Research for United States Navy

This report serves as the Navy's formal evaluation for the 1999 Puget Sound Area Oil Spill Exercise. The report includes exercise results, lessons learned, and recommendations. The basic aim of the exercise was to improve the Navy's ability to interface with the local response community in the effort to organize and respond to a worst-case oil spill and to test the response strategies set forth in the regions Area Contingency Plan and Geographic Response Plans. The report examines both the success of the exercise in meeting its fundamental goals and the success of the spill response. Recommendations include conducting additional Incident Command System (ICS) training, ensuring greater familiarity with exercise goals and roles in future exercises, and predetermining the where the command center should be established in the event of a real oil spill.

The Deputy of Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel asked CNA to study various issues related to maintaining fleet readiness while expanding the role of women in the operating forces. First, we studied the pattern of losses of personnel from ships by gender and explored policies aimed at reducing them. Second, we updated a CNA planning model that links women's accession plans, bunk plans, and a variety of personnel policy parameters. Recommendations include maintaining a presence of female Chief Petty Officers of a least 5 percent of the female crew in order to reduce the level of unplanned losses of junior women, and increasing A-School proportion of female accessions in order to improve retention of female personnel.

The DON is seeking to maximize the availability of child-care spaces within the available funding by adjusting the subsidies paid for different types of childcare. Military childcare is provided either in Child Development Centers (CDCs) or through the Family Child Care (FCC) program in private homes or bases. PDASN(M&RA) asked CNA to take a quick look at the subsidy program. The purpose of the study is to establish a baseline for FCC use and cost in the DON, with particular attention to initiatives to subsidize FCC. Recommendations include improving routine data collection and reporting, instituting regular parent and provider surveys, giving subsidies only to 0-3 year olds, and setting subsidies in line with local markets. In addition, we considered what an evaluation plan to monitor the effectiveness of FCC subsidies should include. Part of the report includes a suggestion for a follow-on study that would implement the evaluation plan. DTIC AD-B242825

The Personnel Readiness Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J1) asked CNA to look into why people are leaving the services, particularly if there has been any change in the reasons personnel cite for leaving the services, and the quality of people who are leaving. The analyses presented here are based on the results form surveys for the Navy, Army, and Air Force. Across the services, we found evidence of increased dissatisfaction with different aspects of military compensation, including pay, advancement opportunities, and retirement benefits. But trends in retention through the first quarter of 1997 show no immediate alarms. Army trends seem to show long-term improvement, Navy data indicates that declines may be leveling off, and Air Force retention rates are erratic and reveal no real trends.