Small Wars Journal

SIGAR Audit of DOD-funded Advising Efforts in Afghanistan

Thu, 11/01/2018 - 12:32am

SIGAR Audit of DOD-funded Advising Efforts in Afghanistan

 

Yesterday, SIGAR released an audit of Department of Defense (DOD)-funded advising efforts in the Afghan Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of the Interior (MOI) from January 2015 to April 2018.

Key Findings

-- Since 2010, DOD has awarded four contracts, worth $1.62 billion, to DynCorp International to provide contract advisors at MOD and MOI. Two of these contracts, worth $421 million, are ongoing and expected to end in November 2018.

-- Because DOD has not fully planned, monitored, or evaluated it, the progress and impact of DOD's advising efforts to build the MOD and MOI capacity is unknown, despite millions U.S. funding over the past three years.

-- DOD, Congress, and taxpayers lack the information necessary to assess the impact the advising effort has made in building the capacity of MOD and MOI, or the effectiveness of its $421 million advising contracts.

-- DOD lacks a baseline and consistent metrics to measure progress, meaning DOD cannot assess the effectiveness of the advising effort over time.

-- DOD cannot track progress, if any, at MOD and MOI because the advising goals and rating system used to measure progress toward meeting those goals has frequently changed.

-- From January 2015 to December 2016, 96% of the plans of action and milestones (POAM) goals for MOD and 86% of the POAMs for MOI changed.

-- DOD reassigns personnel to advising duties once they are in Afghanistan, but does not track reassignments. As a result, neither the Joint CHiefs of Staff nor those responsible for planning staffing requirements know whether they are requesting personnel with the right type of experience or enough personnel for advising positions at the ministries.

-- DOD does not ensure that all uniformed personnel complete advisor training before deploying to Afghanistan, despite CENTCOM requirements.

-- In an anonymous survey conducted by SIGAR, 9 out of 20 deployed U.S. military personnel serving in advising roles indicated that they did not receive any advisor training before deploying. Furthermore, according to officials interviewed, the uniformed advisors tend to have the least advisory specific training. 

-- According to a former CSTC-A Commander, "Proper training is probably the most important aspect that must be addressed during pre-deployment training." However, CENTCOM could not tell SIGAR which uniformed personnel attended required programs, and the command does not track which advisors complete training.

The full report can be found here.