Personnel Readiness in a Force Projection Army
Abstract:
The personnel component of the U.S. Armys unit readiness report USR fails to provide the Armys senior leaders with the information they need to assess any units preparedness to deploy. The force projection strategy of the Army has been exercised thirty times in the past ten years. Yet, the personnel readiness report has changed little in that time. The stop loss remains the central assumption for calculating whether personnel are available to deploy although it has only been used once in the last thirty years. During the remaining twenty-nine deployments, units found as many as 40 of their soldiers were non-deployable, while their USR reported an average of 4 not available. Enormous unit effort was necessary to overcome the personnel shortages in these units. With a minor modification to the current USR personnel report, senior leaders can easily evaluate a units true condition to deploy to support a contingency operation.