By Emelie Rutherford

The Pentagon inadequately tracked thousands of surplus weapons and vehicles provided to foreign countries in recent years, creating a potential security threat, according to the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General (IG).

The DoD IG found in a recent audit that four areas of the Pentagon–the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS) and three Pentagon transportation offices–“did not fully account for” more than 7,000 line items of excess defense articles provided to foreign governments.

“DoD transportation offices and DRMS did not have effective controls in place because of inadequate oversight and guidance for transferring excess defense articles,” states the DOD IG’s Feb. 13 audit report. “As a result of these deficiencies in controls over excess defense articles, DoD transportation offices and DRMS increased the risk of providing foreign governments unauthorized property that could be used to threaten our national security.”

Of 7,373 defense line items transferred to 19 countries from October 2001 through March 2006, up to 7,259 articles, “including M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns, and armored personnel carriers, were not properly tracked, safeguarded, accounted for, or reconciled,” the IG estimates.

As many as 291 of the 7,373 line items–including M-16 parts–were shipped to governments not authorized to have them, and up to 960 of the 7,373 articles were not shipped with proper instructions on how to demilitarize them to thwart misuse, the audit estimates.

The IG came to these conclusions by analyzing a statistical sample of 175 line items of surplus defense articles shipped during the five-plus-year period under scrutiny.

The report does not list the foreign governments that received the inadequately controlled surplus weapons.

It recommends the U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) revise the regulation that DoD transportation offices follow, so that they must identify, track and control each line item the offices ship. And the audit advises that the Air Force, Navy, and DLA transportation offices it investigated conduct periodic reviews of shipping documents to better account for transferred items.

The IG recommends the DRMS take multiple steps, including developing a policy to account for small arms and establishing a procedure to prevent managers from authorizing shipments of excess defense articles not approved by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

After the DoD IG issued a draft of the audit on March 14, 2008, Pentagon offices concurred with many of the recommendations. However, the DoD IG states it did not receive comments from the DLA’s executive director for materiel policy, process, and assessment on all the recommendations; the report, thus, requests additional information from that office by March 13 of this year.

All told, the DoD reported providing excess defense articles, with an acquisition value of $2 billion, to 57 friendly foreign governments from October 2001 through March 2006.

In addition to the DLA, the Army also provides large quantities of surplus items to other countries. However, the DoD IG reviewed controls at the Army’s Security Assistance and found no weaknesses, the report says.

The DoD IG’s audit was conducted from March 1, 2006, through March 14, 2008.