Research for Deployments

N-13 asked CNA to study operational stress and postdeployment behavior in Seabees. Seabees experience two forms of operational stress: GWOT deployments and regularly-scheduled deployments to Guam, Okinawa, and Spain. Enlisted Seabees have many more alcohol- and drug-related behaviors than do officers, so the following results concern enlisted personnel. Active duty GWOT unit deployments are not associated with later negative behaviors, unless length of deployment is considered. Alcohol-related events are more likely after long (> 6-month) GWOT deployments than after shorter ones. Incidents related to alcohol and drugs occur both soon after return from deployments (< 6 months) and well after return from deployments (> 6 months). Reservists express more negative emotions after return from GWOT deployments than do active duty. Reservists had 30 to 45 total incidents per year (alcohol- or drug-related) from 2003 to 2007, but alcohol incidents of reservists are underreported. We recommend that the Navy seek ways to expand support for active duty who return from GWOT deployments of more than 6 months, and that support efforts continue for more than 6 months after return from GWOT. We recommend an expansion of support for returning GWOT reservists and more detailed study of reservists and Individual Augmentees.

The issue is whether warning times for U.S. responses to situations are so short that the U.S. must maintain forces overseas -at land bases or at sea-in order to respond in a timely manner. We judged the length of warning time crudely: from the time a situation broke on the world scene until a U.S. operation began. As described herein, "breaking on the world scene" might be an incident or attack happening out of the blue ; but more often involves a precipitating incident in a local situation in which the U.S. government did not contemplate military intervention when the situation first appeared (e.g., Lebanon). How the U.S. government seizes the problem and begins deliberations at the NSC level is beyond the scope of this paper. A narrower, more technical definition would be from the time warning orders were sent from the President or Secretary of Defense through the Chairman, JCS, to the relevant Unified Commander. Those tend to be of a much shorter time; some cases are discussed in the annex to this paper, and extract from our 1997 study.

Desert Storm highlighted the need to improve our capability to transmit large volumes of digital imagery to afloat commanders. Project Challenge Athena I demonstrated the usefulness of commercial wideband satellites for delivering primary imagery products to an afloat unit. Project Challenge Athena II extended the concept to an operational environment. This demonstration used a duplex, high-volume commercial satellite to provide imagery and other services to the GEORGE WASHINGTON Battle Group during its 1994 Mediterranean/Persian Gulf deployment. This annotated briefing presents the results from Challenge Athena II.

This information memorandum examines the basic issues involved in comparing long range bombers and naval forces and makes some simple quantitative comparisons between the B-2 bomber and the proposed A-X aircraft in cases where they compete head to head.