The Fundamentals of Military Readiness

"Each year the Department of Defense (DOD) requests and Congress authorizes and appropriates billions of dollars in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding to support what the DOD calls readiness. Additionally, other types of defense appropriations may be used to contribute to producing, sustaining, or otherwise enabling readiness. DOD defines readiness as “the ability of military forces to fight and meet the demands of assigned missions.” What precisely this means is a matter of ongoing discourse among congressional leaders and defense officials alike.

Despite disagreement over specific definitions of readiness, DOD retains statutory authorities and responsibilities to produce and sustain ready military forces, and Congress has the constitutional authority to resource and regulate military forces for the nation. For these reasons, many government officials and members of the defense community agree that the focus of readiness is to generate “ready” military forces. The process of generating these forces is complex, and differs across a range of various circumstances (e.g., branch of armed service, military occupation, status of a service member [commissioned officer, warrant officer, or enlisted], and duty type/component [i.e., active or reserve]). Nonetheless, the military’s overall “readiness production process” can be broadly described in terms of producing and sustaining ready military units over time, with the principal focus within these units being the “war fighter” (i.e., the service member). 

This report applies the analogy of a production line to explain the process. The readiness production process includes three fundamental parts:

 Building initial readiness. This includes providing initial training and testing along with proper resourcing, so that war fighters can progress to advanced training.

 Increasing readiness. This includes providing advanced individual and unit training, testing, and proper resourcing, so that war fighters are qualified and resourced to deploy with their operational units.

 Sustaining readiness. This includes the continual training and resourcing of units, prior to and following deployments, in order to ensure units remain ready for future assigned missions.

Related to the readiness production process are the assessment and reporting of military readiness. This report includes an overview of selected readiness systems, assessments, and sample metrics used to inform military and congressional leaders. These include

 the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS);

 the Chairman’s Readiness System (CRS);

 the Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress (QRRC);

 Mission Capable (MC) rates; and 

 Aircraft Availability (AA) rates..."
Military readiness