The Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics has been designated DOD’s Corrosion Executive. The Corrosion Executive is supported by staff assigned to the Corrosion Office. The Corrosion Office was initially established in 2003 as an independent activity within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, reporting directly to the Corrosion Executive. In 2004, the Corrosion Office was formally assigned to the Defense Systems Directorate. The direct chain of command went through the Defense Systems Directorate, which provided management and administrative support. Following a reorganization of the Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics organization in 2006, the Corrosion Office was moved to the Systems and Software Engineering Directorate. The Corrosion Office no longer reports directly to the Corrosion Executive. Appendix III depicts DOD’s organizational structure to address corrosion. The Corrosion Office is led by the Special Assistant for Corrosion Policy and Oversight and works closely with the Corrosion Prevention and Control Integrated Product Team, which has representatives from the military services and other DOD organizations to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Corrosion Office. Several working teams have also been established to conduct work in the seven areas making up the corrosion strategy: policy and requirements; impact, metrics, and sustainment; science and technology; communications and outreach; facilities; training and doctrine; and specifications, standards, and product qualification. The Defense Acquisition Guidebook contains guidance regarding the defense acquisition system, which exists to manage the nation’s investments in technologies, programs, and product support necessary to achieve the National Security Strategy and support the United States Armed Forces. This guidebook contains specific guidance regarding acquisition strategies, which define the approach a program manager will use to achieve program goals. Among other things, an effective strategy minimizes the time and cost required to satisfy approved capability needs. DOD’s directive on the defense acquisition process states that program managers shall consider corrosion prevention and mitigation when making trade-off decisions that involve cost, useful service, and effectiveness. Moreover, on November 12, 2003, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics issued a policy memorandum stating that corrosion prevention should be specifically addressed at the earliest phases of the acquisition process by decision authorities at every level. DOD has had long-standing problems in funding, identification of impacts, and development of metrics, and these are continuing. DOD’s implementation of its long-term corrosion strategy, as required under 10 U.S.C. § 2228(c), has been hindered by weaknesses in these three critical areas. First, the Corrosion Office does not review the services’ corrosion programs or annual budget requests, even though this is required by 10 U.S.C. § 2228(b)(3). Second, the Corrosion Office has made only minimal progress in identifying corrosion impacts. Third, the Corrosion Office has not developed results-oriented metrics, even though we have previously recommended that it do so. Although 10 U.S.C. § 2228(b)(3) requires the Corrosion Office within OSD to review the annual funding requests for the prevention and mitigation of corrosion for each military service, the Corrosion Office has not done so. The Corrosion Office does not review comprehensive corrosion data from the services on their programs and funding requests because (1) DOD has not required the services to provide budget information to the Corrosion Office and (2) the services lack an effective mechanism for coordinating with the Corrosion Office with respect to their corrosion funding requests. None of the four services has a designated official or office to oversee and coordinate corrosion activities, including identifying annual servicewide funding requirements. Without a requirement or mechanism for reporting service funding information, the Corrosion Office officials said they are unable to review the services’ complete corrosion-related funding information, and thus DOD is hampered in its ability to provide oversight of the services’ funding requests. The Corrosion Office currently has oversight over only a small portion of departmentwide corrosion spending that is provided through a separate appropriations account. The Corrosion Office reviews and selects for funding the projects that are proposed by the services based on a combination of criteria, including: whether a project would benefit more than one service, whether it is projected to be completed within 2 years of its initial funding, the availability of matching funds; and the return on investment that it offers. For fiscal year 2006, DOD and the military services funded about $24 million for corrosion strategy efforts. Of this amount, $19 million was spent on 29 corrosion-related projects and about $5 million on contractor support, training, outreach, and other administrative activities. The DOD Corrosion Office projects a combined average return on investment of 42.5 to 1 for the $19 million, or a projected savings of $809 million over the life of the projects. The services frequently bypass the Corrosion Office to obtain their funding for corrosion-related efforts. We reviewed the President’s budget justification for fiscal year 2006 and identified more than $97 million for service-specific corrosion mitigation-related projects in addition to those reviewed by the Corrosion Office. These projects had not been submitted to the Corrosion Office for review, and Corrosion Office officials told us that they lacked any information about the $97 million and the status of the associated efforts. Because corrosion-related projects may be included under other maintenance projects or budget accounts, it is likely that there is more funding that we have not identified. According to recent corrosion cost studies conducted by DOD, the annual corrosion costs for Army ground vehicles and Navy ships alone were identified to be $2.019 billion and $2.438 billion, respectively. Without comprehensive reviews of the services’ corrosion-related programs and proposed funding requests, the Corrosion Office cannot fulfill its oversight and coordination role for the department. None of the four services has a designated official or office to oversee and coordinate corrosion activities, despite a recommendation by the Defense Science Board that they do so. Currently, multiple offices in the services are responsible for corrosion programs and related budgets. For example, several Air Force offices are responsible for corrosion-related matters: maintenance issues belong to the Air Force Corrosion Prevention and Control Office, corrosion policy for weapon systems is managed by an office within the Air Force Maintenance Directorate, and corrosion policy for infrastructure is handled by the Air Force Civil Engineering Directorate. None of these offices has comprehensive knowledge about corrosion activities throughout the Air Force. Without a designated official or office for corrosion, the services do not have the mechanism or capability to fully identify their annual servicewide corrosion funding requirements. DOD has acknowledged since 2002 that the identification of cost, readiness, and safety impacts is critical to the implementation of its corrosion strategy. We recommended in 2003 that DOD complete a study to identify these impacts, and further recommended in 2004 that DOD accelerate its efforts in order to complete the baseline prior to its original estimated date of 2011. According to DOD, the purpose of the study is to document where corrosion problems exist, identify their causes, and prioritize them for funding according to their relative severity in terms of their impact on DOD costs, readiness, and safety. In August 2004, after developing a cost-estimating methodology, a DOD contractor began a study to determine the total cost of corrosion for military equipment and facilities across the services. DOD currently plans to complete this cost study by 2009, 2 years earlier than originally planned. The study uses fiscal year 2004 costs as a measurement baseline and consists of several segments, to be completed sequentially. To date, it has made some progress in identifying corrosion cost impacts. For example, in April 2006, DOD completed the Army ground vehicle and Navy ship corrosion segments of this study. Several segments remain to be completed, including Army and Marine Corps aviation. Corrosion Office officials told us that progress has been slower than expected, primarily because of a lack of corrosion data. Table 1 shows the corrosion cost segments included in the study and their planned completion dates. The two completed studies generated data that could be potentially useful for developing initiatives aimed at reducing long-term corrosion costs, but DOD lacks an action plan for using these data. For example, the studies estimate the annual corrosion costs for Army ground vehicles and Navy ships at $2.019 billion and $2.438 billion, respectively. Costs are segregated in multiple ways, such as costs incurred at the depot, organizational, and intermediate maintenance levels; costs incurred while addressing a corrosion problem (corrective); costs incurred while addressing a potential problem (preventive); and direct costs incurred on end items or removable parts. However, the Corrosion Office has not developed an action plan on how it will use these data, or the data expected from future cost studies, to develop corrosion prevention and mitigation strategies. Without an action plan, DOD could miss opportunities for achieving long- term corrosion cost savings. Finally, although it acknowledges the importance of identifying corrosion impacts related to readiness and safety, DOD has made virtually no progress in assessing these impacts. DOD officials told us that they decided to identify cost impacts before they identify readiness and safety impacts because more information is available regarding costs, and identifying cost impacts is an important step towards identifying readiness and safety impacts. They said that some of their efforts will shift to readiness and safety as the cost impact study approaches completion. In June 2004, we reported that DOD lacked results-oriented metrics in its corrosion strategy and, as a result, could not effectively monitor progress toward achieving the goals of the corrosion strategy. In May 2005, DOD updated its November 2004 long-term corrosion strategy, but the update still does not contain results-oriented metrics for measuring progress toward targeted, quantifiable goals.