What Should Be Stocked in War Reserve? A New Method for Allocating Resources

Abstract

When Army units deploy rapidly for a contingency operation, it creates challenges for the initial sustainment of deployed units. Units bring some supplies with them but generally only enough for a short period. Beyond that, supplies need to come from theater-level inventory or have to be airlifted in. Theater-level inventory typically is established and replenished by sealift. However, it is likely to take 45-plus days for the first supply ships to arrive from the United States. While airlift could be used during this period, it is a scarce resource also heavily valued for early deployments. The Army's war reserve secondary items (WRSI) within Army Prepositioned Stock (APS) address these risks. Stockpiles positioned overseas in strategic locations and aboard ships enable the rapid establishment of theater inventory. Additional inventory in the United States, not made available to support training, compensates until the industrial base can surge and provide a higher level of supplies. However, funding for WRSI stocks often falls short of the total requirement given the breadth of Army budget priorities, and the Army has lacked a formal method for prioritizing which WRSI items to buy for APS when funding is short. The Army asked RAND Arroyo Center to develop techniques to prioritize the use of a $467 million FY 2007 budget for WRSI materiel for a Northeast Asia contingency scenario. Arroyo adapted actual demand data to derive forecasts of the potential contingency demands; determined which items should be forward positioned versus stored in the continental United States (CONUS) and delivered via airlift; and allocated the budgeted funding to maximize the WRSI inventory investment value with respect to readiness and minimizing the need for sustainment airlift early in a contingency.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA554324

Entities

People

  • Kristin J. Leuschner

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Army Budgets
  • Budgets
  • Corporations
  • Education
  • Health Care
  • Homeland Security
  • Intellectual Property
  • Inventory
  • Law
  • National Security
  • Northeast Asia
  • Public Safety
  • Security
  • Supply Chain
  • Training
  • United States

Readers

  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.