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OSD Retention Dashboard

/analyses/2020/04/osd-retention-dashboard

The services commit a considerable amount of resources to retention policy levers, including a variety of reenlistment bonuses for both officers and enlisted personnel. To oversee the resources supporting these levers, the services must understand the current retention environment, both in aggregate and for specific subsets of servicemembers, since retention incentives can target certain communities. This paper discusses the retention dashboard that CNA developed for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (OSD) Personnel and Readiness (P&R) that allows users to view recent active component enlisted retention trends in each of the services. We discuss our choice of retention metrics, identify the data that we used, and provide guidance on using the dashboard. We conclude with a discussion of a potential future extension of the dashboard that incorporates predictive capabilities. Future extensions also could add the reserve component and/or the officer corps.

Estimating Effect of Single Salary

/analyses/2020/04/estimating-effect-of-single-salary

This report considers one of the potential effects of a DOD move to a single-salary system (SSS): changes in servicemember retention driven by changes in marriage behavior. It analyzes the effects that a move to an SSS is likely to have on the percentage of servicemembers who are married and studies the changes in retention rates and force size that may be induced by any changes in marriage behavior. Our approach includes a review of the literature on the relationships between compensation, marital status, and retention; computation of pay changes under different SSS implementation scenarios; estimation of the effect of marital status on retention using personnel data; and development of a model that can forecast marriage rates and force size over time. Overall, we find that these effects are likely to be small, so there is little need for policy-makers to be concerned about these effects when considering a change to an SSS.

Report of Chinas Presence in the Indian Ocean

/analyses/2020/04/report-of-chinas-presence-in-the-indian-ocean

On June 17 and 18, 2019, CNA held a two-day workshop entitled “Views of China’s Presence in the Indian Ocean Region.” This workshop aimed to assess the reaction to China’s economic and military activities of IOR stakeholders from a wide range of IO littoral countries, as well as external countries with stakes in the IOR. This paper synthesizes the insights gained from presentations, workshop discussion, and participant papers prepared for this workshop.

Russian Strategy for Escalation Management: Debates

/analyses/2020/04/russian-strategy-for-escalation-management-debates

This report offers an overview of the main debates in Russian military thought on deterrence and escalation management in the post-Cold War period, based on authoritative publications. It explores discussions by Russian military analysts and strategists on “regional nuclear deterrence,” namely the structure of a two-level deterrence system (regional and global); debates on “nonnuclear deterrence” and the role of strategic conventional weapons in escalation management; as well as writings on the evolution of damage concepts toward ones that reflect damage that is tailored to the adversary. Russian military thinking on damage informs the broader discourse on ways and means to shift an opponent’s calculus in an escalating conflict. The report concludes with summaries of recent articles that reflect ongoing discourse on the evolution of Russia’s strategic deterrence system and key trends in Russian military thought on escalation management.

Russian Strategy for Escalation Management: Key Concepts

/analyses/2020/04/russian-strategy-for-escalation-management-key-concepts

This report examines evolving debates within the Russian military on questions of “escalation management,” or intra-war deterrence.

GPC Assumptions Behind the Headlines

/analyses/2020/05/gpc-assumptions-behind-the-headlines

On April 30, 2020, CNA’s Strategy and Policy Analysis (SPA) program hosted an on-the-record virtual event to analyze great power competition (GPC) as a concept for US national strategy and defense planning and for what it means to compete as US policy evolves. The discussion was motivated by CNA’s recent publication Great Power Relations: What Makes Powers Great and Why Do They Compete? The event, built on themes from our report, explored the implicit theoretical assumptions on which GPC is based, the strategic implications of what it means to be a great power, and the role of cooperation with competitors even in an era of GPC. The discussion took particular aim at how these issues converge in the arena of day-to-day competition. The event featured CNA analysts Dr. Joshua Tallis and Dr. David Knoll and the director of CNA’s SPA program, Ms. Nilanthi Samaranayake.

AVF Investments in Recruiting

/analyses/2020/05/avf-investments-in-recruiting

Enlisted recruiting is the heart of the All‑Volunteer Force (AVF). The young men and women the Services recruit will define what the military force will look like in numbers and characteristics. Because the military is a hierarchical organization—that is, people enlist in the military as youth and advance through the ranks as they age—the Services must find recruits with the attributes that will make them successful Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines today and in the future.

Improving Knowledge About SNAP

/analyses/2020/06/improving-knowledge-about-snap

The Presidential Charter for the 13th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation directed it to estimate the number of servicemembers who qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In this study, we use the Public Assistance Reporting Information System (PARIS), which includes information on people who receive SNAP and other federal benefits, to estimate how many active component servicemembers qualify for SNAP. The data include information from participating states and represent the most authoritative data ever used to estimate servicemembers’ enrollment in SNAP. After we control for anomalies that we conclude are an indication that a significant number of servicemembers in the PARIS data are no longer members of households receiving SNAP benefits, we conclude that between 0.08 percent and 0.42 percent of the approximately 1.1 million servicemembers stationed in the US are enrolled in SNAP at any point in time. For reference, approximately 9.6 percent of adults in the US age 18 to 59 were enrolled in SNAP in 2018. Junior enlisted members represent the largest number of SNAP recipients, and they are the most likely to be enrolled in SNAP. When we combine paygrade and dependents, servicemembers in paygrades E-2 to E-4 with three or more dependents are far more likely to be enrolled in SNAP than all other servicemembers. Even so, fewer than 5 percent of these servicemembers are enrolled in SNAP. The Army has the least restrictions on accessions with dependents and has accessed far more with several dependents in the past few years than the other services; its junior enlisted servicemembers are the most likely to be enrolled in SNAP. Junior enlisted servicemembers advance rather quickly, however, so it is likely that most of these members are receiving SNAP benefits for a relatively short period. Servicemembers who stopped receiving SNAP benefits were enrolled in SNAP in the same state for about 8 months.

Naval Integration Through History

/analyses/2020/06/naval-integration-through-history

This report is a historical examination of naval integration through the lens of five case studies. The cases span 150 years of history and include US and non-US examples. From these case studies, we derived a number of findings and recommendations to support ongoing US Marine Corps efforts to integrate with their Navy partners. Our findings focus on the tactical level, and include the need for unified command, effective training and planning, and a close examination of the littoral geographic space. We recommend that II MEF’s current integration efforts reflect these consistencies: Marines should continue to plan and train with their Navy partners, organize effectively, and seek advantage in the littoral space.

Maintaining the US led International Order

/analyses/2020/06/maintaining-the-us-led-international-order

Maritime security operations sustain and enforce the rule of law and good order at sea. Yet in an era of great power competition (GPC), do those activities support national strategy? This paper offers a structure for answering that question, placing maritime security in the context of GPC by describing competition as a function of control for the international system. The framework introduced in this paper demonstrates that maritime security is an important component of maintaining a system that benefits US security and prosperity. The framework also shows that there are two roles for maritime security in GPC—avoiding corrosion of the US-led system by great powers and avoiding corrosion caused by lesser powers. These two approaches have different implications for Navy deployment, procurement, and employment policy. Consequently, although our analysis suggests that maritime security is integral to GPC, its roles can vary, pulling resources in divergent directions according to policy priorities.