The purpose of this study was to establish a baseline of existing legislation, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and service guidance, and directives and policies that establish ancillary training and general military training (GMT) (herein, ancillary training and GMT are referred to as simplyGMT) requirements for members of the armed forces (both Active Component [AC] and Reserve Component [RC]) and examine options to reduce and standardize these requirements. In this report, we analyze the services’ current training approaches to meeting GMT needs, assess the GMT conducted throughout the services, and identify and evaluate opportunities to reduce and standardize training...

This chapter both definesGMTand details the training conducted by the services that meets that definition. It also sets the context for GMT as it relates to other military training.

We approached the first task, which was to defineGMT, by conducting a literature review of the services’ definitions and through discussions with the sponsor. The services do not use a common definition ofGMT, and a DoD-wide definition does not exist. We examined the services’ definitions ofGMTto develop a working definition that the sponsor would approve.

We reviewed DoD’s and the services’ references to determine how...

After categorizing GMT and determining which topics were most directly under the purview of the services, we examined each of the services’ GMT programs and interviewed service training SMEs to understand their objectives, training approaches, and how the training is delivered. The goal of this review was to gain a better understanding of the services’ programs in order to identify potential options to standardize GMT requirements and reduce GMT burden. We examine and summarize the services’ programs and approach and discuss our individual meetings with service SMEs. OSD sponsored a group meeting with the services’ GMT SMEs to discuss potential...

We examined DoD and higher-level directives, such as U.S. Code and presidential directives, to determine the source of training requirements. In Chapter Two, we listed the guidance that directs GMT. Mandated training requirements are often indicated annually or to be conducted “periodically throughout a service person’s career.” These mandated GMT requirements create demands for individuals’ (and groups’) time that directly compete with time needed for an individual’s specialty training, mission (group and collective) readiness training, and maintenance and readiness demands.

Although GMT provides important knowledge, there are challenges and opportunity costs associated with completing it. Our sponsors asked us to...

This research identifies the baseline of mandatory GMT topics common to all the services. OSD also asked RAND to identify strategies to standardize requirements and reduce the GMT burden with the goal of optimizing available training time and training effectiveness. In this chapter, we examine and discuss potential opportunities to standardize training requirements and reduce the burden of GMT. Note that we have not done an independent analysis of the options discussed. Should OSD wish to adopt any of them, it would need to analyze them to determine whether they produce the desired outcome and do not have unintended consequences....

This chapter summarizes our conclusions and recommendations.

We drew the following conclusions from our research:

Although GMT in the aggregate requires a substantial number of hours across the services, the amount of time as percentage of total training time for AC units is not high, constituting less than 1 percent of total training time. The burden falls more heavily on some RC units because they must accomplish the same GMT as the AC and have far fewer training hours available. The Army and Marine Corps RCs devote from 5 to 8 percent of available training time to GMT.

Service GMT...