The military services preposition stocks ashore and afloat to provide DOD the ability to respond to multiple scenarios by providing assets to support U.S. forces during the initial phases of an operation until follow-on capabilities are available through strategic lift and the supply chain has been established. Each military service maintains different configurations and types of equipment and materiel to support its own prepositioning program. The Army stores equipment sets in its Army Prepositioned Stocks, which consist of sets of combat brigade equipment, supporting supplies, and other stocks located both ashore and afloat. The Marine Corps forward deploys and prepositions sets of materiel and equipment to support a Marine Expeditionary Brigade. These capability sets are stored aboard ships in two Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons and ashore in Norway. The Navy maintains materiel in the Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons in support of the Marine Corps. Its prepositioning program provides construction support, equipment for off-loading and transferring cargo from ships to shore, and expeditionary medical facilities. Prepositioned assets in the Air Force’s war reserve materiel program are located at 43 sites worldwide as well as in munitions storage afloat. The war reserve materiel includes assets such as direct mission support equipment for fighter and strategic aircraft as well as base operating support equipment to provide force, infrastructure, and flight line support during wartime and contingency operations. DOD’s prepositioned stocks are intended to support national military objectives, which are described in strategic and operational documents. High-level military strategic guidance includes the National Defense Strategy and the National Military Strategy, which the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff use to develop guidance that instructs the geographic combatant commanders on what operation plans they must develop to meet operational objectives that address certain scenarios. Joint operation planning is a coordinated process used by commanders, including the geographic combatant commanders, to determine the best method of accomplishing a mission. Combatant commands develop plans with varying levels of detail, and the most detailed plans contain, among other things, time-phased force and deployment data, which include the specific units to be deployed in support of the plan and the timeline for when those forces are needed. The services then determine how best to meet the needs of the combatant commanders, which may include the use of prepositioned stocks or other types of equipment to support the commanders’ goals and ensure timely support of deployed forces during the initial phases of an operation until follow-on capabilities have been established. Combatant commanders periodically review their plans, assess the risk to those plans, and report the results to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By providing needed prepositioned materiel and equipment, the military services can reduce the risks associated with a plan. Prepositioned stocks are employed by the geographic combatant commanders, who have the authority to, among other things, organize commands and forces and employ forces as they consider necessary to accomplish assigned missions. DOD apportions the services’ prepositioned materiel among the geographic combatant commands according to the joint guidance, and the afloat prepositioned stocks may be apportioned to more than one geographic combatant command. Requirements for prepositioning are developed based on an approved operation plan. The approval of the Secretary of Defense is generally required to use the prepositioned capabilities. The Global Prepositioned Materiel Capabilities Working Group, including representatives from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics and the Joint Staff, has responsibility for, among other things, addressing joint issues concerning prepositioned stocks. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has provided the annual report on prepositioned stocks on behalf of the Secretary of Defense since the report’s inception. DOD’s fiscal year 2012 report on prepositioned stocks provided information on all 12 statutorily required elements; however, it only partially addressed three of those elements. Also, the report contains some inconsistencies among the services’ prepositioning data as well as some inaccuracies and omissions, which limit its usefulness to congressional decision makers. DOD provided some information on the each of the 12 reporting elements enumerated in section 2229a in its fiscal year 2012 annual report on prepositioned stocks. Specifically, we assessed that DOD addressed nine of the elements because the information provided in the report was responsive to the reporting requirements. However, we assessed that DOD partially addressed three of the elements—elements seven, ten, and twelve— because it did not provide all of the required information. Table 1 summarizes our assessment of the extent to which DOD’s report included the required elements. We assessed three of the elements as being partially addressed because DOD’s report did not provide all of the required information: Element seven requires DOD to provide a list of non-standard items slated for inclusion in the prepositioned stocks as well as a plan for funding the inclusion and sustainment of those items. DOD’s report contained a table with Marine Corps non-standard equipment slated for inclusion in that service’s prepositioned stocks that included the quantities and purpose of each item, but it did not identify a specific plan for funding the inclusion and sustainment of those items as required. Further, in this section of the report, the Army, Air Force, and Navy stated that they had not identified any non-standard equipment for inclusion in prepositioned stocks as of the time of the report. However, in responding to element one of DOD’s report, the Army had provided a table with the level of fill of non-standard items, in which it provided data on some non-standard equipment that it would be placing in its Army Prepositioned Stocks operational projects. DOD’s report also did not fully describe how those additional Army assets would be funded and sustained, instead indicating that the Army will assess enduring requirements for non-standard items being retrograded from Southwest Asia and program required funding for storage and maintenance in future budget submissions. Because the information provided did not address both required parts of element seven, we assessed that DOD’s report only partially addressed the element. Element ten requires DOD to report on the status of efforts to develop a joint strategy, integrate service requirements, and eliminate redundancies. While the report contains a paragraph describing DOD’s strategic guidance process and framework in response to this element, it does not identify specific efforts that are under way to develop a joint strategy for its prepositioning programs and to integrate service requirements and eliminate redundancies to produce greater efficiency and effectiveness in those programs. Because the information provided did not address all of the required parts of element ten, we assessed that DOD’s report only partially addressed the element. Element twelve requires DOD to list any strategic plans affected by changes to the levels, composition, or locations of the prepositioned stocks and to describe any action taken to mitigate any risks resulting from those changes. In addressing this element, DOD’s report provided a list of strategic plans from the combatant commands that have prepositioning requirements. However, the report did not provide, along with the list of plans, a description of any action taken to mitigate risks resulting from any changes to the prepositioned stocks. The Joint Staff official overseeing the development and submission of DOD’s prepositioning report said that the information describing actions to mitigate risks could be found elsewhere in other sections of the report. However, that information pertained to mitigating shortfalls affecting operation plans, as required by element six, and did not fully address actions taken to mitigate changes to the levels, composition, or locations of prepositioned stocks affecting strategic plans, as required by element twelve. While some of those mitigation actions relate to the operation plans identified as part of DOD’s response to element twelve, it is unclear the extent to which those actions will mitigate the risks to some of the other strategic plans identified in the list provided as part of element twelve. Because DOD’s report did not fully address the second part of the required element regarding changes to prepositioned stocks and actions taken to mitigate any resulting risks, we assessed this element as being only partially addressed. Inconsistencies in some of the information provided by the military services limit the usefulness of the data presented in DOD’s report. Federal internal control standards state that decision makers need complete and relevant information to manage risks and achieve efficiency and effectiveness goals. Such information can be used to compare and assess different sets of data so that agencies can analyze relationships and take appropriate actions. However, we found inconsistencies in the amount and types of data presented on each of the services in DOD’s report. In particular, DOD’s report inconsistently reported information on the services’ future funding requirements, providing decision makers with an incomplete picture of DOD’s future funding needs for prepositioning (see table 2). First, the Marine Corps reported its procurement requirements as “to be determined” rather than giving projected funding amounts, whereas that information was provided for the other services in DOD’s report. Second, the Marine Corps and the Air Force provided information that could be used to identify funding shortfalls in their prepositioning programs for each fiscal year across the five year defense plan whereas the Army and Navy did not provide this information. Third, three of the services reported working capital funds requirements or indicated that they had no working capital funds requirements. The Navy, however, did not report whether or not it had working capital funding requirements. Lastly, each of the services reported its current funding requirements, as of fiscal year 2012, and its projected funding requirements, but they did not all use the same time frame for these estimates. The Navy, as shown in table 2, reported its actual operation and maintenance and procurement funding for fiscal year 2012 and its estimated funding requirements for fiscal year 2013. In contrast, the other services provided funding requirements information for fiscal years 2012 to 2018: a difference of five fiscal years.