The Army Did Not Properly Account for and Manage Force Provider Equipment in Afghanistan

Our audit objective was to determine whether DoD properly accounted for Force Provider (FP) equipment in Afghanistan. See Appendix A for the Scope and Methodology and Appendix B for a list of prior audit coverage. FP equipment is the Army's premier life support base camp system that is a containerized and highly deployable "tent city." The FP concept began in 1991 as a result of inadequate living conditions for soldiers during Operations Desert Shield and Storm. FP modules consist of military and commercial equipment, which includes climate-controlled billeting, food preparation and dining facilities, hygiene services, and morale, welfare and recreation facilities. FP modules accommodate up to 600 personnel and can also be divided into four, 150-man expeditionary base camps. FP can be issued as a complete module or as individual expeditionary base camps. A single FP module is packaged in approximately 103 triple containers, five 20-foot containers, 27 trailer-mounted generators, and assorted other self-storing items. This facilitates transportation by any combination of air, rail, land, and sea. See Figure 1 below for examples of FP module setup in Afghanistan. FP is part of Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS) and is recorded as Theater Provided Equipment (TPE) when deployed. The Army produced five different versions of FP modules: A, B, C, D, and E. The Army only deployed versions B, C, and D to Afghanistan and is only retrograding items from versions C and D that TACOM Life Cycle Management Command (TACOM) identified as required for reset.