Improving the quality and personnel fill rates of U.S. Army Reserve units

Abstract

The most critical component of sustaining combat-ready United States Army Reserve (USAR) units is manning. Traditionally, the USAR has focused on maintaining the Congressionally mandated End Strength Objective (ESO), a total force requirement, at the expense of manning individual units. Historically, the AR has met the overall ESO, but some individual units became unbalanced. Many were very successful at manning soldiers above their authorized strength while others struggled. Massive mobilizations in support of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) have highlighted the importance of manning units to their proper "fill rates." The AR cross-leveled troops from overstrength to understrength units resulting in many problems. This thesis formulates and solves a model addressing the problem of maintaining appropriate AR unit manning. A prior thesis created a database of 30,000 zip codes, 800 RCs, and 264 Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs) that included demographic, vocational, and economic data and past military recruit production. A second thesis established requirements and constraints on recruiting. Together with these two theses, this work will form the Unit Positioning and QUality Assessment Model (UPQUAM), an optimization model that considers unit manning and the Military Available Population (MAP). Results will indicate where the MAP best supports Army Reserve units. Each unit will be associated with an existing Reserve Center (RC) and those that are not supported within a Regional Readiness Command's (RRC) MAP will be highlighted for later consideration in another RRC.