Defense Management: The Department of Defense's Fiscal Year 2012 Corrosion Prevention and Control Budget Request

In 2010, the Department of Defense (DOD) estimated that corrosion costs the DOD over $22.9 billion annually. Corrosion negatively affects all military assets, including both equipment and infrastructure, and is defined as the unintended destruction or deterioration of a material due to its interaction with the environment. Corrosion also affects military readiness, taking critical systems out of action and creating safety hazards. Congress has enacted several legislative requirements to address the high cost of corrosion on military equipment and infrastructure, including legislation that created the Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight (Corrosion Office) within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. The Corrosion Office is responsible for the prevention and mitigation of corrosion of military equipment and infrastructure and, according to officials, manages funding for DOD-wide corrosion prevention and control (CPC) activities and CPC projects proposed by the Military Departments. Section 2228(e) of Title 10 of the United States Code requires DOD to annually report on CPC funding to Congress. Additionally, the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 required each Military Department's corrosion control and prevention executive to submit an annual report with recommendations pertaining to his or her Department's CPC program, including corrosion-related funding levels to carry out all of the duties of the executive. In fiscal year (FY) 2011, Congress expanded the requirement for DOD to report on its CPC efforts by adding to or revising existing elements. Section 2228(e), as recently amended, requires DOD to annually submit a report to Congress on corrosion funding as part of its annual budget submission. In the report, DOD is to address funding requirements for its long-term corrosion reduction strategy, the return on investment (ROI) that would be achieved by implementing the strategy, the current and previous fiscal year funds requested in the budget compared to funding requirements, an explanation if funding requirements are not fully funded in the budget, and the current and previous fiscal year amount of funds requested in the budget for each project or activity described in its long-term strategy compared to the funding requirements for the project or activity. This letter provides our mandated analysis of DOD's CPC budget request and the Corrosion Office's accompanying report for FY 2012. Accordingly, our objectives were to: (1) determine the extent to which DOD's corrosion report addressed the mandated requirements, (2) assess the extent to which the CPC budget request met total estimated CPC funding requirements for activities and preliminary project proposals as stated in the FY 2012 DOD corrosion report, and (3) calculate the potential cost avoidance for DOD's CPC budget request and reported budget shortfall identified in the FY 2012 DOD corrosion report.