U.S. military forces are engaged in a number of missions that are different from most of those of the Cold War period. The U.S. defense strategy calls for the maintenance of military forces that are flexible enough to accomplish diverse missions. Peace operations are among these missions.Within the last 5 years, U.S. combat units have participated in peace operations in locations such as Somalia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Haiti, the Sinai, and northern and southern Iraq. According to the President’s February 1995 National Security Strategy, the primary mission of U.S. military forces is to deter and, if necessary, fight and win conflicts in which the most important interests of the United States are threatened. Nevertheless, to support the administration’s strategy of engagement, the United States has adopted a defense strategy that calls for the maintenance of robust and flexible military forces that can accomplish a number of missions. The National Security Strategy and other defense planning documents have identified peace operations among the missions that U.S. military forces must be prepared to undertake. According to these documents, U.S. forces deployed to these operations should be provided with sufficient capabilities to fulfill their assigned missions. In many cases, this may require specialized training. According to the May 1995 Report of the Commission on Roles and Missions, peace operations warrant appropriate training and equipment because of the often unique characteristics of these operations. The report also states that the difficulty of these operations cannot be underestimated. For example, in peace operations, the enemy is no longer easily identified approaching in a tank or an armored personnel carrier. Also, military tasks common to both war and peace—such as patrolling or escorting convoys—may have a fundamentally different purpose and be conducted in a vastly changed environment. Finally, the use of overwhelming and decisive force, the central tenet of U.S. war-fighting doctrine, often has little relevance to peace operations. DOD is still coming to terms with the unique challenges associated with peace operations. As part of this effort, the Army recently published a new field manual to assist commanders and their staffs in planning and conducting these operations. Similarly, the Marine Corps is revising its Small Wars Manual concerning experiences the naval services have gained in operations other than war since the end of World War II and is developing a handbook to assist commanders who may be participating in peace and foreign humanitarian assistance operations. DOD is increasingly recognizing the importance of providing education and training for peace operations, particularly at the institutional level. Within the last year, a number of DOD and non-DOD reports have been published that identify and assess the education and training opportunities DOD provides for peace operations and for additional operations other than war. For example, in September 1994 the DOD Inspector General issued a report on specialized military training for peace operations and a catalog of peace operations training activities that identify and discuss various U.S. and international peace operations training programs, primarily at the institutional level. The report identifies gaps in three areas where U.S. preparation for peace operations could be enhanced in the near term: (1) U.N. observer training; (2) use of existing U.S. and foreign training programs and educational opportunities; and (3) staff and interagency training, particularly joint task force training for peace operations. A February 1995 report prepared for the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Strategy and Requirements) by a non-DOD organization provides additional detail concerning training and education requirements for peace operations, assesses current programs in the U.S. military, and recommends strategies to enhance preparedness for such missions. In April and May 1995, a two-phase conference and follow-on exercise on peace and humanitarian operations sponsored by the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) and the U.S. Department of State, was conducted at Camp Pendleton, California. A summary report highlights the policy, strategy, and operational issues that resulted from the conference. The former Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, House Committee on Armed Services, asked us to examine (1) how the services incorporate peace operations into their various training programs, (2) what effect peace operations have on maintaining combat readiness, and (3) whether the services have the weapon systems and equipment they need for these operations. We did not assess whether the United States should participate in peace operations. To determine how the services incorporate peace operations into their institutional, staff, and unit training programs, we reviewed training plans, lessons learned from recent operations, and published DOD and non-DOD reports on peace operations training. We concentrated our efforts on unit training and supplemented information already available on institutional and staff training. We visited the home bases of various Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps units that participated in peace operations and talked with personnel about the training they received. We also talked with officials and personnel at various advanced-level training facilities, such as the Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) and the Combat Maneuver Training Center (CMTC), to obtain an understanding of the peace operations training provided. To understand the U.S. Atlantic Command’s role in preparing joint forces for peace operations missions, we talked with command representatives and reviewed relevant documentation. To determine the impact of peace operations on combat readiness, we reviewed the experiences of combat, support, and special operations forces who participated in Operations Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Able Sentry in Macedonia, Deny Flight in Bosnia, and Provide Comfort in northern Iraq. We also obtained some information on the experiences of Army and Marine Corps personnel who had participated in the 1992-93 Somalia peace operations and the impact that these operations had on the units’ ability to return to combat readiness. We visited the home bases of units that had participated in peace operations, and to the extent possible, visited actual operations, such as the one in Macedonia. We talked with and obtained documentation from personnel attached to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division (Light), II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF), and units from the 1st Armored and 3rd Mechanized Infantry Divisions in Europe concerning the extent of combat skill atrophy after participating in peace operations and the effort required to return to combat readiness. We visited Air Force units at their home bases and at their deployed locations in Aviano, Italy, and Incirlik, Turkey, near Operations Deny Flight and Provide Comfort. We talked with and reviewed documentation from military commanders concerning the combat proficiency of their units after participating in peace operations and their plans for restoring full war-fighting capabilities. We discussed the effect of Navy participation in Caribbean peace operations with representatives of various elements of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and examined documents describing the impact of peace operations on Navy training cycles. To determine whether the services have the weapon systems and equipment they need for these operations, we examined reports by DOD agencies and documents from the military services involved in identifying technological requirements. We discussed the involvement of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in identifying new technologies and also examined a draft policy statement on the use of nonlethal weapons. I MEF officials from Camp Pendleton, California, and from the Marine Corps Combat Development Center in Quantico, Virginia, provided us with information concerning their experiences in obtaining, training with, and using nonlethal systems and equipment during Operation United Shield, protecting the withdrawal of U.N. forces from Somalia. Our review was conducted at Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine locations, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and component and unified command headquarters within the United States and Europe. We contacted by telephone any relevant organizations we did not visit, such as the 25th Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and the Army Dismounted Battlespace Battle Laboratory at Fort Benning, Georgia. In many cases, we received written responses to our questions. We did not address the financial impact on the services as a result of participating in peace operations. This issue was addressed in a previous GAO report. We also did not report on the participation of reserve forces in peace operations. While we did some limited examination of reserve component participation in peace operations, the training provided for these missions was not significantly different than training for standard reserve missions. Except in a few cases, the number of reserve component forces participating in these operations was relatively small. Our review was performed from November 1994 to September 1995 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Since the end of the Persian Gulf War, DOD has provided a variety of education and training opportunities to military personnel to prepare them for participation in peace operations. Each service has a different approach to training its forces for peace operations. The services and the regional Commanders in Chief (CINC) have exposed at least some of their personnel to basic operating concepts through institutional training and education, specialized staff training, and unit training. At the unit level, peace operations training primarily involves ground combat forces. Commanders of major ground combat forces differ on when peace operations should be provided; some commanders include aspects of peace operations in standard unit training, and others prefer to maintain an exclusive combat focus until they are advised that their units are about to deploy to a peace operation. Naval and aviation forces perform similar tasks in peace operations and in war. Each of the services conducts a number of comparable courses at training facilities and schools in which peace operations are addressed as part of a progressive program of military training and education. The services’ officer and noncommissioned officer courses, command and staff colleges, war colleges, professional schools for particular military specialties (e.g., infantry, amphibious warfare, and military police), and joint military education programs all include some discussion of peace operations in their curriculums, often as part of a broader discussion of operations other than war.