Colonel PACKARD. We have the two programs. One is the obvious type that you say, fair wear and tear or through damage which we recognize day by day. The other one is to determine at some level what we want to retain. I say that the benefit and advantage we gain by having such a program is tremendous.

Today we are in a fairly difficult situation on this problem, and we know what the situation is, and we know that the costs are being reduced.

Now, how are we going to do what we consider a big job with what we have got? The only way to do that is to get rid of a job that takes up personnel and space without giving us a return.

If we had 15 percent of our Air Force base personnel occupied with obsolescent or dead stock, and then we could take that 15 percent and apply them to more useful work, it would be worth while.

Mr. COTTER. Have you got the other job done to where you can devote your personnel to this job, in which your considered guess might be wrong. From what little I have heard today, I haven't heard much about this cleaning out across-the-board of worthless property. I have heard a lot of Springclean, and I haven't heard much about Springclean taking into consideration

Colonel PACKARD. We have a normal program that goes on all the time, just like cataloging. I told you about the Federal cataloging. We have a full program ourselves.

Mr. HAINES. We have been trying to carry on an educational campaign to our people that an obsolete part represents just as much as a critical part and that you must cleanse your system of them.

In many instances when it is definitely determined that we do not want to use an item in the system, it is cataloged in a code that indicates that any quantities in the warehouse and any other quantities in use will be disposed of.

We find that many of our people put that account down in a lower category. It has a lower priority. They had priority requisitions when things were hot in Korea and they had to get that out there, and this other material, well, "we will get that out when we are not so busy." It is a sort of a natural reaction, and we have been trying to overcome that.

The people at Warner Robins Air Material Area have been trying to ferret it out of their system. We are working on that constantly, and we write them a letter on that about every 3 or 4 months and ask them whether they have taken care of it. That, we feel, is a normal, everyday thing.

Colonel PACKARD. I think we are. We have got the mechanics set up for it and recognize the problem, and as in every case we try to do a better job. Now the emphasis has got to be placed on this. Perhaps you are saying this is a job over and above what we are normally set up for. Once we get the big push out of the way, then we can devote ourselves to regular operations.

Mr. HAINES. Recently, effective the 1st of October there was a reorganization of the disposal activities within the depot. We combined several groups of people working on this into one organization, and one of the functions that we spelled out was that this organization would search out this material, the idle stocks which may or may not be obsolete but on which we would get a determination. If some of this stuff had been in the warehouses in a corner they would bring

that to light and move it out. They are really the survey group to ferret out a great deal of this property, the definitely obsolete property, or for which disposal authority has existed for some time. We do feel we have some of it in our system, but we are honestly trying to get it out of our system.

I think we have also covered the second phase of our criteria, which was the computation of those aeronautical items peculiar to World War II type aircraft on which we did not have retirement dates. On those we kept five times the current program requirements, which Colonel Packard mentioned in his presentation this morning, or the mobilization requirement, whichever is greater, and we disposed of any quantities above that figure.

Now, then, on military items applicable to aircraft, I might explain one thing here to you, a military item. Our definition of that is an item which is manufactured to a military specification. It may be a commercial item which has some slight change in it, some adaptation, or it may be an out-and-out military design. That is to distinguish it from a commercial item which is an off-the-shelf item which you can buy from the hardware store or direct from the manufacturer or from the local dealer, and there is no special design to it. Mr. BALWAN. What is an example of a military item?

Mr. HAINES. The airport radar, for instance.

Mr. BALWAN. Guns, for instance?

Mr. HAINES. Yes.

Mr. BALWAN. Fire-control system?

Mr. HAINES. Yes, definitely, those items which are not necessarily a part of the aircraft but which in some way contribute to the aircraft's mission.

Now then, on military items applicable to aircraft, we apply the same criteria that we apply on the aircraft themselves. In other words, if the item is applicable to an aircraft which had a retirement date, we kept enough to carry us until that aircraft was out of the system. If it is not, we kept five times the apparent total requirements.

Then we had military items not applicable to aircraft. Now on that type of item we might have mess equipment, which is a military item but does not have application to aircraft. On that we kept five times the current program requirements or the mobilization requirements, whichever was the greater.

Then we had commercial items in the last category. If we had had no issue for the last 3 years we could dispose of it, or if we had some issues, whichever was greater, then we could dispose of those items. Are there any questions on that phase so far?

Mr. COTTER. Does the B-29 fall into the category which you have just mentioned, of military items not applicable to aircraft shown on your chart here as item Ď?

Colonel PACKARD. It falls into item B, Aeronautical Items peculiar to World War II type aircraft not having retirement dates, five times the current program requirements or the mobilization requirements, whichever is greater.

Mr. IKARD. I would like to talk a little bit about the overall results of Operation Springclean.

Mr. HAINES. I am coming to that a little later.

Colonel PACKARD. This determination of whether to keep 5 times, which is 5 years or 4 years or 6 years, is a decision which you gentle

men could make or we could make, and it is a matter of considered judgment. We have no magic formula for selecting a point. Mr. IKARD. And the odds are that whatever figure you select will

be wrong.

Colonel PACKARD. Undoubtedly you cannot apply 5 years to every item, and therefore this is all a matter of judgment.

Mr. IKARD. It has to be. It cannot be anything else.

Mr. COTTER. Are you gaining any profit from your Springclean Operation by an analysis of why you were so long in certain items! I know that there are certain factors that are readily determinable due to circumstances, but are you finding or is any effort being made to find that some of the reasons are bad procurement or reliance on, say, the manufacturer to supply the parts?

Colonel PACKARD. Actually your point is well taken. To answer you very honestly, we probably will not because in the determination of this computation, the clerk who makes it is so busy trying to make the determination, and the buying was done so long ago, and it would take probably a long time in each case to determine whether the consumption data was bad, or whether the mission changed, or whether it became obsolete through technical change, for instance. Let me point out that the same individual in our decentralization in our procurement program is making the same decision as to the disposal and I am sure they are putting them all together and it has an effect, but I would say no, generally.

Colonel JOHNSON. For instance, not necessarily Springclean and the question of whether it was bad procurement, but we have used it for the P-47 particularly on wing sections. We bought heavy and we just had a lot of wing sections because we expected a very heavy attrition on them. It never occurred. We ended the war with a lot of wing sections.

We are now procuring only three total. Now, it wasn't Springclean that brought that up, but it was the experience of having known that this attrition didn't take place in a pretty darned good shooting war. Those wings cost a lot of money, and we are using that experience.

WARNER ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE EXHIBIT No. 2

PROJECT SPRING CLEAN

The initial phase of project 'spring
clean, which was the computation of
retention levels by AMC depots in ac-
cordance with the above disposal
criteria, resulted in the following:

Total No. prime items reported.
Total No. items subject to
disposal criteria.

Na items reflecting excesses.

Dollar value of excesses..

924,385

424,215 or 46%

55,417 or 13%

276,582,162

266760,148

$ 543,342,310

Total dollar value of excesses

MATERIAL SUBJECT TO REMOVAL

FROM AF STOCKS

Aircraft engines are subjet to further recla-
mation for parts.

Mr. HAINES. The initial phase of the project was a computation of the retention levels. That work was accomplished by the 15 prime depots for the classes in which they were prime.

The 15 prime depots had nine hundred and twenty-four thousandsome items, and of those, 424,000, or 46 percent, would fall under these criteria. You will ask, possibly, what happened to the other 500,000 items. Those were applicable to aircraft, we will say, for instance, which were not covered by this program because under this we were not computing on any post World War II aircraft, and if it had application to a post World War II aircraft we could not compute it under these criteria we had.

We ran into the factor that while it might be used on a World War II aircraft, the same item might have been used on a post World War II aircraft. For instance, Boeing makes certain planes today and there are certain items which have been used on all the aircraft being made by them now, and one example is the rivet. If they had application to post World War II aircraft, we did not dispose of them. So that is the reason why we got only 46 percent of the items.

We found that 55,000 items, or 13 percent of the total, actually had

excesses.

We computed these retention levels and utilizing the stock balance report which Colonel Packard covered in his presentation this morning, we compared our assets with our requirements and we determined

whether we had an overall Air Force excess of that item. Now, admittedly, as we said before, this was a very careful program and we were required to keep pretty high levels, so actually we computed 424,000 items and found only 55,000 which had excesses on them. Those excesses amounted to $276,582,162.

Mr. IKARD. Now, on this item, for instance, of gunnery equipment, there are 3,197 items of which 664 were reviewed in Springclean. Of that number, 515 were in excess. Do you mean to say that all of the items that were not reviewed were related to post World War II aircraft?

Mr. HAINES. There may be a procurement status on that.

Colonel PACKARD. If we were buying the item we would assume there is no disposal of it because if we had to make a computation to determine what we were buying and if we took the assumption it was

excess

Mr. IKARD. Is it correct to say that every item that related to World War II or a pre World War II aircraft was reviewed in Springclean? Colonel PACKARD. If it was not on procurement status, that is a correct assumption.

Mr. HAINES. They had to review it to justify the procurement. I think you gentlemen realize that these are line items.

In other words, these are 55,000 different groups of items. In other words, 1 item might be a table, for instance, but we might have 500 tables and that still would be only 1 line item so far as this is concerned. Now, in addition to the overall program, we have $266 million in engines which will be explained later.

This property has only been authorized for disposal and we will have to go into the disposal process as prescribed.

Mr. IKARD. And down to that point this is purely a paper computation? There has been no actual identification of material involved. Mr. HAINES. That is right.

Mr. IKARD. What did your experience show with reference to your records? It seems to me that you would have to assume that your records were 100 percent completely correct to come up with that figure.

Mr. HAINES. To answer your question, and as you have mentioned this morning, it is more or less an estimate and is based on our inventory data.

We provided for a final audit of what we came up with. The prime depot made the computation of what the Air Force needs, and we decided what we were going to keep and how much we would keep, and how much Warner Robins would keep in the Eastern Zone, and how much the opposite zone would keep.

Taking Warner Robins, they would determine where in the zone. they wanted to retain this property, how much would be retained at the base and how much at the depot. They established a retention level. They might have decided that at Turner Air Force Base in Georgia it is okay but at Pine Castle in Florida they have too much. So they have 100 of this item and the consumption shows they need only 75, and therefore we will establish a level of 75 and expect them to dispose of 25.

When they go down to Pine Castle they are given a specific number of days. They are to count what they have and make sure they keep