The Army and Marine Corps maintain organic depot maintenance capabilities that are designed to retain, at a minimum, a ready, controlled source of technical competence and resources to meet military requirements. In fiscal year 2008, DOD budgeted about $5.6 billion for the five Army and two Marine Corps maintenance depots and maintained a workforce of about 26,000 personnel at these facilities. Depot-level maintenance and repair involves materiel maintenance or repair requiring the overhaul, upgrading or rebuilding of parts assemblies and subassemblies, and testing and reclamation of equipment as necessary, regardless of the source of funds for the maintenance or repair or the location at which the maintenance or repair is performed. Army and Marine Corps depots work on a wide range of weapon systems and military equipment, such as combat vehicles, aircraft, and communications and electronics equipment. Each of the services’ depot-level activities has been designated as a Center for Industrial and Technical Excellence in the recognized core competency of the designee, pursuant to Section 2474 of Title 10, U.S Code. Table 1 describes the principal work performed at each Army and Marine Corps depot. During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, Army and Marine Corps maintenance depots—like other DOD depots—were significantly downsized as a result of reductions in the armed forces and DOD’s decision to outsource many logistics activities, including depot maintenance, to the private sector. These downsizing efforts contributed to decreased workloads at the depots and diminished their capability, reliability, and cost effectiveness for supporting requirements for legacy systems; it also reduced their opportunities to acquire work for new and modified weapon systems. The downsizing also affected the depots’ ability to obtain investments in facilities, equipment, and human capital to support their long-term viability and to ensure that they remained a key resource for repair of new and modified systems. As a result, DOD’s depots had become facilities that primarily repaired aging weapon systems and equipment. In 2003, Army and Marine Corps depots experienced an increase in workload, stemming from overseas contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contributing to this increase were efforts to reset systems such as the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, the M1 Abrams Tank, and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, as well as work related to armor fabrication and the armoring of systems such as the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement. Despite the increase in workload, the Army and Marine Corps lacked direction from DOD on a department wide strategic depot plan that clarified the future role of the military depots. We reported in April 2003 that the services and DOD had not implemented comprehensive strategic plans for defense maintenance to revitalize or protect the future viability of their depot facilities, equipment, and workers. In that report, we recommended that the services develop depot strategic plans that are linked to the services’ missions and objectives, and that DOD develop a strategic plan that provides guidance and a schedule for identifying long-term capabilities to be provided in government-owned and -operated plants. The House Armed Services Committee has previously encouraged DOD to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that the depots are viably positioned, and that they have the workforce, equipment, and facilities they need to maintain efficient operations to meet the nation’s current and future requirements. In March 2007, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics approved the DOD Depot Maintenance Strategy and Implementation Plans, which articulated OSD’s strategy and plans for ensuring that the department’s organic depot maintenance infrastructure is postured and resourced to meet the national security and management challenges of the 21st century. The plan also specified that each military service was responsible for conducting strategic planning for depot maintenance that focused on achieving DOD’s strategy. OSD required the services to submit the results of their strategic plans no later than 6 months after the publication of DOD’s plan. In March 2007, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness modified this requirement to have each service submit either its published depot maintenance strategic plan, or a report describing the process being used to develop its strategic plan, and a target date for completing the plan by September 1, 2007. The Army and Marine Corps finalized and submitted their strategic plans to OSD in 2008. In addition, the Army developed an implementation plan to accompany its strategic plan. The Marine Corps did not produce an implementation plan. While the depot maintenance strategic plans developed by the Army and the Marine Corps identify key issues affecting the depots, they do not fully address all of the elements required to achieve a results-oriented management framework, and they are not fully responsive to OSD’s direction to the services for developing their plans. Furthermore, these plans do not address uncertainties in workload that affect the depots’ ability to plan for meeting future maintenance requirements. Finally, they do not show whether and how the depots will have a role in planning for the sustainment of new and modified weapon systems. As a result of these deficiencies in their strategic plans, the Army and Marine Corps may lack assurance that their depots are postured and resourced to meet future maintenance requirements. The Army’s and the Marine Corps’ depot maintenance strategic plans do not fully address all of the elements that are needed for a comprehensive results-oriented management framework. In addition, the plans are not fully responsive to OSD’s direction to the services for developing these plans. Our prior work has shown that organizations need sound strategic management planning in order to identify and achieve long-range goals and objectives. We have identified critical elements that should be incorporated in strategic plans to establish a comprehensive, results- oriented management framework. A results-oriented management framework provides an approach whereby program effectiveness is measured in terms of outcomes or impact, rather than outputs, such as activities and processes. The framework includes critical elements such as a comprehensive mission statement, long-term goals and objectives, approaches for accomplishing goals and objectives, stakeholder involvement, external factors that may affect how goals and objectives will be accomplished, performance goals that are objective, quantifiable, and measurable, resources needed to meet performance goals, performance indicators or metrics that measure outcomes and gauge progress, and an evaluation plan that monitors the goals and objectives. OSD also directed the services to include many of the elements in their depot maintenance strategic plans. Specifically, the OSD criteria stated that each military service’s plan should include a comprehensive mission statement, general goals and objectives (including outcome-related goals and objectives), a description of how the goals and objectives are to be achieved, metrics that will be applied to gauge progress, key factors external to the respective service and beyond its control that could significantly affect the achievement of their general goals and objectives, and descriptions of the program evaluations used in establishing, monitoring, or revising goals and objectives, with a schedule for future program evaluations. Furthermore, OSD directed the services to address a number of specific issues in their strategic plans, including logistics transformation, core logistics capability assurance, workforce revitalization, and capital investment. OSD wanted the services, at a minimum, to address these four issues because it believed they were critical to ensuring the depots would be postured and resourced to meet future requirements. Based on our evaluation of the Army’s and Marine Corps’ depot maintenance strategic plans, we found that the plans partially address the elements for a results-oriented management framework. While the services’ strategic plans address key issues affecting the depots and contain mission statements, along with long-term goals and objectives, they do not fully address all the elements needed for sound strategic planning. Elements not fully addressed in the strategic plans are Approaches for accomplishing goals and objectives; Stakeholder involvement in developing the plan; External factors that may affect how goals and objectives will be Performance goals that are objective, quantifiable, and measurable; Resources required to meet performance goals; Performance indicators or metrics that measure outcomes and gauge progress of the goals and objectives; and An evaluation plan that monitors the goals and objectives. Table 2 summarizes, based on our evaluation, the extent to which the Army and Marine Corps depot maintenance strategic plans address the strategic planning elements needed for a comprehensive results-oriented management framework. The Army’s and Marine Corps’ depot maintenance strategic plans partially address logistics transformation, core logistics capability assurance, workforce revitalization, and capital investment—the four issues that OSD directed each service, at a minimum, to include in their plans. Table 3 summarizes, based on our evaluation, the extent to which the Army and Marine Corps depot maintenance strategic plans discuss these four issues. Army and Marine Corps officials involved with the development of the service strategic plans acknowledged that their plans do not fully address the OSD criteria, but they stated that the plans nevertheless address issues they believe are critical to maintaining effective, long-term depot maintenance capabilities. An official in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, G4, who was involved with the Army’s depot maintenance strategic plan acknowledged that the Army’s plan does not fully address OSD’s criteria. According to this official, the Army’s plan focuses on issues of greatest priority to the service’s depots. The official added that the OSD criteria lacked clear and specific instructions to the services. According to an official in the Marine Corps’ Logistics Plans, Policy, and Strategic Mobility Division who was involved with that service’s depot maintenance strategic plan, the Marine Corps’ plan was intended to be only an overarching outline and was not intended to provide the detailed “nuts and bolts” that would be needed for implementation. The Army and Marine Corps have not updated their strategic plan since initially submitting them to OSD in 2008, and since that time neither service has received notice from OSD that its plan did not meet OSD’s criteria or should be revised and updated.