Estimating the Economic Benefits of Forward-Engaged Naval Forces
Abstract
In preparing for the 1997 quadrennial defense review, U.S. Navy leaders asked the Naval Postgraduate School to study the economic benefits of forward-engaged naval forces and communicate them to policy makers and the public. Until this point, the only evidence of any benefits of such action was anecdotal. Forward-engaged naval forces are U.S.-based ships deployed to such areas as the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, or the western Pacific Ocean. Forward engagement affords the opportunity to work with regional states in shaping the international security environment and also enables rapid response to unexpected crises. The Naval Postgraduate School assembled an interdisciplinary team of faculty from the operations research and national security affairs departments and it prepared a study plan consisting of three interrelated tasks. The first task was to analyze the flexibility and effectiveness of naval forces in providing crisis response options to the president and to the national command authority. The second task was to quantify economic benefits. The third task was to quantify how the Navy's ability to provide forward engagement and crisis response depends upon force structure. They approached this task as a scheduling-optimization problem, taking into account ship-maintenance requirements, restrictions on crew deployment periods, battle group and air wing training requirements, and other deployment parameters. In this paper, they focus on the second task -- quantifying the economic benefits of forward-engaged naval forces. Using a methodology based on oil-futures prices, they estimated the economic benefits of crisis response by forward-engaged naval forces for the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The study showed that the economic benefits to the United States and its trading partners are conservatively in the tens of billions of dollars.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA484913
Entities
People
- David A. Schrady
- Robert E. Looney
- Ronald L. Brown
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School