Ensuring Our Nation's Security

Understanding the Asian Security Environment

Since 1978, China's reforms and modernization efforts have resulted in an unprecedented rate of economic development. If current trends continue, China may pose a serious geopolitical challenge to the United States in several important ways. It could be a difficult military adversary in East Asia. A militarily and economically strong China might also offer an attractive alternative to the current U.S. "monopoly" as a provider of regional security, thus weakening the U.S. position as the region's preferred security partner. Ultimately, China could seek to limit U.S. political-military access, and possibly economic access, to the region.

The United States and a Rising Chinareports the results of a two-year study undertaken by RAND's Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to assess the effects of China's growing capabilities on U.S. national security planning and to determine the implications for the Air Force. Concluding that Washington's longstanding strategy of engagement with China is flawed, and asserting that an attempt to contain and slow the growth of Chinese power is inappropriate, the research team offered an alternative approach: Continue to try to bring China into the current international system while preparing for a possible Chinese challenge to it. Moreover, seek to convince the Chinese leadership that such a challenge would be difficult to prepare and extremely risky to pursue.

This report has been praised by Secretary of Defense William Cohen and his staff, who found in it reinforcement for recent policies that the Department of Defense (DoD) has been pursuing. The project has also shaped Air Force thinking about basing posture and particularly about the need for access to Asian operating bases.

Fighting Future Wars

To help the DoD realize its vision for fighting future wars, RAND analysts have been supporting the Defense Science Board, primarily with simulation experiments. In the seminal 1999 report entitled Joint Operations Superiority in the 21st Century: Analytic Support to the 1998 Defense Science Board, researchers in RAND's Arroyo Center highlight the limitations of employing airpower and standoff fires alone against a capable opponent. They also identify the problems associated with introducing ground, naval, and air components using traditional doctrine and tactics. Most importantly, their work demonstrates the potential of inserting revolutionary types of forces that operate under new joint concepts of maneuver and firepower.

Current quick-reaction forces can deploy rapidly but are not very maneuverable once they arrive. They can carry out only a limited number of missions and can be bypassed or attacked. The Arroyo Center's proposed concept of agile maneuver capability was derived from several Army and joint agencies. This concept, in combination with long-range fires, changes the equation. The force could set up ambushes or pursue an enemy that decided to bypass it. Should the enemy choose to engage, the reaction force could respond or use its maneuverability to disengage and attack later at a time and place of its choosing.

The work has been briefed to the Secretary of Defense, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and many other U.S. and allied decisionmakers. This study has been instrumental in redirecting the thrust of the Defense Science Board, which previously favored sole reliance on long-range precision munitions. Recent high-level directives have embraced the concept of joint operations that have an agile maneuver capability. The research has also significantly influenced the Army's Strike Force, Army After Next, and Future Combat System efforts, and the report has been recommended as a reference for the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review.

Supporting Combat Forces

If combat operations are to be successful, it is crucial that fighting forces get what they need when they need it, and at an affordable cost. Since 1995, the Arroyo Center has been working with the Army logistics community to implement Velocity Management (VM), a resource management approach that defines, measures, and continuously improves logistics processes. The results of VM are telling: A high-velocity, streamlined Army supply process now delivers repair parts in half the time it took to deliver them just three years ago.

In 1999 Arroyo analysts added two new methodologies to the VM approach. One has improved inventory performance at several Army installations without increasing risk or investment. The second gives the Army a long-desired capability for diagnosing sources of equipment failure. With each success, VM gains additional currency among senior DoD officials. In addition, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the United States Transportation Command have requested RAND's help in applying VM to improve their logistics processes.

Today's Air Force must effectively support nearly continuous deployments of relatively small-scale forces for peacekeeping and humanitarian relief missions and still maintain the capability to win major theater wars. Moreover, because of continuing political and economic pressures, the Air Force has withdrawn from two-thirds of its overseas bases since 1981. Now, basing occurs primarily within the continental United States. To meet the challenges of this unpredictable environment, the Air Force has developed the concept of an Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF). At the EAF's core are readily tailored and highly effective air and space force packages that can be quickly deployed from the United States to any destination worldwide and be ready to engage in required operations.

Implementing the EAF concept poses daunting logistical challenges. PAF is helping the Air Force redesign its logistics system to ensure that it can support the spectrum of operations, deal with uncertainty in location and timing of deployments, and evolve in response to changing political situations, new technologies, and new weapon systems.

As described in Supporting Expeditionary Aerospace Forces: An Integrated Strategic Agile Combat Support Planning Framework,PAF recommended establishment of a global network of forward support locations to provide munitions, fuel, vehicles, spare parts, engine repair, etc. The support locations would be aligned with forward operating locations chosen from a broad set of possibilities, including abandoned airfields. PAF also created and tested a series of automated planning models that compute support requirements and resources (e.g., supplies, munitions, transportation) and then provide commanders with options to consider.

The PAF concepts have been tested in war games and were partially implemented during operations in Kosovo. In addition, the broader PAF analytic framework gives the Air Force a continuing ability to review and improve its support system design.

Attracting Quality Recruits

Attracting skilled and smart recruits is becoming a critical job for the DoD. More than ever, the services are competing with the private sector for high-quality enlistees and with colleges and universities for qualified young people. As the United States becomes more ethnically diverse, the government will want to tap into new or growing populations who are underrepresented in the military ranks today. RAND researchers have approached the analysis of manpower issues by emphasizing how an understanding of developments in U.S. society as a whole will influence force management. RAND work has shown that solutions to the current recruiting shortfall lie in developing new approaches that respond to societal changes.

In concert with the Army, Arroyo Center analysts designed two new programs to respond to the Army's continuing recruiting shortfalls. The College First program draws in part on recent work from RAND's National Defense Research Institute (NDRI). The program will enhance the Army's position in the college recruiting market by targeting high-aptitude youth interested in attending college before going on active duty. It provides incentives to help cover college costs and bonus payments to offset the wage premium earned by college attendance.

The Education Plus program will expand opportunities for nongraduates and minorities by recruiting high-aptitude youth and sponsoring them to get their GED prior to accession. Launched by the Secretary of the Army, these programs will be tested in a national experiment designed by RAND that will run at least two years.

Retaining Experienced Military Personnel

In the first cross-service inquiry into the relationship between reenlistment and personnel deployments arising from peacetime military operations, an NDRI study found the opposite of what many feared would be the case.

Does Perstempo Hurt Reenlistment?shows that having some long or hostile duty tends to increase reenlistment in all four services. Such duty, e.g., a tour in Bosnia or deployment aboard a ship, provides service members with an opportunity to serve their country actively and may contribute experience valuable to their service careers.

But tacking an additional tour atop the first or extending sea duty beyond the expected length tends to reduce that higher likelihood of reenlistment. The negative effect of the additional duty is stronger when it involves danger.

The research was useful to DoD because it offered hard evidence on the retention effects of today's heightened pace of peacetime operations. The findings imply that balancing the burden across personnel might actually increase retention, whereas adding duty to personnel who have already had duty could reduce their retention.

While the frequent-deployment issue accounts in part for the pilot retention problems currently being experienced by the Air Force, it does not entirely explain why large numbers of experienced pilots are leaving as their initial service or bonus-payback commitments expire. These losses also occur because commercial airline demand is strong, and they have caused unprecedented peacetime shortages, especially among fighter pilots.

The shortfall of experienced pilots is most keenly felt in operational units, where flight leaders and instructors are needed to supervise the development of new pilots. As the ratio of experienced pilots to newcomers drops, inexperienced pilots each fly a smaller share of the squadron's sorties; therefore, they develop more slowly and take longer to become experienced.

As part of its ongoing research on training, compensation, and retention issues, PAF recommended actions that the Air Force could take to mitigate this problem, including the following: Place experienced reserve pilots in active units to help control the shortfall and increase the number of qualified supervisors. Send a modest number of new pilots to reserve and guard units to be trained.

In 1999, the research results were made available to a "summit" of four-star generals. Several of the recommendations are now being implemented.

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1999 RAND Research Highlights