The secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force have a key role in making decisions on where to locate their services’ forces when they are not otherwise employed or deployed by order of the Secretary of Defense or assigned to a combatant command. The service secretaries are authorized, subject to the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense, to conduct all affairs of their departments—including functions such as organizing, equipping, training, and maintaining force structure. The secretaries also have the authority to construct, maintain, and repair buildings, structures and utilities, and to acquire the real property or interests in real property necessary to carry out their responsibilities. In addition, the secretaries may assign forces under their jurisdiction to carry out these functions, unless otherwise directed by the Secretary of Defense or the forces are assigned to a combatant command. The Secretary of Defense has authority, direction, and control over DOD, including the military services, and may perform any of his functions through organizations of the department as he may designate, unless prohibited by law. Furthermore, OSD was established in part to assist the Secretary of Defense in carrying out his duties and responsibilities and to carry out such other duties as may be prescribed by law. Senior officials within OSD develop policy and guidance for their unique areas of responsibility. For example, among the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics is establishing policies for logistics, maintenance, and sustainment support for all elements of DOD. DOD periodically monitors, as part of its oversight role, its significant investments of military force structure and resources through its Quadrennial Defense Review that is generally conducted every four years. Under law, the Secretary of Defense is to conduct a comprehensive examination of the national defense strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the country’s defense program and policies with a view toward determining and expressing the nation’s defense strategy and establishing a defense program for the next 20 years. The four military services each use different terminology and definitions when describing their basing decision processes. For example, the Army describes its basing decision process as “stationing,” the Marine Corps generally uses the term “force laydown,” and the Air Force uses the term “beddown.” The Navy describes its basing decision process using the terms “strategic laydown” and “strategic dispersal;” the strategic laydown process provides the Navy with a methodology to align, organize, and position naval forces between the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. The strategic dispersal process is used to determine the distribution of ships by homeport in regard to infrastructure, operational availability, proximity to ranges and support, port loading, quality of service and quality of life, and antiterrorism and force protection factors. For the purposes of this report, we use “basing” to refer to the services’ processes to make decisions about where to establish locations for their force structure within the United States (the 50 states and the District of Columbia) that are not made under BRAC legislation. Our analysis showed that, generally, each of the services has established a basing decision process that uses similar criteria, scope, and methodologies to determine where to locate its force structure within the United States and globally. The basing process begins by the service identifying the goals for the planned change in the location of military force structure. The service then conducts a series of analyses, such as capability and capacity analyses, to determine the specific requirements for meeting those goals. Based on the results of the services’ analyses, potential installations are identified. Further analyses are conducted using cost estimates and environmental considerations to develop a list of candidate basing locations. The candidate locations are presented to the service’s leadership, and after further review, a final basing decision is reached. Throughout their processes, the services conduct multiple risk assessments; coordinate with internal and external stakeholders, including combatant commanders; and use military judgment to support their decisions. The services have guidance documents that are used to implement the processes for making basing decisions within the United States and not made under the BRAC legislation. This guidance and its implementation is part of the services’ management control, which provides oversight of the basing processes. In addition, service officials stated that the same guidance and processes are used to make overseas or global basing decisions. The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force use a comprehensive regulation, order, and instruction, respectively, for their processes. According to Navy officials, the Navy currently uses five guidance documents to implement its basing decision process: Chief of Naval Operations Instruction: Navy Organization Change Strategic Laydown Flow Chart Strategic Dispersal Flow Chart Chief of Naval Operations Instruction: Environmental Readiness Secretary of the Navy Instruction: Environmental Planning for Department of the Navy Actions As an aspect of management control—to continually seek ways to better achieve an agency’s mission and program results—each of the services is taking steps to strengthen its basing process. The Army and Air Force have made revisions to their regulation and instruction, respectively, to incorporate changes made in how their processes are conducted. For example, Army officials stated that the Army’s basing regulation will incorporate an analysis of military value, which was identified as a priority criterion to be used by the Secretary of Defense during the BRAC process. Army officials said that the addition of this analysis in its process will provide more data to its leaders for making future basing decisions. Air Force officials told us that the Air Force recently changed from a decentralized to a centralized process to better clarify roles and responsibilities in the process and ensure that the Air Force performs an objective review of all operational and training options. The Marine Corps’ most recent revisions to its basing process clearly emphasizes the integration of strategic guidance (top-down direction) and commander- generated recommendations (bottom-up requests); mandates a detailed integrated examination of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, and facilities; and explicitly defines leadership roles and responsibilities. Navy officials stated that while the Navy has used its strategic laydown process to make basing decisions for the past 20 years, it recently refined the process and added a strategic dispersal process, which was designed to align with the transformation described in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and the Navy’s Maritime Strategy. To assist in evaluating the military services’ basing decision processes, we developed an assessment tool that included the key elements, factors within the elements, and management control standards that are part of a comprehensive process, and when incorporated in the process, increase its transparency, repeatability, and defendability. Our tool includes four key elements—strategic and force structure planning, infrastructure analysis, implementation considerations, and authority for making the basing decision—together with various factors that make up each element (see table 1). Within each of the four key elements are a series of factors that represent supporting analyses and activities that are important for completing the element. The strategic and force structure planning element, for example, includes factors such as national strategies, DOD and service planning and guidance documents, the results of risk assessments, and military judgment. Risk assessment is also considered as a factor in the infrastructure analysis and implementation considerations elements and as a standard for management control. In commenting on our assessment tool, OSD and service officials agreed that our tool was reasonable and complete. Management control underpins the entire basing process, and the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government provides a foundation that can help government program managers achieve desired results through effective stewardship of public resources. Management control comprises the plans, methods, and procedures used to meet the organization’s missions, goals, and objectives and consists of five standards—control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communications, and monitoring. For example, management control recommends that an organization issue a governing instruction that specifies who is responsible for each step of a process, including oversight and review of decisions made at critical steps by an official or group other than those who made the original decision, and directs those responsible to document the steps of a key decision process, such as the basing decision process. The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force basing decision processes include all of the key elements, associated factors, and management control standards that we identified as necessary in a comprehensive process and that when incorporated in the process, increase its transparency, repeatability and defendability. However, the Navy’s basing process needs additional guidance for its infrastructure analysis—a key element—and for related management control standards for its process to be complete. We found, for example, that one of Navy’s guiding documents—the Strategic Dispersal Flow Chart—did not provide details about how and by whom specific actions will be done during the process. In addition, management control underpins all aspects of a basing decision process, and the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government recommends policies and procedures to enforce management’s directives; specify who is responsible for each step of the process, including oversight and review of decisions made; and direct those responsible to maintain appropriate documentation. Specifically, we found that some of the Navy’s guidance documents do not provide detailed information about how certain types of analyses will be completed and who is responsible for completing them. Additionally, Navy officials acknowledged that the Navy has not clearly described the linkage between all five guidance documents it uses to implement its basing decision process. Without comprehensive and clear guidance of the Navy’s overall basing decision process, the Navy may lack the completeness and management control to ensure that its basing decisions can facilitate external stakeholders’ examination and scrutiny or ensure effective implementation of Navy’s basing process. Our assessment found that the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force basing processes incorporated all of the key elements, associated factors, and management control standards that we identified as necessary for a process to be comprehensive and its decisions to be transparent, repeatable, and defendable.