Research for Methodology

Early in FY00, the U.S. Army asked each of the other services to consider joining it in proposing, through the Unified Legislative and Budgeting (ULB) process, legislation that would change the military's personnel target from an end-strength goal to a goal based on average strength, calculated across the fiscal year. The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Manpower and Personnel (N1) asked CNA to evaluate the average-strength scheme to help the U.S. Navy formulate its response to the Army. We provided the N1 staff an earlier draft of this report that raised concerns about the scheme (as this final version of the report continues to do). The Navy shared the draft report with the Army, which decided not to continue pursuing the proposal.

Despite shrinking budgets, the U.S. military is struggling to simultaneously fund force levels, current operations, and an aggressive modernization program. Many believe the military can fund its recapitalization program if cost efficiencies can be achieved from within infrastructure budgets. One way to reduce infrastructure costs is through competition, outsourcing, and privatization. Whether the in-house (or organic) team or the private team wins the contract, the government benefits because the competition lowers costs and increases productivity. This paper examines the maintenance of the Navy's TA-4Js. The value of this analysis is that it allows us to look at a long series of performance and cost data, both for in-house and contractor maintenance. Because we have data on three contractors, we can also examine the effect of changing contractors.

In this study, we explored ways to quantify the costs and benefits of infusing technology into formal Navy schoolhouse training. At the outset, we worked with the Navy sponsor (N75) to identify a set of high interest and potential technologies - Automated Electronic Classroom (AEC) and Video Teletraining (VTT) - to pursue as a first order of business. This report discusses our analysis and findings concerning the use of AEC technology in Navy training. A separate CNA report addresses our findings with respect to the VTT technology. In keeping with the study tasking, we approached the AEC conversion question as a return-on-investment problem.

This briefing presents some results of our analysis of various methods and models that are used to determine wartime medical requirements. Our approach has focused on two key issues. First, we examined the requirements process, which really means understanding the main methods or tools that are used. The second key issue concerns the comparison of the requirements models used in the process. We identified three major objectives in the study plan. We identified three major objectives in the study plan. We would examine current methods and models. We would then examine some proposed or future methods. Understanding the requirements for similar resources allows us to then state their respective strengths and weaknesses and recommend improvements.