Force Structure Analytical Framework: A Notional Army for SARA Version 1.3

Abstract

This document presents a Notional Army that has been created to provide realistic but generalized inputs to the Stochastic ActiveReserve Analysis (SARA) Model that is being developed by the Institute for Defense Analyses for the Office of the Secretary of Defense Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation. SARA uses a historical approach to estimate the probabilities of occurrence of foreign and domestic military operations. These probabilities are used to generate stochastic distributions of several kinds of operations that produce estimates of the Army forces used in them. In order to use the stochastic results, it is necessary to measure both demand and supply in the same terms. The U.S. Army is a large and complicated organization with over a million military personnel. It is difficult to simplify. One way is to differentiate between the Operating Force that conducts military operations and the Generating Force that provides trained units and personnel to the Operating Force. The Operating Force has two basic parts: 1) units assigned to the functional combatant commands (CCMDs) and 2) units in an Expeditionary Force that can be allocated to regional CCMDs to conduct both foreign operations and to NORTHCOM and PACOM to conduct domestic operations. SARA addresses only the Expeditionary Force. Many studies of the Army force structure address only the Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) and ignore the numerous supporting functions that are essential to allow BCTs to generate combat power. It is necessary, however, to consider these support functions when estimating demand. This is difficult because the Army has several thousand small units (companies, batteries, troops, platoons, detachments, and teams) that are subordinated to tactical headquarters (battalions, brigades, divisions, and corps) to conduct operations. After considerable discussion, it was recognized that it would not be possible to represent the many possible combinations of these small units in a useful manner.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2016
Accession Number
AD1123577

Entities

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  • John R. Brinkerhoff

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  • Institute for Defense Analyses

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