Strategies and Tools for Maximizing Active/Reserve Component (AC/RC) Performance

Today's Army relies on numerous AC/RC force integration initiatives to strengthen its ability to meet military commitments at home and abroad. For these initiatives to be fully successful, leaders of composite units must have knowledge of inter-component operational and cultural differences, easy access to lessons learned by their predecessors, and the latest information on ways to foster mutual trust and respect among unit members. Accordingly, the RC must be prepared to accept the integration challenge to attain and maintain higher levels of readiness without the benefit of additional training time. The RC, therefore, needs to train and evaluate itself more efficiently than ever before while finding ways to ensure that enough company-grade officers are on board to guide the process. Because a good portion of RC-available time is spent on small-arms training/qualification, R&D is needed to (a) develop a streamlined training/evaluation process for maximizing the payoff from the resources (e.g., time, ammunition) spent, and (b) identify steps for ensuring that sufficient numbers of company-grade officers are available to effect successful implementation of this process at the unit level.

The objective of this effort is to develop tools that satisfy the information needs of AC/RC composite unit leaders, support innovative approaches for maximizing the efficiency of RC small-arms marksmanship training and evaluation, and increase the number of company-grade RC officers. In so doing , we will develop (a) a world-wide-web-interactive, CD-ROM-based, information reference tool to help composite unit leaders meet the challenges of AC/RC integration, (b) easy-to-use, simulation-based tools for predicting small-arms marksmanship proficiency, (c) recommended frequency for simulation vs. live-fire-based qualification performance assessment, and (d) recommendations for increasing the number of company-grade officers through enhanced state Officer Candidate School (OCS) enrollment.

The U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) intends to (a) distribute the CD-ROM reference tool to Army unit leaders participating in both stateside and overseas AC/RC force integration initiatives, and (b) use the marksmanship-related products to maximize small-arms qualification rates, reduce the live-fire time and ammunition needed to do so, and serve as proof-of-principle for using simulation to satisfy yearly marksmanship training and evaluation requirements when live-fire range facilities are unavailable. The Army National Guard (ARNG) intends to use the OCS-related recommendations for reducing its current company-grade officer shortfall.

In FY2004, we will:

• Quantify ammunition savings from application of simulation-based boresighting
• Develop simulation-based strategies/tools for predicting machine gun qualification scores

Proponent: Chief of Army Reserve
ARI Unit: Force Stabilization Research Unit

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