The services’ O&M appropriation gives them the funds to carry out day-to-day activities, such as recruiting and fielding a trained and ready force, equipment maintenance and repair, child care and family centers, transportation services, civilian personnel management and pay, and maintaining the infrastructure to support the forces. Table 1 shows the Army’s and the Air Force’s O&M budget requests, amounts received, and amounts obligated for fiscal years 1993 through 1995. The services’ annual O&M budget requests to Congress are presented in four broad categories referred to as budget activities: operating forces, mobilization, training and recruiting, and administrative and servicewide activities. Each budget activity is further broken down into activity groups which, in turn, are further broken down into subactivity groups. For example, the Army’s operating forces budget activity is divided into two activity groups (land forces and land operations support), and each of the activity groups is made up of various subactivity groups. To illustrate, the land forces activity group consists of eight subactivity groups: combat units, tactical support, theater defense forces, forces related training, force communications, depot maintenance, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) exercises, and base support. Table 2 is an example of the budget presentation document for the Army’s operating forces budget activity, activity groups, and subactivity groups for fiscal year 1995. The budget subactivity groups are further broken down into program element codes. Although the codes are not part of the budget presentation to Congress, they are maintained as part of the services’ funds control process and provide more details about how the services plan to spend the funds received. For example, within the Army’s subactivity group—combat units—there are three program element codes that show how the Army plans to use the funds designated for combat units. There are similar program elements in the four budget activities. For example, base operations is a program element that is in most budget activities. Therefore, by grouping similar program elements, it can be determined how much was budgeted and obligated for a particular function. In performing our analysis, we placed all the program element codes into the following four categories: combat forces and support of the forces, training and recruitment, management and command activities, and base support. For each of these four categories, we listed the budgeted and obligated amounts. See appendixes II and III for a complete listing of the program element codes that comprise each of these four major categories. For fiscal years 1993 through 1995, funds requested for combat forces and support of the forces ranged from $3.6 billion to $4.5 billion for the Army. During the same period, the amount of O&M funds the Army obligated for these program element codes ranged from $3.2 billion to $4.2 billion. For the Air Force, funds requested for combat forces and support of the forces ranged from $4.7 billion to $5.1 billion and the amount obligated ranged from $5 billion to $5.3 billion. As shown in table 3, the amounts obligated have increased slightly during the 3-year period, but, at their highest level, still only represent 21.5 percent of the Army’s and 26.8 percent of the Air Force’s total O&M obligations. As shown above, over the past 3 years, the Air Force obligated about $700 million more for its combat forces than was requested. In contrast, the Army obligated about $900 million less than the amounts requested.The fact that the Army did not obligate all the funds that it requested for its combat forces means that the amount initially requested for combat forces was probably used to fund other O&M programs. Training and recruiting are essential elements in maintaining a ready force. Our analysis showed that the amounts obligated for these purposes were routinely less than the amounts the services requested. As shown in table 4, the Army’s and the Air Force’s requests for the program elements related to training and recruiting in fiscal years 1993 through 1995 ranged from $2 billion to $2.2 billion and from $1.5 billion to $1.9 billion, respectively. Although the amounts obligated have increased slightly during the 3-year period, at their highest level they still only represented about 10.8 percent of the Army’s and 9.1 percent of the Air Force’s O&M budgets. Table 5 shows the types of training and recruiting activities the Army and the Air Force obligated their O&M funds for in fiscal year 1995. In most cases, the amounts requested and obligated were fairly close. However, overall, the Army and the Air Force obligated less than they requested for their training and recruiting activities. For fiscal years 1993 through 1995, the Army obligated about 33 percent of its total O&M funds for base support and the Air Force about 30 percent. Table 6 shows the amounts requested and obligated for base support program elements during the 3-year period under review. Although the amounts have decreased slightly from the high point during the period under review, the services continue to devote a substantial portion of their O&M budgets to maintaining the infrastructure. Program elements in the base support category include base communications, environmental compliance, real property maintenance and real property services activities, child and family services, leases, maintenance of nontactical equipment, food service programs, and community and morale support activities. Table 7 shows the amount requested and obligated for the above base operations program elements in fiscal year 1995. Of particular interest is the amount the services obligated for base maintenance and repair—about $974 million obligated versus about $793 million requested for the Army and about $2.4 billion obligated versus $1.3 billion requested for the Air Force. In fiscal year 1995, Congress reduced the Army’s and the Air Force’s requests by $100 million, respectively. Therefore, the fact that the services obligated more than requested cannot be explained by Congress appropriating more than was requested. The more likely answer is that O&M funds from other programs were reprogrammed to the base maintenance and repair accounts. Another area where the services obligated more than was requested was for environmental activities. Whereas the Army requested about $465 million for these activities, it obligated over $1.1 billion. The Air Force also obligated significantly more of its O&M funds for environmental activities than it requested—about $774 million versus $404 million. The reason for this is that the requested amounts do not include funds transferred from DOD to the services under DOD’s environmental account. Between fiscal years 1993 through 1995, the Army obligated approximately 37 percent of its O&M funds for management, command, and servicewide activities. The Air Force obligated about 35 percent of its O&M funds for the same purposes. Table 8 shows the amounts requested and obligated for management, command, and servicewide program elements during the 3-year period under review. Although the amounts obligated by the Army decreased from fiscal years 1993 to 1994, fiscal year 1995 obligations show a reversal of that trend. Air Force obligations rose steadily over this same time period. As shown in table 9, Army headquarters and command management activities accounted for $770 million, or 11 percent, of the total obligations in the management, command, and servicewide activities grouping. The $770 million included obligations to operate the headquarters activities of the Army’s specified commands as well as the operations of the departmental headquarters located in Washington, D.C., and other headquarters activities, such as the Corps of Engineers, public affairs, and space activities. The Air Force obligated about $654 million, or about 9 percent, of its management, command, and servicewide activities funds for similar programs. Athough it would not be expected that the amounts obligated would necessarily agree with the amounts requested, there are certain obligation trends that seem to emerge. This is particularly true for the Army, which historically obligates less funds for its combat forces than it requests even when appropriated more than requested. Conversely, the opposite trend emerges for the infrastructure and management accounts. The reason why obligations exceed the amounts requested may be because Congress appropriated more than requested. However, another reason could also be that funds initially requested for other O&M accounts were reprogrammed to the infrastructure and management accounts. We believe that this report will assist congressional decisionmakers by showing how obligation patterns differ from the budget estimates submitted to Congress. In commenting on a draft of this report, DOD said that all of the Army’s special activities programs (see app.II) should not have been included in the management, command, and servicewide activities category. DOD said that special activities include items such as the Army battle simulation center, Louisiana maneuvers, Army flying hour program, combat training centers, training range operations, soldier modernization, and contingency operations and that these items should have been included in the combat forces category. DOD further stated that the only portion of special activities that was properly included in the management, command, and servicewide activities category was subsistence-in-kind, which has been about $250 million to $300 million a year. DOD contended that including all of these programs in the management, command, and servicewide activities category led us to conclude that this category was too large in comparison to the combat forces budget. DOD’s response included a level of detail beyond the program element level that was not available to us during our review of the activities included in the special activities category or other O&M subaccounts. For that reason, our analysis was based on the program element level that was available for all O&M subaccounts. We categorized special activities as management, command, and servicewide activities because of the Army’s definition of the special activities program element. The Army defines special activities as units with a predominantly peacetime mission.