DOD’s efforts to build partner capacity include a broad range of security cooperation activities designed to build the defense capacity of foreign partners and allies. These security cooperation activities include military- to-military training, military exercises in cooperation with partner nations, knowledge sharing from subject matter experts, visits between senior military leaders, providing military equipment and supplies, and counternarcotics activities. Table 1 below describes selected partner capacity activities that DOD implements. The table illustrates the broad range of activities DOD engages in to build partner capacity and is not a comprehensive list. To perform its military missions around the world, DOD operates six unified military geographic combatant commands, which are responsible for a variety of functions including planning for and conducting missions that range from humanitarian assistance to combat operations.their planning responsibilities, geographic combatant commands develop theater campaign plans, which are multiyear plans that reflect the command’s strategy to achieve certain end states within their areas of responsibility. These plans are the primary vehicle for designing, organizing, integrating, and executing security cooperation activities. A hierarchy of national and strategic guidance—including the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, the National Military Strategy, and the Guidance for Employment of the Force—informs the development of the combatant commands’ theater campaign plans. The U.S. Special Operations Command is responsible for preparing special operations forces to carry out assigned missions and to plan and conduct special operations. Its mission is (1) to provide fully capable special operations forces to defend the United States and its interests and (2) to synchronize global operations against terrorist networks, including receiving, reviewing, coordinating, and prioritizing all DOD plans that support the global campaign against terror. notifies the combatant command and solicits proposals from the adjutants general of the state Guards. These proposals go through three levels of review within DOD, and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau forwards a recommended nominee to the combatant command and the partner country’s U.S. embassy for final approval. I would like to now discuss the key practices we have identified that can aid DOD in more effectively managing its building partner capacity activities. Setting clear goals and defining terminology can help stakeholders understand what partnership capacity programs seek to accomplish and how they fit in with broad national security interests. In our reviews, we found that DOD’s efforts to align goals with broader strategies and clarify terminology have varied. More specifically, in some reviews, we found that programs have aligned with broader strategies but DOD officials have experienced challenges in agreeing upon key terms. A positive example of strategic alignment involves our work on the Section 1206 program. In 2010, we reported that the Section 1206 activities have generally been in alignment with U.S. counterterrorism priorities while also addressing the partner countries’ security interests. For example, in 2010, we found that DOD and the State Department (State) have used Section 1206 funds in Kazakhstan to address its priority of enhancing the country’s counterterrorism capacity in the Caspian Sea, according to a U.S. embassy official. Additionally, in Pakistan, U.S. officials used Section 1206 funds to increase special operations capacity to support counterterrorism operations on its western border. Overall, from fiscal year 2006 to 2009, DOD and State allotted $932 million, or 95 percent, of all Section 1206 funding for counterterrorism-related equipment and training for partner countries and the remaining $47 million, or 5 percent, to build the capacity of five partner nations to participate in stability operations with the United States, such as providing spare parts for a country’s ground vehicles. We also found that most Section 1206 counterterrorism resources had been directed to countries that the U.S. intelligence community has identified as priority countries for the counterterrorism effort. In another case we found that DOD is taking steps to address challenges faced by department officials in identifying and defining partner country assistance requirements. In a November 2012 report on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s oversight of security cooperation and assistance programs, we found that since 2009, DOD has initiated reforms to improve the process of developing assistance requests that are intended to reduce implementation delays and improve the effectiveness of assistance to partner countries. new training courses and provided in-country advisors to help country officials identify short- and long-term requirements and strategies to meet those requirements. Second, DOD is reforming its own processes for defining requirements to improve long-term effectiveness of security cooperation programs and provide short-term solutions for meeting requirements using assistance requests. Third, DOD created a strategic planning support group to assist combatant commands with early identification and resolution of issues related to capability requirements and certain types of assistance requests. Fourth, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency established expeditionary teams whose purpose is to help the combatant commands, partner countries, and security cooperation officers identify and refine a partner country’s requirements. GAO, Security Assistance: DOD’s Ongoing Reforms Address Some Challenges, but Additional Information Is Needed to Further Enhance Program Management, GAO-13-84 (Washington, D.C.: November 16, 2012). the Task Force’s original mission of countering violent extremism and its location at Camp Lemonnier remain important, particularly given terrorist threats in the region, we found some activities that may not be aligned with the command’s mission. For example, at a training exercise for incoming Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa officials, discussion was raised concerning Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa’s discovery of a dilapidated school in Kenya with a placard stating “donated by Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa”; current staff had been unaware of the school’s existence. While the activity may have promoted temporary benefits for the participants at the time it was built, its dilapidated state could have potentially promoted unfavorable views of the U.S. military within the partner nation and heightened concerns about how such activities fit into a framework of sustained security engagement. In another example, other embassy officials stated that the experiences of African navy and coast guard participants of Task Force maritime training sessions were dampened because participants had anticipated a permanent training program; instead, they received sporadic and short- term training, which may not promote U.S. Africa Command’s mission of sustained or long-term security engagement. As a result, we recommended that U.S. Africa Command complete its evaluation of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa to determine whether the Task Force should be retained, and if so, whether changes are needed to its mission, structure, and resources to best support the command’s mission. In a 2012 follow up on our recommendation, U.S. Africa Command stated that it had issued a plan to alter the Task Force’s mission in accordance with the command’s assessment of the current security environment. However, DOD has not identified how the Task Force is changing its structure and resources to support the new mission. Another review in 2012 found that DOD’s lack of clarity surrounding the term “security force assistance” has created challenges for the combatant commands and military services in their efforts to plan for security force assistance as a distinct activity and enhance force capabilities. DOD intends to focus more on security force assistance activities and has directed the combatant commands to incorporate them into their long range plans and forecast requirements. In its instruction, DOD defined security force assistance as “DOD activities that contribute to unified action by the U.S. government to support the development of the capacity and capability of foreign security forces and their supporting institutions.” Seeking to clarify this definition, DOD has further stated that security force assistance encompasses all DOD activities conducted under various programs to “organize, train, equip, rebuild/build and advise foreign security forces and their supporting institutions from the tactical to ministerial levels.” Notwithstanding DOD’s efforts to clarify its terminology, we found that the commands continue to lack a common understanding of the term and therefore some were unclear as to what additional actions were needed to meet DOD’s intent. Officials we interviewed generally viewed security force assistance as a recharacterization of some of their existing security cooperation activities but had different interpretations of what types of activities should be considered as security force assistance. For example, within one command, officials considered nearly every activity with partner nations to be security force assistance. Another command considered only individual efforts to train partner nations as security force assistance and excluded other activities. Also, some command officials were not clear as to the intent of DOD’s increased focus on security force assistance and whether any related adjustments should be made in their plans and scope or level of activities. As a result, they do not currently distinguish security force assistance from other security cooperation activities in their plans. The services are taking steps and investing resources to organize and train general purpose forces capable of conducting security force assistance based on current requirements. Without greater clarity in regard to future needs, the services are uncertain whether their current efforts are sufficient or whether additional capabilities will be required. Therefore, we recommended that DOD take steps to clarify its intent, including the level of effort that combatant commands should devote to security force assistance, and what additional actions are required by the commands to plan for and conduct security force assistance beyond their existing security cooperation efforts. These steps would also help inform the services’ efforts to ensure that the capabilities that they are developing and thus the resources that they are investing are appropriate and adequate to meet future requirements. DOD generally agreed with our recommendations. In another instance, we found that DOD, State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development used different terminology to describe similar efforts during our review of DOD’s humanitarian assistance efforts. For example, according to DOD officials, DOD uses the term “humanitarian assistance” to describe its strategically planned assistance.