A Defense Department inspector is taking a close look at the contract for maintenance of the Army's Stryker vehicles.

A new report says the Army could be saving money on its contract with General Dynamics to maintain roughly 1,000 Army Strkyer vehicles at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

The 19 ton vehicles cost about $123,000 a year to keep moving, The News Tribune ( http://is.gd/OfWwV7) reported In Sunday's newspaper.

Defense department inspectors believe the Army could have saved money if less had been spent on anticipated future expenses. General Dynamics stocked up on unnecessary inventory at taxpayers' expense to the tune of $335.9 million, the auditors found.

The auditors found the company had every incentive to spend its allotted amount each year rather than defer spending on parts for replacements and upgrades.

General Dynamics did not respond to written questions from The News Tribune and the Inspector General did not return a call for comment to the paper.

As a result of the audit, the Inspector General said General Dynamics set aside $152.4 million worth of equipment to reduce costs on upcoming work.

"The sole focus on operational readiness created an incentive for the contractor to spend all available funds on Army inventory, valued by General Dynamics at about $676.2 million, resulting in little, if any, cost risk for the contractor or incentive to control cost," the report said.

The high costs of logistics support for Strykers reflects in part the many revisions to the vehicle that have been installed since the start of the Iraq War.

General Dynamics manufactured the first Stryker in 2001. There are now 17 Stryker variants, including the heavily armored, slanted-hull varieties that two Lewis-McChord infantry brigades are using to carry weapons and 11 soldiers each in Afghanistan.

General Dynamics consistently met performance targets of keeping more than 90 percent of each Stryker brigade's vehicles ready to fight. A brigade usually has about 300 Strykers.

The Inspector General has asked the Army's Ground Combat Systems Office to consider more criteria, such as costs per mile. The report blames the Army for creating the system that led to the overspending.

The Inspector General found that the Ground Systems Office failed to "adequately define performance-based contract requirements in clear, specific, and objective terms with measurable outcomes."

The Michigan-based Army Ground Combat Systems Office, which oversees the contract and works closely with General Dynamics to upgrade the vehicles, told the Inspector General it would incorporate the audit's recommendations despite reservations about how the investigators reached their conclusions.

The Stryker management office rejected the Inspector's General's assertion that the Army was failing to control costs in sustaining the vehicles. It said the Stryker program provides weekly updates to a four-star general, holds monthly cost-management reviews and makes regular calls on its contract logistics hubs, including the one at Lewis-McChord.

It said the Inspector General was wrong when it wrote that the report spurred the Stryker office to redirect $152.4 million in equipment. Those savings, the Stryker office said, were attributed to a planned transition assigning more of the maintenance work to active-duty soldiers instead of civilian contractors.

In addition to revealing how the Pentagon pays for the upkeep of its Stryker fleet, the Inspector General report is full of information describing how soldiers have used the infantry vehicle over the past 10 years of war.

It shows that:

- 77 Strykers have been completely destroyed in combat.

-Stryker brigades have deployed 16 times, mostly to Iraq, by the time of the audit.

- Strykers clocked more than 40 million miles in combat theaters.

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Information from: The News Tribune, http://www.thenewstribune.com