airline industry experiences similar difficulties in this area. The third question concerns what is being or can be done about parts shortages. Many efforts are underway to improve the state of spare parts supply availability.