By
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on April 07, 2021 at 3:50 PM
SOURCE: Government Accountability Office (GAO)
WASHINGTON: The GAO just released a new report on military readiness trends from 2017 to 2019, one based on earlier classified reports to Congress, that found naval forces were in the worst shape, largely due to maintenance backlogs at shipyards.
The report did not cover 2020, when the COVID pandemic scrambled training plans, forced the cancellation of many exercises and further hobbled the already-stumbling shipyards.
Military units sampled by the GAO readiness study. SOURCE: Government Accountability Office (GAO)
GAO sampled dozens of different types of units from across the military: Navy ships and submarines; Army and Marine ground units; air units from across the services, everything from F-35 fighters to AH-64 helicopters; and undisclosed cyber and space units.