Senator GLENN. Thank you very much, Mr. Jehn.

We next have Dr. Bernard Rostker, Study Director, Active and Reserve Force Mix Study, National Defense Research Institute of the RAND Corporation. We had legislation last year that required an outside study and RAND was contracted to conduct the research. Dr. Rostker is in the middle of that study right now. We welcome your testimony, Dr. Rostker.

STATEMENT OF DR. BERNARD D. ROSTKER, STUDY DIRECTOR, ACTIVE AND RESERVE FORCE MIX STUDY, NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, RAND CORPORATION

Dr. ROSTKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present this overview.

This presentation is an abbreviated version of the overview briefing we have given to interested parties inside and outside the Department of Defense. The briefings and the forthcoming interim report are designed to explain clearly what we are doing and how we are going about providing the comprehensive analytic information needed to assess the structure and mix of future Active and Reserve forces. Neither the briefing nor the interim report presents analytic cases, partial analysis, or preliminary conclusions. At this point in the study, such information would be incomplete, subject to revision, and we could not stand behind any conclusions that could be drawn by ourselves or by others.

However, we are mindful of the importance of meeting the expectation of the committee for an independent assessment that is available within the time provided by section 402.

Senator GLENN. Can I just interrupt a moment? The final report is due when? The end of this year?

Dr. ROSTKER. To the Secretary, December 1; to the committees, December 15.

Senator GLENN. Thank you.

Dr. ROSTKER. We will cover that in the briefing.

I am going to go through this presentation pretty quickly, mindful of your time commitments.

There are three basic parts to the presentation. I would like to review very quickly the congressional mandate, describe the institutional arrangements for the study, and then provide an overview to our approach.

The authorization act requires that we assess a wide range of alternatives relative to the force structure and mix, and we take that very seriously.

Section 402 requires a two-part assessment. The first part is to be provided by a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). We are the organization that was selected. It includes the various points here, and we will be talking about those points in this presentation.

But there is a second part, and that is an evaluation by the Secretary and the Chairman of our work. Section 402 also asks that they provide the committees with additional information in terms of the Active and Reserve mixes that would be acceptable to carry out the expected future military missions. That is due to the committees on the 15th of February; our report to the Secretary on the

1st of December. Section 402 requires them to forward that directly to you by the 15th of December, and then their other assessment by the 15th of February.

A quick overview of the institutional arrangement. This slide shows the RAND Corporation's three separate FFRDC's: Project Air Force is responsive to the Department of the Air Force; the Arroyo Center is the Army's study and analysis FFRDC; and the National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) supports the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman. We are doing the study within NDRI. We draw on the broad RAND staff that is knowledgeable about Army and Air Force matters, but we do not do that through the formal mechanism of the FFRDC.

We are supported in this study by the three other study and analysis FFRDC's. The Logistics Management Institute is providing support in the form of data analysis. The Center for Naval Analyses is supporting us with analysis of naval and Marine Corps issues, and the Institute for Defense Analyses is supporting us with studies in the area of training and some force structure work.

We are also supported by a panel of outside experts. We have been meeting frequently with that panel, as we will through the summer and the fall.

A quick overview of the approach we are taking. We have divided the study into three main areas. The law calls for an evaluation of past policies and practices for implementing the Total Force and a look at the experience of the Total Force in the Gulf.

Those inform the next major area, which is to develop alternative Active and Reserve force structures which then can be considered for evaluation. You will notice that the arrow from the lower left-hand corner moves forward. Those are background studies. The arrow in the upper right is double-hatted showing that these are an interactive task. We need to design alternatives and evaluate those alternatives, and on the basis of those evaluations, go back and change the designs and the like.

A quick word about the policies and practices for implementing Total Force. We are concentrating on the internal workings of the Defense Department. We are developing a case study of the decisions leading to the Base Force. We have had excellent access at the OSD level and at the service levels. We are trying to understand the roles people play, the kind of information that was brought to bear on the problem. In this part of the study, we are not assessing the particular outcome. We are assessing the process to make sure that it was rational, and the kind of decision making that we can agree should provide a rational decision was carried forward.

The second background study covers the Gulf. There are myriad studies covering the mobilization and deployment of forces to the Gulf. We are asking questions about the nature of the call-up, the effectiveness of the call-up to get the kinds of people that were needed in a timely fashion. The quality of the forces, however, are addressed in the area of military effectiveness.

The heart of the study deals with developing alternatives and evaluating those alternatives. Let me show you that in a little bit more detail.

In the next set of slides, we are going to use a format in which we will stress the part of section 402 that we are addressing and a table which will illustrate for you the kind of information we are capturing.

The first task is to understand the range of alternative Active and Reserve mixes; if you will, paradigms that can be used. Some of those come from foreign countries. We often hear that the Germans or the Israelis or the Dutch have a system that could be used. We are going to be looking at them.

Within the United States, there are a number of models that have been suggested. The following examples will be for the Army but there are similar ones for the other services. There are a number of examples that have been suggested, and in this particular illustration we are showing the current Army, but we can also think of changes to the Army. The Marine Corps has a different model than the Army in the way it trains and integrates its forces. Others have suggested that there are still other models, the model of the militia that was even mentioned here this morning. We are trying to capture and understand that.

We need to bring those models down into a set of candidates that we can follow through in the analysis. We are interested in models that have basic differences in philosophy. We characterize the existing system as a system of like-units which are substituted for one another based on cost and availability. But there are other models of integrating Active and Reserve forces. The Air Force associate concept integrates Reserve and Active personnel in the same unit structure. This is an alternative model.

Once we understand those alternative models we need to address the purpose of those forces. We take the goals largely from the scenarios that the Defense Department has promulgated. The committee asks that we look at missions appropriate for carrying out assigned missions, and those scenarios broadly provide those assigned missions.

I believe you are familiar with the range of Joint Staff scenarios. To make sure that they are comprehensive. We have reviewed them in an historic concept of what has happened since World War II. From Korea through the Gulf, the United States has fought many different kinds of conflicts. We are satisfied that the range of scenarios we will look at cover these characteristics.

With the goal in mind, we can construct a force structure. The force structure for the Army contains combat forces, combat support, and combat service support. The TDA Army splits between active and reserve in different ways.

It is very important to note that section 402 directs a congressional base case. The committee has provided that we hold constant the fiscal year 1993 authorization levels. We show here those levels, for example, the Army National Guard with an authorization of 425,450. We will hold that level constant into the future as the defense budget comes down.

In other words, we will try to construct forces that make sense given the scenarios and the missions, but maintain the National Guard level and take whatever cuts are necessary out of the Active force. By 1997, this means there are 187,000 National Guard and Army Reservists that we need to put in effective units and pay for

within the DOD budget. We understand that to be the base case that the Congress has asked us to look at.

Consistent with this base case, of course, there will be alternatives. There are different ways of organizing that and, in fact, the committee has directed that we look at alternatives above and below those numbers. So, there will be a base case and then there are alternatives to those base cases.

So far we have talked about a particular case in broad terms, numbers of divisions, manpower, combat support, combat service support. We need to provide a lot more detail in order to estimate the cost of the forces and the mobilization process for those forces. We can do that by using historic databases that already exist within the Department. For example, we are going to create a new Reserve unit or maintain a Reserve unit, we get a picture of that Reserve unit in terms of readiness and manpower levels and skill levels from existing databases. So, we are taking not just the existence of forces in the Active or Reserve components but trying to characterize the nature of those forces.

That defines simply a set of alternatives. We now go on to the evaluation. The committees have directed in section 402 that the evaluations take place in terms of military effectiveness, cost, and sustainability.

The military effectiveness is highlighted. The committees have asked that we focus on the process of preparing forces for combat. The next chart emphasizes that. What we are trying to do is understand, what this type of diagram shows is how different mobilization resources, different levels of readiness, different ability to mo- bilize, and deploy the forces the availability of lift impacts in the deployability of forces to a theater of operation. This cartoon shows the availability of Reserve and Active forces against a threat in a theater and how that would change with various mobilization scenarios.

Any active-Reserve mix needs to be costed, and we are actively engaged in providing those costs. But it's more than just estimating costs; it is really assessing the cost. We need to gain insight from the cost analysis. We need to understand what the key drivers are, what kind of investments are necessary, what kind of implementation costs, and very critically what the resource bottlenecks are. If there is a bottleneck, we want to understand where it is, how much it costs to remove that bottleneck. The bottleneck might be the availability of training areas in post mobilization periods or it may be lift. We want to understand where the constraints are and how expensive it is to remove those constraints in the consideration of active and Reserve mix.

Finally, section 402 talks to the issue of personnel sustainability. This chart shows the outlines of one of the many personnel models we have at RAND showing the synergy between the Active force, the selected Reserve, and the IRR, and how the personnel would flow in that system. As a total system it highlights the relationship between Active manpower and the Reserve manpower. Very critically we are interested in the role of prior service personnel.

I can tell you that in this area there is not going to be a definitive answer because we know the personnel managers can use compensation education bonuses and affiliation bonuses to alter per

sonnel flows but that adds to the cost, and that has to be considered in the total cost of the system.

Finally, Senator, the study will not produce a single recommendation. We propose to use a scorecard approach. We will assess a wide range of options and alternatives in terms of the ability to meet the various scenarios. As shown here it is not just a check mark or a ranking. In every case we will talk to the costs involved, the mobilization and deployment schedules involved, the critical assumptions we made in the analysis, significant uncertainties in terms of the performance of any element of the Total Force, and finally the assessment of risk. We will fill out the scorecard providing both the Secretary and the committees the analytic information needed to make decisions as the ultimate product of this study. Thank you, sir.

[The slides referred to by Dr. Rostker follow:]

Assessing the Structure and Mix of Future Active and Reserve Forces

A Congressionally Mandated Study

Presentation to the Manpower and Personnel
Subcommittee

Senate Armed Services Committee

April 8, 1992