The United States plays a unique and important role among nations. The diverse demands of today’s international security environment mean that the United States continues to require the best trained, best equipped, and best prepared military forces, capable of performing a wide range of missions effectively. Recruiting, training, retaining, equipping, and providing for these forces is an ambitious undertaking and the number one priority of the Department of Defense. The Department’s challenge is to maintain the appropriate balance between the competing priorities of modernization, ongoing mission responsibilities, and current readiness. Thus, readiness is Government Performance and Results Act Corporate-Level Goal 5.

Overall, the Department’s first-to-fight units continue to remain at high levels of readiness, while the readiness of later deploying units remains within historical norms. All major combat and key support forces are ready to respond effectively, and the Department is pursuing a number of initiatives to ensure their continued readiness. DoD routinely assesses the readiness of its forces to respond to a variety of scenarios, ranging from major theater war through the full range of smaller-scale contingencies to selected asymmetrical threats.

While the overall readiness of forces is good, the Department is closely watching a few areas of concern. These concerns include issues such as personnel tempo (PERSTEMPO) and pilot retention. Managing the load on people, known as the PERSTEMPO level, is critical to maintaining a ready force. As General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated in his confirmation hearing, "Foremost is a conviction that people are more important than hardware." Military members are currently shouldering a large deployment schedule. DoD’s ongoing operations involve about 35,000-40,000 people at any time. With a force of nearly a million and a half active duty personnel, and nearly a million Reservists, this is a load the Department can meet. But the burden is not always spread evenly. Certain military skills or specialized units may be called on to deploy more often than others. DoD’s new Global Military Force Policy is one of the initiatives undertaken to improve the way the load on people is regulated.

DoD faces another problem in pilot retention. Increased airline hiring, coupled with the earlier force drawdown, has raised concerns about maintaining a robust pool of qualified pilots for the future. All Services are aggressively managing this situation, with initiatives including reduced pilot deployment tempo, improved quality of life, and increased aviation compensation.

America’s leadership in world affairs relies on ready military forces. Because U.S. forces are organized and trained to support the National Security Strategy, they must be prepared for, and on occasion must engage in, operations that support the full spectrum of national interests.

The U.S. military plays an essential role in building coalitions and shaping the international environment in ways that protect and promote U. S. interests. On a day-to-day basis U.S. defense efforts help to:

Despite best efforts to shape the international security environment, the U.S. military will, at times, be called upon to respond to crises in order to protect U.S. interests, demonstrate U.S. resolve, and reaffirm the role of the United States as a global leader.

Therefore, U.S. forces must also be able to execute the full spectrum of military operations. These include:

Forces must meet standards in terms of the:

Keeping U.S. forces ready to fight requires an appropriate force structure, modernized equipment, adequate maintenance, training and logistics support, and the requisite trained and motivated personnel. A deficiency in any of these elements can hurt readiness, inhibiting force deployment. In managing readiness, the Department strives to maintain a balance among these crucial elements to ensure that forces arrive on time and fully capable to meet mission demands. All units are expected to meet their readiness goals.

As the United States moves into the next century, it is imperative it maintain the military superiority essential to global leadership. To be able to respond effectively in the future, DoD must strive for information superiority and technological innovations.

It takes resources and time to develop and sustain ready forces. Readiness is a cumulative process, the result of many years of care and attention. It takes 20 years to develop senior military leaders, five to ten years to develop and field technologically superior equipment, and one to two years to develop a sustainment program to provide trained and ready units. Meeting DoD readiness goals in today’s dynamic political, fiscal, and operating environment presents a daily challenge. A decline in resources and adequately educated and trained people will lengthen the amount of time it takes to rebuild readiness. Through its efforts to ensure a highly capable force, DoD has encountered tough challenges to readiness. Those challenges fall into four key areas: attracting and retaining quality people, training the forces, keeping equipment ready, and ensuring ready forces.

One of the top challenges to readiness is managing the various demands placed on the forces, while ensuring they remain trained and ready. The time service members spend away from home station, PERSTEMPO, places stress on both the individuals and their families. Similarly, excessive PERSTEMPO by some personnel may shift an extra workload to those who remain at the home station. Deployments are a part of military service. Yet, it is necessary to balance the needs of the Service for training, exercises, and peacetime operations with the needs of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for a stable and predictable tempo level. To that end, DoD has taken the following steps to better manage and monitor the peacetime tempo of the force:

The Department also is exploring whether additional initiatives are needed to regulate excessive PERSTEMPO.

Another emerging readiness issue is pilot retention. Early indications are that the Department will be unable to retain the optimal number of pilots due to airline hiring and PERSTEMPO concerns. While no immediate readiness impacts are forecast, these critical personnel assets need to be managed carefully since a capable and combat ready pilot takes years to develop. The Department is taking this issue very seriously. The military departments have initiatives planned to mitigate the potential shortfall. Plans include enhancing compensation packages and reducing PERSTEMPO to improve quality of life.

The Department’s training objective is to ensure that U.S. forces have the highest quality education and training, tailored to needs, delivered whenever and wherever it is required. The challenge is for DoD to modernize its training policies and processes to ensure that forces are continually ready to meet the challenges of today’s dynamic global strategic environment.

Service unit training is a key building block to Service readiness. Normally, unit training is scheduled periodically so that all individuals may complete their Service mission essential task list training and thus maintain the unit’s required readiness. The military departments continue to pursue vigorous unit training programs. The Air Force, for example, has recently developed a new approach to ensure that units’ required flying hours are based on meeting the CINCs’ operational needs. The Department continues to resource unit training for first deploying forces at 100 percent of requirement, to ensure highly ready forces in times of crisis.

Many of DoD’s engagement operations impact a unit’s ability to meet all its training objectives. For example, because units deployed in support of humanitarian operations are not using wartime fighting skills, their participation can degrade training readiness. While this sometimes occurs, it presents an acceptable risk to meeting the National Security Strategy. The Department recognizes this issue and has initiatives under way to mitigate the negative effects. For example, Army units in Bosnia rotate crews to Hungary to accomplish gunnery training.

The Department’s training will involve new environments and methods of learning and performance aiding. It will use information technologies to provide an integrated global network of knowledge resources. It will be more distributed, adaptive, and tailored to operational missions and tasks. In particular, the training will take advantage of key advances in learning technology.

Today’s operations involve joint/interservice interactions at organizational levels lower than envisioned in traditionally designed military force structure and doctrine. The Department is using the explosion in modeling and simulation technology to allow less expensive, more realistic, and more frequent training of joint command and control elements.

Because each operation is unique, forces require additional on-the-spot training to prepare for new roles. Embedding training in the unit itself, either on the operational platform or in a deployable training device (such as a simulator), allows just-in-time training tailored to the immediate situation.

The Department’s training infrastructure is large and requires a large end strength because so many people must spend time in schools rather than in operational units. With advanced distributed learning, the Department can take training and education to the student, teaching or reinforcing infrequently used or quickly forgotten skills on training devices located in the unit. By permitting people to remain in their operational units, distributed learning increases unit readiness. It also allows for a more efficient training infrastructure.

Since late 1996, the Air Force has experienced some decline in the overall engine mission capable rates and spare engine availability. This deterioration of Air Force engines has been a result of many factors, including technical problems, base realignment and closure actions, spare parts shortages, and resource levels. Although these engine problems have not seriously degraded unit readiness, the Department is aggressively working to rectify these engine issues. To that end, the Air Force has implemented both near- and long-term policies. For the near term, policies focus on improving parts support to the repair process. Initiatives include improved parts forecasting, revisions in the funding allocation process, an increase in engine stock fund obligation authority, improvements in shop floor material control, and increased utilization of Defense Logistics Agency support.

The Department also developed five proactive policies which aim to solve the root causes of the engine problems in the long term. These policies are:

All of these policies are designed to preclude the engine problems and prevent any direct impact to unit readiness.

Depot backlogs have always been a key readiness concern. If maintenance backlogs increase, unit readiness may be affected negatively. While backlogs exist today in aviation maintenance, they are at levels that do not cause serious problems. For example, funding for the Navy aviation depot maintenance program has been increased by approximately $600 million through FY 2003. The Navy also has developed a new readiness-related metric designed to reduce the number of backlogged aircraft and improve the material readiness of deployed or deploying squadrons. Additionally, in accordance with Quadrennial Defense Review guidance, the projected funding for ship depot maintenance has increased by approximately $800 million over the Future Years Defense Program to more robustly support estimated future requirements and to minimize the potential future migration of funds into the operations and support accounts. Deferred depot maintenance requirements for recent years are shown in Table 15.

The scope and variety of modern weapons and support systems require a complex yet highly responsive logistics management system. The Defense Logistics Agency and Service logistics communities manage hundreds of thousands of items on a global scale. To optimize resources and maximize readiness, inventories must be kept small and responsive—the concept of lean logistics. Lean logistics negates the need for large parts inventories while still rapidly responding to the parts requirements of operational units. Parts arrive as soon as they are needed, so warehouse requirements are minimized. Modern computer and communication technologies will soon bring to fruition the concept of providing units and depots constant visibility of all items in the global inventory. Parts will be obtained from depots or other installations around the world, minimizing delays in ordering and equipment becoming nonoperational due to parts shortages.

To improve responsiveness to DoD customers around the world, the logistics community has established the goal of reducing the response time of the wholesale logistics system by 50 percent in three years. In 1997, the Department began measuring the performance of the wholesale system in response to customer requisitions. Early in 1997, it took an average of 36 days from the date a customer requisitioned an item until the customer received that item if the requisition had to be passed to the wholesale system. The Department’s goal is to reduce wholesale logistics response time to 18 days by 2000.

In summary, the Department’s efforts to improve its logistics system focuses on managing parts from creation to operational use in minimum time. These improvements have reduced cost, improved supplier responsiveness, and increased unit readiness. Of course, funding levels have a direct effect on the level of parts entering the system. If funding shortages occur, the velocity of parts in the logistics system will decrease.

The Department must ensure that adequate resources are allocated to ensure ready forces. Structuring the budget to ensure adequate readiness resources involves a rigorous, multistep process. The process begins with the Secretary’s guidance to the Services and other defense components in setting Department priorities. In the latest budget cycle, the Secretary directed the Services to provide enough funding in future programs and budgets to ensure their forces were ready to carry out missions at acceptable levels of risk.

The Department’s emphasis on fully funding all readiness accounts will avoid having to later move funds from other business areas or the investment accounts. The Services have adequately funded their readiness accounts over the Future Years Defense Program, so the risk of funds migration is at a manageable level. The Department’s FY 1999 budget request further aids readiness by increasing funding in readiness risk areas, such as the flying hour programs and depot maintenance. Not all currently identified readiness risk areas can be solved solely by funding actions; some will require further study as well as nonfiscal decisions.

In light of the improvements made, the Department’s budget is balanced and realistic. The funding provided in the FY 1998 budget will maintain adequate readiness levels in the Services, with one important caveat—the Services must receive timely funding for unbudgeted contingency operations. Without this funding, readiness can degrade rapidly. This is because most contingencies are unplanned, and the Department must therefore fund them by reallocating other funds. The later the operation occurs in a fiscal year, the less flexibility the Department has in funding alternatives. Usually, the cost can only be absorbed from the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) appropriation, which provides the funding for core readiness activities. By the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, the only places from which O&M funds can be diverted are the readiness accounts that support training and maintenance. The key resource lost while waiting for supplemental funding is time. Dollars arriving late in the fiscal year cannot buy back missed training or quickly put a delayed maintenance program back on track.

The Department’s challenge, then, has been to develop alternative funding to avoid damaging the readiness accounts. Currently, the Department is able to fund ongoing contingency operations. Yet, there will remain unforeseen operations for which timely reprogramming authority will be necessary.

Assessing readiness is one of the Department’s toughest tasks. In an unpredictable world, U.S. forces must be able to adapt and respond to a wide spectrum of military and political circumstances. Thus, the Department must be able to monitor the readiness of the forces to accomplish the stated capability of winning two major theater wars. In addition, the Department must be able to measure the readiness of the forces to accomplish unplanned—and in many peacetime engagement cases unforeseen—operations other than war, frequently referred to as smaller-scale contingencies. Further, the Department must be able to measure the ability of the sustaining base to support either major theater wars or smaller-scale contingencies for extended periods. The Department’s goal is a system that accurately measures the actual conditions in the field.

DoD’s central forum for integrating readiness issues is the Senior Readiness Oversight Council (SROC). The council meets on a monthly basis to review, debate, and decide on critical readiness issues. The SROC is chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense; membership includes the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Service Chiefs, Under Secretaries of Defense and of the military departments, and key DoD civilian leaders. One-third of the SROC meetings are devoted to reviewing the current readiness assessments provided through the Joint Monthly Readiness Review (JMRR). At these meetings, the Service Chiefs and the Vice Chairman provide a current and one year forecast assessment of the readiness of the operational Service units, as well as an overall assessment of the readiness of the armed forces to fight and execute the national military strategy. JMRR assessments provide a tool for the SROC in determining whether near-term reallocation of resources is required to maintain readiness. JMRR assessments provided to the SROC show that, overall, the readiness of military units today is holding steady, with some indicators such as pilot retention and mission capable rates showing a decline.

SROC meetings are devoted to discussions of readiness issues. For example, an SROC agenda might address PERSTEMPO, personnel shortfalls or imbalances, pilot retention, or mission capable rates for aircraft. Other issues may arise from Status of Resources and Training System reports or a host of other sources of readiness issues. These sources include routine reviews of leading readiness indicators, reviews of program and budget requests, issues raised during Department readiness assessment trips to field units, or points discussed in congressional testimony. The Department is sensitive to the perception of a gap between official readiness reports and concerns voiced by some individuals in the operating forces. The SROC provides the forum through which senior leaders can review all aspects of readiness. The Department submits a Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress, providing a synopsis of the readiness status reviewed in SROC meetings.

A key part of the Chairman’s Readiness System is the Joint Monthly Readiness Review, chaired by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The JMRR is designed to examine the armed forces’ current readiness to execute the full range of the National Military Strategy, including peacetime engagement, deterrence and conflict prevention, and winning the nation’s wars. The review provides the Chairman a key tool for accurate advice to the President and Secretary of Defense on the use of force; current and projected unit, combat support agency, and joint readiness; current force and support commitments; and how those commitments impact the flow of forces and services to warfighting commanders.

Created in conjunction with the SROC, the JMRR provides visibility into the CINCs’ ability to integrate and synchronize Service-provided forces and combat support agencies by assessing joint readiness, as well as traditional readiness status of units provided by the Services. The JMRR process provides a joint perspective by focusing on the unified commanders’ requirements to conduct joint operations with Service-provided and combat support agency assets across geographic regions vital to national interests. The scenarios used in the JMRR assessments change quarterly to explore possible conflict combinations such as force protection initiatives or a chemical and biological warfare threat. JMRR reports assess current and projected readiness over the following 12 months.

The current readiness system is composed of tactical level information provided by Service-specific readiness systems and the Global Status of Resources and Training System (GSORTS), synthesized with operational level analysis from the CINCs and other combat support agencies via the Joint Monthly Readiness Review. These two levels feed the Chairman’s Readiness System, which allows strategic assessment of the U.S. military’s readiness to execute its assigned missions.

Although vastly improved in recent years, the GSORTS system still has its shortcomings. Unless carefully understood, the system provides little information on readiness to perform missions short of a major theater war. Additionally, this cumbersome system fails to sufficiently capture topical readiness concerns such as depot backlogs or infrastructure shortfalls.

To address these shortcomings, DoD is developing an integrated business plan to establish a Readiness Assessment System capable of addressing the full spectrum of missions required by the strategy. Its goal is to incrementally improve the current system by providing visibility into supply pipelines and by integrating leading indicators. This business plan is the underpinning for future readiness assessment development.

The Readiness Assessment System combines policy changes and new technology to improve the Department’s ability to assess force readiness on a near real time basis. The new system will permit the Department to assess its readiness to meet the full range of military missions. The rapid progress of technological advances will provide more accurate and faster information gathering from desired information sources. As these are implemented, a broader and more in-depth picture of total readiness will become available to senior leaders. This fusion is already being undertaken in the current readiness data bases which support the Global Status of Resources and Training System (Enhanced) and the Joint Operation Planning and Execution System. This action will provide a graphic portrayal of unit data tied to the various operational and concept plans.

By taking advantage of rapidly advancing technology and other initiatives under development, such as the Global Combat Support System, the Department will incrementally develop a cost-effective readiness assessment tool that is user friendly, decreases errors, and reduces the manpower burdens on analysts. Also, the Department will conduct mobilization and crisis response exercises to assess readiness and sustainability. Lastly, the Department will improve scenario assessments used in the JMRR, the SROC, and in operational plan development to enhance analysis of current status and capability of forces to transition to tasked missions.

In conjunction with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Services, the Joint Staff is developing a force medical protection strategy within the framework of future joint health service support. The focus is on healthy and fit forces, casualty prevention across the operational spectrum, and casualty care and management during operations.

Force medical protection is the uppermost principle embedded in this strategy. It builds on lessons learned since the Gulf War, as well as the tenets contained in the National Military Strategy and Joint Vision 2010. The Military Health System provides health services in support of military operations by emphasizing readiness, health promotion, and managed care for eligible health care beneficiaries.

A key component of medical readiness is the experience gained through real-world health service support operations. The Department has provided medical support to numerous peacekeeping, noncombatant evacuations, and humanitarian assistance operations around the world. In addition to supporting operations, the department also conducts exercises that provide active, Reserve, and National Guard medical personnel the opportunity to hone their wartime skills in a realistic environment, employing the equipment and systems they will deploy with in wartime or contingency operations.

To enhance force protection for deployed service members, the Department has implemented a Joint Medical Surveillance Policy. This new policy will accurately capture health status, health risks encountered, and health consequences of deployment throughout the Services. It will enable the precise assessment of individuals across time and will also capture population based data for trends and for post-deployment assessment.

DoD’s Medical Readiness Strategic Plan 2003 provides an integrated synchronized plan for achieving and sustaining medical readiness. Medical readiness is measured against objectives outlined in the plan. The Department continuously monitors the status of DoD medical readiness through the development and implementation of effective oversight/evaluation mechanisms.

The Medical Readiness Strategic Plan is complemented by internal DoD program guidance which is used to define Departmental policies, help in the consistent allocation of medical-related resources, and monitor the success of medical readiness programs and initiatives.

For the foreseeable future, DoD will maintain the readiness of its forces to carry out the National Security Strategy. The Department is addressing readiness challenges with continued initiative and energy. These efforts will set the stage for future readiness and ensure the United States will continue to have the world’s best trained, best equipped force.