Overview | Training by Country | Training by Program | 1998 Training data

Link to the Foreign Military Training Report at www.state.gov: Report on 2005, September 2006 Report on 2004, April 2005 Report on 2003, July 2004 Report on 2002, May 2003 Report on 2001, May 2002 Report on 2000, January 2001 Report on 1999, March 2000

Memorandum: Analysis of the 2006 Foreign Military Training Report (November 2006) Recent trends in military training, as revealed by an annual State and Defense Department report. - Printer-friendly Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format

Overview

Section 581 of the 1999 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act contained a signifsicant advance in congressional oversight of foreign military assistance. This provision required the Departments of State and Defense to provide a detailed report on all military training that the United States provided to foreign military personnel the previous year, plus estimates of training for the current year.¹

For every military training activity, the Foreign Military Training Report (or "FMTR") must include the activity's foreign policy justification and purpose, the number of foreign military personnel provided training and their units of operation, the location of the training, the U.S. military units involved, the aggregate number of students trained from each country, the aggregate cost of military training activities with each country, and the operational benefits to U.S. personnel derived from each military training activity. The law allows the Defense and State Departments to include a classified annex "if deemed necessary and appropriate."

The report appeared again in subsequent Foreign Operations Appropriations bills, this time excluding training purchased by the recipient countries and training of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members.

Simultaneously, section 1307 of the 2000-2001 "Foreign Relations Authorization Act" permanently added the Foreign Military Training Report to U.S. foreign aid law. The measure added a new section (section 656) to the Foreign Assistance Act requiring that the report be submitted each year by January 31. Section 656 does not exempt NATO countries or purchased training, and while it allows classified information to be provided in a separate annex, it requires that all unclassified information be posted on the Internet.

The first FMTR, released in mid-1999, was delivered to Congress in four bound volumes. Each was presented in a fashion that did not facilitate oversight: a sparse introduction followed by raw data, no page numbers, and no totaling of information. Though many U.S. programs offer foreign military training, the first FMTR grouped most of its training listings into only two categories: "IMET" and “Other Security Assistance.” The first category corresponded to the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, while the second combined many programs, among them International Narcotics Control (INC), Foreign Military Financing (FMF), emergency drawdowns, “Section 1004” Defense Department training, and training purchased through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. A separate section released later listed Special Forces training deployments, including counter-drug training and the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program. Though JCET listings also appear in a report the Pentagon releases each April, this report and the JCET section of the FMTR were far from identical, containing numerous discrepancies.

The 1999 report was also produced in CD-ROM format. The authors of this study analyzed the information in both the hard copy and CD-ROM versions of the FMTR and found numerous inconsistencies and often puzzling data. After submitting questions to the Defense Department seeking clarification, the authors received the following response:

Your analysis did indeed uncover a technical problem we had not previously detected. Discrepancies between the CD-ROM and printed versions of the training report appear to result from a coding error in the data translation algorithm used to produce the CD-ROM....We recognize that inconsistent accounting methods have produced confusion in some areas of the Training Report....However, we do believe that if the Report is read as a statistical snapshot, as opposed to a source of detailed information, it can be a useful resource.²

The 2000 version of the FMTR contained some improvements. Foreign policy justifications for each country's training program were more complete, funding sources were more specifically accounted (with no catch-all categories like "Other Security Assistance"), and the addition of sums and page numbers made it more user-friendly. Cost estimates, for the most part, appeared to reflect reality more closely -- though, as the tables below indicate, there are still significant discrepancies. (Compare the IMET cost figures below, for instance, with the consistently higher totals on this database's main IMET page, which uses information from the State Department's 2001 Congressional Presentation for Foreign Operations).

The new version of the FMTR contained far less information overall than its predecessor, however, as it moved several key pieces of information to its classified annex. Dates and locations of training, the U.S. units involved, and the foreign units trained were all omitted from the public version.

Removing locations from the report made it impossible for those without security clearances to learn how much training takes place in the United States and how much is carried out overseas, or to determine how many foreign students attend U.S. training institutions such as the School of the Americas or the Inter-American Air Forces Academy. The omission of foreign units trained made it impossible to oversee the U.S. government's implementation of the Leahy Amendment, a law banning assistance to any foreign military unit that includes individuals who have violated human rights with impunity.

Reports since 2001 continue to include a classified annex, but do not classify total numbers of students trained as in 2000. Information about locations and students' units has been restored, though the latter are often vague (with units specified as "army" or "police").

Training by country [7]

Training by program [7]