Active Duty Individual Manpower Augmentation: Selection and Career Impact

As the U.S. and coalition forces prosecute the Global War on Terrorism and support other contingency operations around the world, the demand for Navy manpower to augment deployed forces from all Services has increased dramatically. These manpower augmentation requirements represent unfunded, unplanned, but necessary allotments of Navy personnel to augment existing units and organizations so that Navy and Combatant Commanders can effectively perform their assigned missions. Active duty Servicemembers who are pulled from their current commands and sent on TAD orders to fill these requirements are known as Individual Augmentees (IAs). With this increased demand has come concern about the Navy’s ability to continue to effectively provide manpower to support these requests. To help the Navy address these concerns, CNA examined two issues. The first was whether Servicemembers with particular characteristics were more likely to be selected for IA assignments. Some characteristics, such as paygrade and occupation, may be explicit requirements of the IA request, while others, such as race/ethnicity and marital status, are not. The second issue was whether IA assignments have affected the career progression of active duty Servicemembers. Of particular interest are the effects on retention, promotion, and sea/shore rotation for active duty enlisted Sailors and officers.