Relating Resources to the Readiness and Sustainability of Combined Arms Units

As Soviet forces have modernized and increased in size over the past ten years, U.S. military commanders have become noticeably more concerned not only about sustaining U.S. qualitative superiority in the 1980s, but also about improving the readiness and sustainability of forces already in the field. Few analytical tools are available to help readiness managers and DoD decisionmakers relate changes in the readiness and sustainability status of forces to resource-flow decisions. This report offers an approach to this problem for Army maneuver units. The methodology can be adapted to other types of general purpose forces as well. Section II summarizes the concepts behind the resource readiness and sustainability index. Section III presents the results of applying these concepts to a combined arms brigade supported by its associated FAST and DISCOM, using the AURA simulation model. Section IV discusses some policy and research implications of the results for resource and readiness managers.