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RAND Study of Reserve Xxii Realigning the Stars Realigning the Stars A Methodology for Reviewing Active Component General and Flag Officer Requirements RAND National Defense Research Institute C O R P O R A T I O N For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR2384 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-1-9774-0070-3 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2018 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Cover design by Eileen Delson La Russo; image by almagami/Getty Images. Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Realigning the Stars Study Team Principal Investigator Lisa M. Harrington Structure and Organization Position-by-Position Position Pyramid Health Analysis Analysis Analysis Igor Mikolic-Torreira, Paul Mayberry, team lead Katharina Ley Best, team lead Sean Mann team lead Kimberly Jackson Joslyn Fleming Peter Schirmer Lisa Davis Alexander D. Rothenberg Matthew Sargent Ricardo Sanchez Christina Panis Russell Hanson Forced-Choice Exercise Command Chain Legal and Historical David R. Frelinger, team lead Application Research Igor Mikolic-Torreira Bart E. Bennett, team lead Geoffrey McGovern Bart E. Bennett Mitch Tuller Connor P. Jackson Jenny Oberholtzer Ben Goirigolzarri Steven Deane-Shinbrot Sebastian Joon Bae Hilary A. Smith Project Communications Barbara A. Bicksler iii Foreword The size, reach, and complexity of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) demands an executive corps with the skill, expertise, and temperament appropriate to the challenges that a world power faces.1 With personnel in more than 180 countries to carry out its responsibilities, the department commands a budget that rivals the gross domestic product of Sweden—and with its service contractors, it employs an equivalent labor force. Its leaders are responsible for military capabilities that include Special Operations, classic conventional units (Army maneuver battalions, air supe- riority squadrons, etc.), and nuclear missiles, and for business functions that range from basic research to a worldwide school system for the children of servicemembers. In the last generation, DoD’s missions have included disaster relief, the insertion of military units halfway around the world on a week’s notice, and the takedown of nation-states. In order to lead a department that is this large and this complex (on a command and control basis, no less) and that is one of society’s most respected institutions, how large an executive corps is needed? DoD is an institution on which Americans depend to protect their society from attack and to help advance their interests internation- ally. It’s an institution to which they turn for support in domestic emergencies and one whose virtues are widely celebrated as worthy of broader emulation. What career experience should prepare members of such a corps for their leadership responsibilities? Today, that executive corps—the general and flag officers and the Senior Execu- tive Service—numbers just over one individual per thousand federal personnel (inter- estingly, one of the lowest ratios among Cabinet agencies). The majority of its mem- bers and all the uniformed leaders come from within the department’s ranks. That’s understandable, given the developmental paths that the department favors, which are intended to build expertise in the diversity of DoD operations. Most executives bring two decades or more of experience to their senior responsibilities. A closed personnel system, of course, requires sufficient billets to develop the experience needed within its own confines. Other possibilities could be considered, and the U.S. Congress 1 These ideas are elaborated at greater length in David S. C. Chu, Reflections on Executive Leadership for the Department of Defense, IDA document P-8943, May 2018. v vi Realigning the Stars has started to encourage lateral entry, at least for middle management in technical disciplines. Each Secretary of Defense will have distinct perspectives on selecting and shap- ing the executive corps. One key issue is the corps’ size, although the Secretary’s lati- tude may be limited by statutory and regulatory constraints on this matter. Those constraints reflect the reality that the size of an executive corps is an especially conten- tious subject in DoD, as one of several issues involving “tooth to tail” balance. Most recently, Congress has challenged the size and shape of the general and flag officer force, mandating reductions for most of the services and in the joint pool, and consid- ering additional cuts in the future. Ultimately, what’s optimal is a matter of judgment. But judgment is presumably improved if it is informed by tools that allow one to weigh the pros and cons of avail- able options. The tools developed and implemented in this volume could be used not only to help the department respond to the immediate query to review current require- ments for general and flag officers, but also to inform decisions about the flexibility any Secretary needs to sustain the success of the defense enterprise—an enterprise on which the American public so frequently relies and in which it reposes such great trust. David S. C. Chu President, Institute for Defense Analyses and former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness Preface Statutory requirements exist to ensure that military departments have the appropriate authorized number of general and flag officers (G/FOs) on active duty. But how many G/FOs are required to meet military leadership requirements in the Department of Defense (DoD) has long been a point of debate. In the National Defense Authoriza- tion Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017, Congress took initial steps to reduce the number of G/FOs. In addition, Congress mandated that the department conduct “a compre- hensive and deliberate global manpower study of requirements for general and flag officers.” The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USD [P&R]) and the Joint Staff, Manpower and Personnel Directorate (J1) asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute to assist in responding to this mandate and conduct an independent study of G/FO requirements. The study’s principal objec- tive was to develop a methodology to assess active component G/FO requirements and authorizations. This report contains the results of RAND’s analysis, with particular emphasis on details of the methodology developed to assess G/FO requirements. In conducting this study, RAND worked closely with the DoD General/Flag Officer Working Group, established in December 2016 by the USD (P&R), to address the provisions in the fiscal year 2017 NDAA pertaining to general and flag officers.2 The working group was chaired by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Mili- tary Personnel Policy and the director for Manpower and Personnel, J1, Joint Staff.3 The working group was charged with facilitating the active component G/FO requirements analysis as well as preparing and executing implementation of the NDAA provisions. This includes identifying required general and flag officer reductions and developing the department’s implementation plan to be submitted to Congress in conjunction with the fiscal year 2019 budget. The working group was comprised of representatives from:4 2 Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, General/Flag Officer Requirements Study, memo- randum, December 6, 2016. 3 Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Expanded General/Flag Officer Working Group, memorandum, January 6, 2016. 4 Office of the Secretary of Defense General and Flag Officer Management, Terms of Reference, November 21, 2016. vii viii Realigning the Stars • Office of the Secretary of Defense General and Flag Officer Management • Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation • Washington Headquarters Services • Joint Staff • Military departments • Service Manpower and Reserve Affairs offices • Service/Joint Staff General and Flag Officer Management offices. The working group’s terms of reference called for RAND to provide analytical support to the working group and, specifically, to provide a global review of G/FO requirements. The General and Flag Officer Management office, within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, provided the conduit to the other members of the work- ing group and facilitated RAND’s access to G/FO management information and data required for the analysis. This research was sponsored by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy and the Joint
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