Starting on Feb 20, 2022, the contract that supports the Army Oil Analysis Program (AOAP) will experience a gap in service. As a result, the AOAP labs located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Hood, Texas; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; and Camp Arifjan, Kuwait will not be analyzing oil samples until a new contract is put into place.
This doesn’t mean units will stop taking oil samples. There is a new procedure being put into place to fill this gap. Units will follow their current maintenance schedule and continue to mail or deliver samples to their servicing laboratory.
Samples normally analyzed at Bragg, Hood and Lewis-McChord will be collected at the lab and shipped to the lab at Redstone Arsenal (RSA), Alabama. Those normally analyzed at Arifjan will be collected and shipped to the lab at Kaiserslautern Army Depot, Germany. The Camp Humphreys, Korea, lab will remain open and conduct business as usual.
At RSA, the samples will be analyzed according to the following order: crash investigations, special aeronautical, routine aeronautical, special non-aeronautical and routine non-aeronautical.
Because of lab capacity, the required turnaround times will be affected and take longer than normal.
Bottom line: there’s no change to when a sample is due to be taken. The change is where the sample is analyzed, how it gets there and the length of time it takes the lab to process it.
Be sure to routinely check this website, which will provide an update as soon as the new contract is in place and the idled labs are operational again.