Research for Readiness

This annotated briefing summarizes the results of an investigation of perstempo levels, trends and implications conducted for the Personnel Readiness Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This paper looks at indicators, short of personnel losses, of the impact of perstempo on enlisted personnel readiness, with the aim being to shed light on the level of perstempo that can be tolerated before the negative effects of excessive perstempo show up in declining retention rates. We found some evidence of increased dissatisfaction with military pay and military life, as well as some increases in use of family service programs that help with stress, as perstempo increases. Marines, who had the largest role in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, showed the strongest indication of stress from deployment to that environment. The report also provides charts of perstempo trends for selected occupational specialties in each of the services.

In the wake of a changing defense climate, the Navy is continuing to find ways to adjust to its smaller size while maintaining its ability to respond when required. An important part of strategy is to monitor readiness during the downsizing process. The first step toward managing readiness is to understand what readiness is and why it changes over time or among units. This paper contributes to the further understanding of readiness by identifying the relationship between standard readiness measures and their determinants for Navy fighter, attack, and fighter/attack aircraft. The analysis is an extension of our earlier work on explaining the readiness of surface combatants. Our objective was to build a comprehensive database of navy fighter and attack units over time and identify readiness trends and relationships between readiness determinants and readiness measures where they exist.

Since 1989, the Navy has decommissioned 165 ships, seen its endstrength fall by nearly a quarter, and had its budget reduced by $38 billion -- a net reduction of 32 percent. These cuts have raised fears that the Navy may once again be on the verge of a hollow force. Our review of the readiness literature suggests that hollowness is a condition that keeps ships from living up to their design potential. It is the general state that persists whenever maintenance problems dominate a force; when poor quality sailors seem the rule rather than the exception; and when meaningful training is both scarce and questionable. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Navy experienced all of these problems and more. This paper summarizes the stages of our work on this issue and discusses the insights and key findings we have made along the way.

The Exxon Valdez disaster of March 1989 revealed major shortcomings in this nation's ability to deal with such an incident, and resulted in the passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA-90). In general, OPA-90 called for increased preparedness for major oil spills by requiring information of area committees, preparation of area plans, and periodic exercises. It was in response to this requirement for periodic exercises that the Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Research and Special Programs Office of Pipeline Safety, and Mineral Management Service developed the Preparedness for Response Exercise Program (PREP). The country is divided into 60 areas for oil spill response. PREP conducts 20 area exercises per year, so that each area is exercised once every three years. The 1995 San Diego PREP area exercise was the first exercise led by the Navy. This report serves as the formal evaluation report for the 1995 San Diego PREP area exercise and satisfies all Navy documentation requirements under PREP.