Army Force Management School, Part III

Today's excursion into force management lore brought us to consider the Army Force Generation model, aka ARFORGEN.  Formally defined, the ARFORGEN model is the structured progression of readiness over time, to produce trained, ready, and cohesive units prepared for operational deployment in support of combatant commander and other Army requirements.  It is a cyclic system that allocates resources to units based on unit deployment schedules.  The model has three phases:  RESET, Train/Ready, and Available.  It is an "evolving" process--the instructor kept saying that there are still a lot of imperfections in the system.


The other subjects covered today were Force Readiness, Business Transformation (Institutional Adaptation), and the Army Campaign Plan.

Force Readiness is about measuring the status of unit readiness.  We learned about the Defense Readiness Reporting System-Army (DRRS-A).  The DRRS-A is the Army's operational database of record.  It captures readiness across the force, meets Army readiness management requirements and directly supports Army Title 10 responsibilities.

In the hour spent on business transformation, we learned about the Army's efforts to improve its governance, assessment, and collaboration architectures.  Three things are driving this transformation.  First, the generating force does not directly support the ARFORGEN process; the two are not in sync.  Second, decision making has become too centralized and many decisions are made at too high a level.  This increases mission timelines.  Third, the Army must transform in order to provide the best readiness at the best value.

The Army Campaign Plan, we learned, is all about building a balanced Army for the 21st Century that is a versatile mix of tailorable and networked organizations, operating on a rotational cycle, to provide a sustained flow of trained and ready forces for full spectrum operations and to hedge against unexpected contingencies--at a tempo that is predictable and sustainable for our all-volunteer Army.  Is that a mouthful, or what? The Army Campaign Plan provides the direction to create and sustain a campaign-capable joint and expeditionary Army (that's what the one of the slides said).  In the development of the plan, decision points are presented for resolution in the 4-star updates co-chaired by the Under Secretary of the Army and the Vice Chief of the Army.

Big test first thing in the morning!