Research for SELRES

The Reserve Components Common Personnel Data System (RCCPDS) is an important source of Reserve manpower data. Its transaction file provides data on gains, losses, and reenlistments for each military service's Selected Reserve (SELRES). The strengths and weaknesses of the RCCPDS transaction file as a source of data on Navy SELRES manpower are examined, with particular emphasis on enlisted personnel.

Because savings are usually expected when responsibilities are transferred from Active to Reserve units, Congress directed the services in 1984 to prepare annual reports outlining how they would provide the Reserve with new missions, more modern equipment, and greater integration with the active forces. The purpose of the Active/Reserve Force Mix Study was to provide analytical assistance to the Navy in preparing its annual report. This research memorandum summarizes the analyses conducted for the study. The availability of personnel to man missions being transferred to the Reserve forces is studied. In particular, this paper examines which homeports will be most able to support the Naval Reserve Force, what determines whether Navy veterans will affiliate with the Selected Reserves, and what the supply will be of aviation officers leaving active duty. Better techniques for estimating the cost savings of Reserve units are developed, and the operating and support costs of aviation units, especially personnel costs, are discussed.

This paper analyzes the factors that may influence the decision of first-term enlisted Navy veterans to join the Selected Reserve. A model of the determinants of affiliation is developed and estimated using data on active Navy separations and Reserve accessions from 1979 to 1985. Unique features of the model and estimation are that they combine all forms of pay into one variable, incorporate demand constraints, adjust for simultaneity between bonus eligibility and affiliation rates, and use a more comprehensive data set than has been available before. Affiliation is found to depend on Reserve pay, unemployment rates, geographic area, race, sex, paygrade, and Navy rating.

One seldom considered dimension in examinations of active-reserve force tradeoffs is our historical experience in calling up and using Naval Reserve Forces in circumstances and crises short of general war. The fact that Naval Reserve Forces have not been called in a host of conceivable recall situations, coupled with the sparse but mostly troubled experience when reserve forces were in fact recalled involuntarily, add useful perspective to the ongoing debate about the active-reserve force mix in the Navy. This memorandum examines that experience from the early days of the Korean War to the present. It includes a discussion of lessons from past experience which seem germane to current considerations.