The U.S. Army has traditionally employed civilian contractors in noncombat roles to augment military forces. For example, civilian contractors were used extensively in the Korean and Vietnam Wars to augment logistical support provided to U.S. forces. LOGCAP was established by the Army in 1985 as a means to (1) preplan for the use of contractor support in contingencies or crises and (2) take advantage of existing civilian resources in the United States and overseas to augment active and reserve forces. Initially, the program concept was that each Army component of a unified command would individually plan and contract for its own logistics and engineering services. In 1992, the concept was changed to provide a single, centrally managed worldwide planning and services contract. Although it originated as an Army program, LOGCAP is available to the other services. Since 1992, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been responsible for the program’s management and contract administration. When LOGCAP is used in support of a mission, the operational commander becomes responsible for defining services to be provided by the contractor, integrating contractor personnel into the mission, and ensuring that funding is provided. The contractor is paid from the operational command’s operations and maintenance appropriation account. On October 1, 1996, LOGCAP management transferred to the U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC). However, the Corps of Engineers will remain responsible for LOGCAP management in Bosnia for the duration of that mission. The original LOGCAP contractor, Brown and Root Services Corporation of Houston, Texas, was competitively awarded a cost-plus-award-feecontract for 1 year with 4 option years on August 3, 1992. According to Army documents, a notice regarding the contract in the Commerce Business Daily elicited 37 requests for copies of the solicitation. Four companies competed for the contract. The 1992 LOGCAP contract required the contractor to (1) develop a worldwide management plan and 13 regional plans, (2) participate in planning and exercises, and (3) be prepared to execute the plans upon notification. The worldwide management plan is a general description of the equipment, personnel, and supporting services required to support a force of up to 20,000 troops in 5 base camps for up to 180 days and up to 50,000 troops beyond 180 days. The regional plans use the worldwide management plan as a baseline to provide detailed logistics and engineering support plans for a geographic region based on a specific planning scenario prescribed by the requiring commander. The Army decided to use the LOGCAP contract in December 1995 to augment its forces that are part of the Bosnian peacekeeping mission. The United States provides a major portion of the mission’s implementing force as set forth in the Dayton Peace Accords and occupies key leadership positions responsible for the mission. The U.S. Army, Europe provides most of the U.S. force and is the major command responsible for the mission’s logistics planning and funding. U.S. forces deployed in support of the implementation force were located in 4 countries and numbered approximately 22,200: about 16,200 in Bosnia, about 1,400 in Croatia, and about 4,600 in Hungary and Italy. Several factors created unique challenges for the Army as it implemented LOGCAP during the Bosnian mission. These factors related to the uncertainty of the U.S. role, the need for rapid deployment once the role was defined, and the harsh weather environment. (See app. II for more detail on these matters.) U.S. Army, Europe is using LOGCAP to provide a range of logistics and engineering services, including troop housing and facilities, food service, and laundry operations, as well as base camp and equipment maintenance, shuttle bus services within camps, and cargo handling services throughout the area of operations. The Army’s December 1995 estimate of the cost to provide these services for 1 year, which was developed by the contractor based on the Army’s tasking, was $350.2 million. However, when the Department of Defense submitted its estimate of incremental costs for the Bosnia peacekeeping mission to Congress on February 23, 1996, it reduced the estimate to $191.6 million. The estimate was reduced because officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense believed there was duplication between the services the contractor would provide and the services military personnel would provide. However, Defense Department officials had no documentation supporting the $191.6 million estimate. Thus, we used the Army’s estimate of $350.2 million as the basis for analyzing LOGCAP cost increases in Bosnia. As shown in table 1, since 1992, the Army has used a contractor instead of force structure to meet some of its combat support and combat service support needs in six major peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance missions. Although using LOGCAP is the choice of last resort, Army officials stated it is often necessary to use LOGCAP in these missions because of planning considerations such as the ability to respond to a major regional conflict, the political sensitivity of activating guard and reserve forces, the lack of host nation support agreements in undeveloped countries, and the desire to maintain a relatively low U.S. presence. The use of the contract by far has been the most extensive for the Bosnian mission and that mission provides a good illustration of how the factors come into play in deciding whether to use the contract. The Army has established a decision-making process for determining when it will use LOGCAP. The following discussion describes the decision-making process and illustrates how it worked in the Bosnian mission. The Army’s LOGCAP regulation states that LOGCAP is one of several options available to commanders for meeting combat support and combat service support shortfalls in their operational plans. It is intended to be the option of last resort, and it was primarily designed to be used in areas where host nation support agreements do not exist. Other options to be considered by commanders before selecting LOGCAP include the other military services, allied support, and local contracting. In addition, commanders must consider other factors such as risk to personnel, lift availability, quality of life, and mission duration. The key planning and resource considerations that led to the Army’s decision to use LOGCAP were (1) troop ceilings for active and reserve forces, (2) engineering resources available in the Army force structure, (3) host nation support agreements, and (4) quality of life issues. According to U.S. Army, Europe officials responsible for planning the Bosnian mission, they initially identified a need for a force of 38,000 troops, including 20,000 combat troops. This number of combat troops was considered necessary because U.S. forces had to patrol a 1,200-mile zone between the formerly warring factions. Also, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told U.S. Army, Europe not to expect authorization for more than 25,000 troops: 20,000 in Bosnia and 5,000 in Croatia. U.S. Army, Europe also had a ceiling on the reserve forces it could use. For Bosnia, the President authorized the call-up of 4,300 reservists for all the services, 3,888 of which the Defense Department allocated to the Army. The Army used its allocation to activate key support capabilities such as civil affairs and psychological operations units that existed primarily in the reserve forces and could not be contracted. Once these units were activated, most of the 3,888-reserve ceiling had been used, leaving little opportunity to call up other types of support units. Many of the Army’s combat support and combat service support units were in the guard and reserve. An Army planner told us they could have asked the national command authority to increase the force ceiling and reserve call-up authority; however, because they had LOGCAP as an option, it was not necessary to seek these increases to meet support needs. The Army also used some units from the other services. According to U.S. Army, Europe officials, the Army did not have enough engineering resources available for deployment to build all the required base camps in the time allotted and received assistance from Air Force and Navy engineering units. By managing the flow of forces into the theater to remain below the 25,000-force ceiling, they were able to use these units and Army engineer units to construct 15 of the base camps. When the initial construction was completed, these units left the area of operations and the remainder of the Army’s force deployed. U.S. Army, Europe officials also told us that because the former Yugoslav Republic was not a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, U.S. Army, Europe had no preexisting support agreements in the region. Therefore, little consideration was given to obtaining host nation support to meet the requirements in excess of force ceilings. Army officials further stated that quality of life considerations and the fact that the Army lacked the capability to provide some services also favored the use of LOGCAP. For example, the Army’s Deputy Commander for Support in Bosnia cited food and laundry services as areas where the contractor is able to provide a higher standard of service than Army units typically provide during deployments. LOGCAP also was able to provide services, such as sewage and solid waste disposal and janitorial services, that the Army routinely contracts for because the capability is not in the force structure. The estimated costs for LOGCAP implementation in Bosnia have increased substantially. The Army’s latest revised estimate of $461.5 million exceeds its initial estimate of $350.2 million by $111.3 million, or 32 percent. Our review shows that the difference in the Army’s estimates was largely driven by changes in operational requirements once the forces arrived in Bosnia. Specifically, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Army, Europe decided to increase the number of base camps from 14 large camps to 34 smaller ones and to accelerate the schedule for upgrading troop housing.