term.subject="administration"

Summary: A universally accepted definition of what a sense of community is remains elusive, but policymakers agree that increasing that sense has tangible benefits for the U.S. military in improvements to commitment, performance, retention, and readiness. This report examines the role of the Defense Department's personnel support programs and focuses on nine tools for increasing sense of community: group symbols, rewards and honors, common external threat, making military membership attractive, group size and individuality, personal influence, personal investment, contact and proximity, and group activities. The report also analyzes which groups would most benefit from programs to increase a sense of community and how to avoid pitfalls when attempting to increase that sense

Summary: This publication describes the application of the RAND Corporation's Portfolio Analysis and Management Method (PortMan) to the evaluation of the National Security Agency's (NSA) information dissemination program portfolio, which is managed by the NSA Information Sharing Services (ISS) division. RAND's PortMan method enables the data-driven analysis of project portfolios and provides a means to monitor the progress of potentially high-value projects. It also allows portfolio managers to monitor the impact of any mitigation strategies they undertake, ensuring that the portfolio's highest potential value is achieved. For this project, RAND researchers first employed the Delphi method, a process for eliciting group opinion by a series of questionnaires with selective feedback from earlier responses, to collect expert opinion from the ISS Senior Leadership Group. This allowed for an estimation of value and risk for each project. RAND then used these estimates, together with cost information provided by ISS, to develop project rankings and to estimate the expected value-to-cost ratio for each project. RAND selected portfolios of projects that maximized the total expected value for the available program budget using a linear programming method and compared these results to ISS management's funding priorities

Summary: "As the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) has grown in strength, it has needed to add intelligence capabilities. Since the end of the Cold War and, especially, since September 11, 2001, USMC intelligence has had to tailor its organization to meet the evolving demands of the operational environment. This has resulted in a number of ad hoc arrangements, practices, and organizations. A broad review of the organizational design of the USMC intelligence enterprise examined how to align it efficiently and effectively with current and future missions and functions. Specifically, the review, which included interviews with a range of USMC personnel and civilians, considered the organization of (and possible improvements to) the Intelligence Department, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the intelligence organizations within the Marine Expeditionary Forces (specifically, the intelligence and radio battalions), and intelligence structures in the combat elements. A comparison of 48 organizational and functional issues with a series of USMC intelligence and functional issues resulted in a series of recommendations to help improve the "fit" of USMC intelligence organizations with their environmental context. In some cases, the service would benefit not from changing its intelligence structure but by realigning it; in other areas, restructuring would lend greater efficiency and effectiveness to the USMC intelligence enterprise."--Page 4 of cover

Summary: The U.S. armed services have different methods and processes for promoting enlisted personnel. All of the services, however, aim to ensure that promotion outcomes correspond to substantive differences in personnel quality. This report provides a snapshot of how the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force go about measuring duty performance, leadership potential, experience, knowledge, and skills to determine who among its enlisted force merits promotion, when they are eligible for promotion, and at what level promotion decisions are made. This report provides an overview of the enlisted promotion system in the 1990s as retention issues again move to the forefront of Defense Department concerns

Summary: Today's military is a military of families; many service members are married, and many of their spouses work and contribute to family income. But military wives earn less than civilian wives, and this study seeks to understand why. The authors find that military wives, knowing they are likely to move frequently, are willing to accept jobs that offer a lower wage rather than to use more of their remaining time at a location to find a higher-wage job. Compared with civilian wives, military wives tend to work somewhat less if they have young children but somewhat more if their children are older

Summary: Workforce planning is an activity intended to ensure that investment in human capital results in the timely capability to effectively carry out an organization's strategic intent. This report examines the purposes of workforce planning, identifies key factors contributing to successful workforce planning, and describes a RAND-developed process for conducting workforce planning

Summary: The confrontation that began when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 brought with it the threat that chemical and biological weapons might be used against the more than half a million military personnel the United States deployed to the region. To protect these troops from such threats, the Department of Defense wished to use drugs and vaccines that, not having been tested for use in these specific situations, were considered "investigational" by the federal Food and Drug Administration. This report examines the history of the Interim Rule, adopted in December 21, 1990, that authorized the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to waive informed consent for the use of investigational drugs and vaccines for certain military uses; how this authority was used for pyridostigmine bromide and botulinum toxoid during the Gulf War; and the subsequent controversy surrounding the rule, its application, and its implications. The report then analyzes the issues the Interim Rule raised when investigational drugs are used for such purposes and makes recommendations for dealing with similar situations in the future

Summary: The qualities of commanders and their ideas are more important to a general theory of command and control than are the technical and architectural qualities of their computers and communications systems. This theory separates the art of command and control (C2) from the hardware and software systems that support C2. It centers on the idea of a command concept, a commander's vision of a military operation that informs the making of command decisions during that operation. The theory suggests that the essential communications up and down the chain of command can (and should) be limited to disseminating, verifying, or modifying command concepts. The theory also suggests, as an extreme case, that an ideal command concept is one that is so prescient, sound, and fully conveyed to subordinates that it would allow the commander to leave the battlefield before the battle commences, with no adverse effect upon the out-come. This report advances a theory about military command and control. Then, through six historical case studies of modern battles, it explores the implications of the theory both for the professional development of commanders and for the design and evaluation of command and control architectures. The report should be of interest to members of the Joint Staff and the services involved in developing command and control doctrine for the U.S. military, and to all of those interested in the "military art and science" of command and control

Summary: The purpose of this study is to assess requirements for peace operations, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief, then to develop options for conducting such contingencies more effectively without detracting from the nation's capability to conduct major theater warfare. This study focuses on one aspect of requirements: those military units required to accomplish these types of operations. It reviews the history of operations during the period of interest, 1990-1996, assessing frequency, duration, and level of effort for each type of operation, expressed in military units. The authors then develop vignettes, or generalized patterns for each type of operation, to examine requirements--both peak strength and rotational demands--under broad projections of the level of future operations. Finally, they analyze implications for all armed services, but particularly for those Army units that are central to protracted land operations and those Air Force units that are required to secure no-fly zones and conduct strikes. The report concludes by recommending options that would improve capability. These options are mostly changes or adjustments at the margin, because U.S. forces have clearly demonstrated that they have sufficient capability to perform these operations successfully. The authors especially recommend organization of Army contingency brigades and air expeditionary forces optimized for close air support. Together, these would be a powerful, versatile force appropriate for a wide range of contingencies. The prospective audience includes decisionmakers and supporting staffs within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, and also the services for areas falling within their cognizance

Summary: The Defense Department has been spending over $100 million annually on recruiting advertising. Previous econometric studies of military advertising's effects have relied on data from time periods unlike today's and have used models possibly inappropriate for supporting today's decisionmakers. This report details improved methods developed to assess military advertising's effectiveness and illustrates them using early 1980s and mid-1990s data