The RAND SLAM Program

Assessing alternative mixes of active and reserve forces is a crucial defense issue. Force structure decisions are made in an inherently uncertain environment: Force requirements can vary unpredictably, sometimes surging dramatically, depending on the types of conflicts that arise. The RAND SLAM program is a software application designed to aid military analysts in exploring the inherent trade-offs between cost, stress, and risk in force structure decisions. Its unique feature is that it models force requirements stochastically, allowing for analysis of requirements that change unpredictably over time. This report serves as a user's guide, explaining the program's features and interface and guiding the user through example analyses. Several of these example analyses examine some of the same force structure decisions as those analyzed with spreadsheet techniques by Lynn E. Davis et al. in Stretched Thin: Army Forces for Sustained Operations, thus validating the RAND SLAM results against this previous work. The authors also discuss the underlying model for the program, including its strengths and limitations and how it might be expanded and improved.