Albert A Robbert

The composition of Air Force active and reserve forces is often contentious, especially during a force drawdown. This document seeks to inform force composition decisions by clarifying issues that affect the suitability of missions for assignment to the reserve components.

Appointment scrolls are required for officers to enter the services and to take on service in a different grade, military service, or component. Researchers examine processes used to meet scrolling requirements, identify gaps and redundancies that create administrative burdens and delays, and provide recommendations for increasing the efficiency of the scroll creation process.

This report addresses the issues of promotions, tenure, and other aspects of officer career management that lend themselves to modernization. The authors identify statutory, policy, cultural, and fiscal constraints on the military departments' flexibilities to make changes; they gather service perspectives on these constraints; and they offer potential mitigation strategies.

This report documents analyses of either a warrant officer component or an aviation technical track for commissioned officers to supplement the traditional Air Force pilot career path. The analysis sought to determine whether either alternative would enhance force sustainment, thus helping to reduce pilot shortages.

Processes for determining U.S. Air Force manpower requirements vary across and within the workforces. The primary focus of this report is on quantitative manpower requirements processes and the extent to which they are validated, coordinated, and consistent. For wartime or deployment needs, this report seeks to determine if a common-sight picture of demands is available, particularly for non-operational, non-maintenance activities referred to as agile combat support. It also explores the qualitative side of personnel requirements.

This tool describes RAND efforts to develop and employ personnel inventory models to conduct human capital management analyses. It should be of interest to analysts at the formative stage of a project to help in visualizing potential analytic paths.

The Department of the Air Force is working to develop artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) systems for mission areas and support functions, including human resource management. The authors reviewed how private-sector organizations evaluate and select such projects and developed a framework for assessing business value, technical feasibility, and implementation complexity of possible ML projects to form a portfolio.

The Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act established an alternative framework for setting promotion policies for military officers in competitive categories. The authors examine whether a shift to alternative promotion authority (APA) would be beneficial to the U.S. Air Force, how it would be implemented, and the use of related policy options-merit sequencing and lineal zone management-under either conventional or APA.

The Department of the Air Force is revamping the way it manages officer development and promotion. These changes will enhance leadership's ability to identify and develop talent at all stages of an officer's career. To help evaluate new personnel policies, the authors built a tool called the Air Force Personnel Policy Simulation Tool, which simulates effects of new personnel policies on career field health and demographic diversity.

Researchers conducted a study to propose new approaches for determining staffing needs in the U.S. Secret Service's highest-priority administrative, professional, and technical functions. Using process mapping and business-case analysis, the team created staffing models. This report documents the team's methods, implementation considerations, and lessons learned for future workforce studies.

The authors examine the process the Air Force uses to determine manpower requirements, compare it with processes used in other services and organizations, and evaluate options for increasing the efficiency of the Air Force process.

The Air Force's special operations and combat support specialties in the enlisted force are among the highest in demand by the service yet have persistently high rates of attrition in initial skills training. This report addresses challenges for implementing new approaches to these high-demand, high-attrition specialties' recruiting, screening, and development processes, and takes a holistic approach to identifying methods to fill process gaps.

This report assesses the effect that proposed military human resource management flexibilities could have on Air Force officer accessions, promotions, separations, and other force management outcomes. The assessments identified flexibilities that would benefit the Air Force and characterized subsets of the military workforce to which they could be advantageously applied.

This report examines alternative policies and practices to better align post-promotion board reporting with the objectives of promoting officers who have served on the Joint Staff and OSD staff at at least the same rate as those with service headquarters staff experience and of promoting joint-qualified officers and Acquisition Corps members at at least the same rate as line or equivalent officers in their services.

This report assesses the FY 2012 reorganization of the Air Force Material Command (AFMC), which was undertaken as one of the initiatives to achieve mandated budget reductions by eliminating civilian manpower positions, thus achieving cost savings. One AFMC challenge was to absorb these cuts with minimal, if any, impact on its assigned missions in part by targeting staff positions.

This report describes a methodology for compiling and comparing the costs of Air Force active- and reserve-component flying units. Using data from the Air Force Total Ownership Cost system, the author estimates the cost of operating the Air Force s active and reserve C-130, KC-135, and F 16 fleets; highlights how cost considerations favor the active and reserve components differently; and discusses how this can inform force mix decisions."

This report describes a process for achieving and maintaining the balance between requirements for rated personnel and inventory. The process includes (1) recategorizing positions; (2) streamlining conversion of recategorized positions; (3) planning for effects of major actions on rated requirements; (4) redesigning positions to concentrate tasks requiring rated expertise in fewer rated positions; (5) making aircrew management more responsive.