James Hosek

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.

The number of field grade and noncommissioned officers with more than 30 years of service has increased since 2007. Drawing on interviews with subject-matter experts and using RAND's Dynamic Retention Model, the authors consider the effects of capping retired pay for mid-grade military personnel so that only those in the highest grades and with the most years of service would receive the highest retired pay.

The authors develop and estimate a stochastic dynamic programming model to analyze the relationship between compensation, including retirement benefits, and retention over the career of Chicago public school teachers. The structural modeling approach used was first developed at RAND for studying the relationship between military compensation and the retention of military personnel and is called the dynamic retention model (DRM).

Exactly how much money do the average officers and enlisted personnel make every month? Retaining high-quality personnel is a priority for the U.S. armed forces. To do so, the military must compensate its servicemembers adequately. The Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation looks at cash pay to enable each armed service to meet its manpower requirements. The authors here examine all forms of cash pay, with attention to special and incentive pays. They found rates of compensation across the services remarkably similar, regardless of skill area. The services should seek greater differentiation if they want to vary the experience mix of their personnel.

The authors developed an Army Enlistment Options Optimizer approach that creates bundles of bonus and less costly non-bonus enlistment incentives. Survey respondents choose the bundle they most value from those available according to job type, term length, recruit characteristics, and recruiting environment, potentially increasing satisfaction and enlistments, generating cost savings, and providing recruit cohorts with desired characteristics.

This report assesses the effects of the Blended Retirement System (BRS) on military retention and cost. The report finds that the BRS can produce the same retention as the legacy system if continuation pay (CP) is set at optimized levels. CP levels affect the likelihood that currently serving members elect the BRS, thereby affecting the time pattern of cost and cost savings to the government.

RAND Corporation researchers developed an analytic capability for determining the efficient amount of U.S. Air Force special and incentive pays for a rated officer pilot career field given the cost of producing an additional trained and adequately experienced rated officer, as well as the retention behavior of rated officers, to sustain the size of the pilot force.

U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) have been deployed intensively in recent years, and this is expected to continue. SOF membership is highly selective, and members receive lengthy and costly training, making retention of those who qualify a high priority. This report focuses on the effectiveness of monetary incentives for SOF commissioned officer retention and the development of a models to assess how such incentives affect retention.

The Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) provides income security for the survivors of U.S. service members who perform in an authorized-duty status and die in the line of duty, as well as for the survivors of retired members enrolled in SBP. This report assesses SBP in terms of participation and benefits, compares it with similar plans in public and private organizations, and considers the feasibility of having SBP provided by commercial sources.

Officer special and incentive (S&I) pays are used to create incentives for officer retention to meet manning requirements. This report describes a methodology, based on RAND's dynamic retention model, for assessing how alternative S&I pay adjustments affect the retention of mental health care officers.

This report presents a theoretical model of the retirement accrual charge, critically reviews reforms suggested by past studies, and provides empirical estimates of the inaccuracy in each service's total and marginal accrual charges under the current system and indicates how this could be fixed by service-specific accrual charges with separate charges for officers and enlisted personnel.

Researchers extend RAND s dynamic retention model for Defense Department civil service workers by reestimating pay profiles, adding costing capability, obtaining estimates for separate and combined cohorts, and allowing estimates to differ for veterans and nonveterans. They apply the extended model to simulate the retention and cost effects of mandating workers to pay a larger share of contributions into the Federal Employees Retirement System."

The Army can design voluntary separation pay (VSP) to meet drawdown goals within a certain time frame without over- or undershooting the goals. A dynamic retention model determines the appropriate VSP levels by year of service to achieve drawdowns of alternative sizes for the active component Army, and the approach could be applied to other services, for enlisted personnel and officers, and for the steady state and the transition to it.

In a multimethod analysis, RAND researchers assess whether the military should continue using its 40-year pay table, implemented in 2007, to retain the most-experienced officers, warrant officers, and enlisted personnel, as well as more-junior personnel aspiring to higher ranks. Alternatively, could such retention be equally achieved by reverting to a 30-year pay table, and how much special and incentive pay would be required?

An increase in pilot hiring at major commercial airlines could increase the outflow of U.S. Air Force rated officers and create manning shortfalls. Because aviator retention pay is now a discretionary program, budget requests for it must be defended. The authors analyzed airline pilot supply, compensation, and demand to estimate possible changes in civilian pilot pay and hiring and the level of aviator retention pay needed as a countermeasure.

This report documents RAND analytical support to the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission (MCRMC). Using the Dynamic Retention Model, the report evaluates MCRMC s proposed military compensation and retirement plan reforms, by service, for officers and enlisted personnel in both the active and reserve components. In addition to generating cost savings, the proposed reforms sustain the current force size and shape."