
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990                   TAG: 9003071748
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Short

MILITARY STORAGE OVERFLOWS

Gorged by years of fat budgets, the Pentagon's warehouses are now full to overflowing with spare parts and supplies that in many cases have become worthless, Congress was told Tuesday.

The Defense Department's $103 billion supply system has become a "high risk" area for the government, said Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, which has been tracking the worsening spare parts problem since 1987.

Tuesday, the Government Accounting Office laid three more reports on a growing stack at the committee outlining some of the worst excesses disclosed thus far.

They ranged from a deliberate deceptive order for a million more uniform shirts than the armed services needed, to $3 billion in spare parts that were already obsolete by the time they arrived.

The GAO was especially critical of the Air Force and Navy's excessive aircraft parts inventory, which has grown to $13 billion.

The report covered procurement practices at the Navy's Aviation Supply Center in Philadelphia and the Air Force Logistics Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Between 1980 and 1988, the GAO found the Air Force's inventory of "unrequired" spare aircraft parts increased by nearly 300 percent, from $2 billion to $7.9 billion.

Overall, $34 billion of the Defense Department's entire $103 billion inventory was in unrequired items, the GAO found.

by CNB