Force Structure: Army Support Forces Can Meet Two-Conflict Strategy With Some Risks
NSIAD-97-66
Published: Feb 28, 1997. Publicly Released: Feb 28, 1997.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed how the Army determines its support force requirements, and the results of its most recent process for allocating support forces, known as Total Army Analysis (TAA) 2003.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
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Department of the Army | To improve TAA's ability to accurately project war-fighting requirements and allocate the Army's personnel resources, the Secretary of the Army should reexamine key model inputs to ensure they are accurate and consistent with war-fighting scenarios. |
The Army has taken initiatives which address the intent of this recommendation.
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Department of the Army | To improve TAA's ability to accurately project war-fighting requirements and allocate the Army's personnel resources, the Secretary of the Army should perform analysis to determine how multiple operations other than war support force requirements might differ from support force requirements based on two MRCs and bring any variances to the attention of the Secretary of Defense so that he can consider them in developing defense guidance. | In responding to this recommendation, the Army said that, during Total Army Analysis (TAA) 2005, it would analyze operations other than war (OOTW) support force requirements once the base case warfighting requirements analyses were completed. However, Army officials advised GAO that these analyses were not performed. GAO believes there may be opportunities to reduce the stress on high demand/low density specialties needed in peace operations, consistent with guidance. Further, the recommended analysis could prove useful to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in developing future policy. More recently, GAO found that during TAA 2007 the Army did, in fact, assess requirements for seven...
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Department of the Army | To improve TAA's ability to accurately project war-fighting requirements and allocate the Army's personnel resources, the Secretary of the Army should perform sensitivity analyses on significant model inputs, assumptions, and resourcing decisions to determine their impacts on war-fighting risk. For example, although the Army used assumptions established by defense guidance, determining the implications of less favorable conditions, such as delayed call-up of reserves, would provide the Army with additional information on which to base its assessment of risk. |
The Army has taken some initiatives which address the intent of this recommendation.
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Department of the Army | To improve TAA's ability to accurately project war-fighting requirements and allocate the Army's personnel resources, the Secretary of the Army should rerun TAA models with the required force to assess the impact of force size on mobility requirements. |
The Army adopted the recommendation in TAA 2005. According to the U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA), which models the Army's warfighting requirements, the Army reran the mobility model with the TAA 2005 required force to determine the impact on force flow and the campaign.
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Department of the Army | To improve TAA's ability to accurately project war-fighting requirements and allocate the Army's personnel resources, the Secretary of the Army should determine how support units resident within the eight National Guard divisions, Table of Distribution and Allowances military personnel, contractor personnel, and DOD civilians can be used to fill some support force requirements. | The Army has no plans to consider contractor personnel or civilians in the resourcing phase of Total Army Analysis (TAA). However, the Army did agree that some of the National Guard's aviation assets could be applied against warfighting requirements. GAO previously verified that the Army had assigned a warfighting role to two National Guard Blackhawk aviation companies. Further, in a March 15, 1999, report, GAO found that, in addition to these two aviation companies, the Army identified warfighting missions for one attack helicopter battalion, seven chemical companies, and three field artillery battalions, for a total of 3,600 National Guard divisional spaces. GAO's work this year shows...
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Department of the Army | To improve the management and allocation of personnel resources to the institutional Army, the Secretary of the Army should report to the Secretary of Defense the Army's long-standing problem with implementing workload-based analysis as a material weakness under the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act to maintain visibility of the issue and ensure action is taken. |
The Army has taken some initiatives which address the intent of this recommendation.
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Department of the Army | To improve the management and allocation of personnel resources to the institutional Army, the Secretary of Army should closely monitor the military positions the Army plans to save as the result of Force XXI initiatives and have a contingency plan in place in the event that these savings do not materialize. | DOD concurred with this recommendation, but GAO's subsequent review disclosed that the Army had not carried it out. In a February 1998 report (NSIAD-98-65), GAO concluded that the Army's savings from institutional redesign would be less than projected and that the Army may not know the source of some of its savings because no single office monitors the status of redesign initiatives or their implementation costs. The February 1998 report recommended specific actions to improve the Army's ability to oversee reforms for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of its Institutional Force. In response: the Army published a final version of Pamphlet 100-1 (the Army's Redesign "vision"...
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Army personnelCombat readinessDefense contingency planningForce structureMilitary cost controlMilitary downsizingMobilizationPersonnel managementRisk assessmentStaff utilizationStrategic mobility forces