“Army readiness” is the ability of the Army to serve the nation. It includes the capabilities of the Operating Force and the Generating Force as well as intangible factors that significantly contribute to overall preparedness, such as Army values, doctrine, strategy, programs, policy, and processes. Both the law and military operational requirements require the Army to track its readiness, gauge shortfalls, and assess the associated risk. The Army must have effective processes for evaluating readiness to make and implement critical resourcing decisions, and to articulate significant shortcomings to Congress and to the military community. Determining the state of Army readiness...

One of the challenges of the past ten years that has caused concern both for Army readiness and the Army’s readiness reporting system has been the need to furnish units with new capabilities to meet emerging operational requirements. On the one hand, there is the organizational challenge of responding to new requirements in a timely manner, notwithstanding the fact that the new equipment is not part of the standard Modified Table of Organization and Equipment (MTOE), the new capabilities are not necessarily in adherence with units’ design or intended purpose, and the conventional procedures for authorizing new gear and capabilities...

Chapter Two showed how the Army builds new capabilities outside the MTOE process. While there were many areas for improvement, the general ability to acquire capabilities as needed is available and undergoing consolidation and enhancement. The question that logically follows is: Given all those changes outside the MTOE, is the MTOE still a valid basis for defining and measuring Army readiness? The question applies both to whether units manned and equipped to MTOE are ready to do what the Army requires of them, and more narrowly to what that means for readiness reporting. To address this question, we expand on...

The previous chapters described concerns with the unit-level approach to readiness reporting given rapid capability development and fighting a protracted conflict with a changing operational environment. Can the Army change? Can readiness reporting keep up? Is the MTOE a useful construct? The bottom line answer to these questions is, yes. However, what emerged in our research were a number of unanticipated issues relating not so much to the quantitative aspects of readiness (i.e., equipment and manning fill) but to the qualitative implications of the kinds of change discussed in the previous chapters. These issues are all related to the basic...

To revisit a theme alluded to early in this report: the Army’s readiness reporting system has been challenged largely because it was built for a different kind of Army. The chief differences in this Army that we discussed throughout this report are:

Dynamic readiness replaced static or tiered readiness;

Instead of building units to reasonably defined and static plans, units were being built for a changing environment and actual deployments;

Army missions following major combat operations in Iraq were outside expected designs, thus entailing new and different capabilities.

The basic tension, thus, is how the readiness reporting system deals with...