It is, or should be, a little simpler. I know most of the ring knockers are engineers out of the Academy and they do love having a number to quantify things. But "readiness" outside number of people vs billets and completing training rotations isn't so objective a determination. My perception is that it goes down to the lowest unit and rolls back up. The Chief has his section in order and all ratings up to training specs (as NCOs do in platoons, with LTs in tow). The ward room makes sure all sections are ship shape and conducting maintenance and training to maneuver and fight the ship (Captains et al in Marine and Infantry units)...etc. All the way up the line. If you concentrate on individual unit readiness at each level, then the sum will be greater than the parts.
It's worse than just bad standards on the deckplate. Until last spring most NRRUs didn't even know what the mobilization to billet standards were because they had not been set by CNRFC for non-hardware units for two decades. Most non-hardware NRRU sailors just got their ITPs and JQRs for their mobilization billets this summer.
was gonna say the same thing. you need to try and define readiness standards if you want to measure and compare. if not, all you get are wave functions.
Sounds like a hospital staffed with interns and residents. Don't get sick July 1 to October 31. November 1 to May 15 is optimal, after that everyone is anxious to move on.
Waves - that's a good analogy. My experience (back in the days of the Annual General Inspection Army) was that every commander came in and immediately saw what was slacking, and worked to fix it. Meanwhile - the stuff that worked, started to slack. So the next commander came in and... wash, rinse, repeat. And you could see that in the AGI reports. Starkly.
Some new COs just change things to change things. Gotta do it their way instead of not fixing what ain't broke. I never looked forward to a change of command.
Get your navy reserve buddy to translate. BLUF The Navy Reserve knows it has a mobilization billet training problem. It sees the weather west of Wake getting bad. And it's executing this FLAILEX to get reservists mobilization to billet ready as fast as possible.
But it is data, and we know we must make data driven decisions. We may not know what the data really means, but it is data after all. We can probably even use AI to look at even more data, and therefore, make even better decisions.
DOD (collectively and at the individual service level) forgets the universal mantra of all data analysis: garbage in, garbage out.
Quantifiable readiness reporting is, has been, and likely will remain a boondoggle dog-and-pony show; a labor intensive exercise in smoke and mirrors designed to make the mil look like it operates one way while the reality is very much the other direction. I’d be shocked if any FOGO w/ OPCON of forces makes any sort of significant operational decisions on the back of these “metrics”.
USNR has done more in the last three years to fix itself than the AC. Full stop. All the new personnel systems (pay, orders, etc) are being tested on NR first for one, and secondly each community has been realigning to plug-and-play its sailors directly into the AC mob/supported units. I’ve been on ADOS for over a year now and I can say without a doubt that personnel readiness on the AC side is not trending the right way.
Make fun of Engineers all you want, but I rather have a simple linear equation dictate business than superfluous mission statements and corporate buzzwords that PO3 Neversail cares nothing about.
Good Governance is the key to making the Subjective as Objective as you can. Define your assessment criteria to the best of your ability. This way you can have a common understanding of what does a value such as "2" means. Is that a good score or a bad score?
When you reduce things down to pure numbers, it provides the staff easier ways to put metrics in front of the boss. But when you factor in the coefficient of PROFICIENCY to these equations, you end up with an asymptotic curve that approaches zero. We always talk about integrating the USNR folks to mobilize our forces, but those discussion are usually devoid of such training terms. It is necessary to have the USNR forces and they are vital. But we need to focus on how we quickly build proficiency to improve integration so we truly have a READY FORCE.
This is actually a confused and flawed step towards trying to build proficiency for the reservist to mobilize to their AC support billet. For what it's worth.
LoL ... every one of these "tools" was the brain child of an Admiral or SES who wanted some "dashboard" ... The problem isn't even the tools. It's the fact the data is collected and submitted by humans.
Training and qualifications are good but I've always valued what level of dedication is in a sailor's heart to overcome obstacles to perform their personal assignments. My job was to inspire that level of dedication and reward the same. These formulas don't assist with this strategy.
The problem is that the NR is in such a sorry state after two decades of IAs to CENTCOM that most reservists don't even know what their Blue Force personal assignment is, let alone how to do it. This Mob to Billet effort is a step in the right direction, albeit a very confused and flawed step.
"Uh, we can't sail coz half the guys have the flu, we can't get any fuel or weapons loaded because they think we're decommissioned, and we're missing an engine".
Corporate and academic worlds. I look at dashboards (ooh look! We have a Tableau license!) and I say to myself, "Neato frito. Wonder if we collected any data on variables that might tell us _why_ the pretty graph looks the way it does?"
Good question. Ask the three star. The entire NR system needs to be scrapped in favor of NRRUs reporting directly to their supported Active Duty command for training and readiness. Local readiness can be serviced at the closest Joint Base to the member's home of record or by a civilian provider for medical readiness with proof of service forwarded to the Joint Base clinic for e-record updating. The NRC (former NOSCs) are antiquated time and resources pit that takes more out of the system than it gives back. The NRC personnel should be redistributed to the AC command, CONUS PSD or medical clinics as appropriate. But then that would require the Navy Reserve to smash its own rice bowl for the good of the country. And well bureaucracies are designed for self-preservation.
Agree on this. The NRC's (Former NOSC's) were a time suck when things needed to get done. I was attached to a reserve unit and we needed to send roughly 20 sailors (all ranks) somewhere essentially overnight on a holiday weekend oconus to essentially mob billets but on ADT (ADOS) funds. Finding whom owned arbitrary hard holds to get order through was a big problem
This isn't smart and will create more an excessive admin burden while encouraging gun-decking and false reporting. The best way to judge reserve readiness would be a simple calculation to measure what percentage a unit's RUAD goes on AT every year: # of ATs complete/# of billets in the RUAD. That ratio incorporates fit/fill, medical readiness, CAI utilization, capacity of the supported command to absorb reservists, training readiness, etc. Instead, yeah, they had to create a monstrosity.
No, that won't work either because just doing AT does not capture whether a reservist actually can perform his mobilization billet. Most AC units will have their AT reservist performing COPS duties instead of whatever their actual mobilization billet is. In addition, until the last year and this new Mob to Billet concept was launched FIT/FILL on mobilization billets was completely F'ed, so tracking AT alone did not ensure that FIT/FILL was on track. So, while the reservist conducts AT they are no more ready to perform the job the Navy actually plans on them doing once mobilized. The above concept is a flawed and confused step towards actually getting the reservist trained to do their mobilization billet.
You (and the fit to fill initiative) assume the gaining commands actually know and can plan what they intend to do with reserve support once a war kicks off. Most of them have absolutely no idea; they just know that they need bodies. Measuring how many bodies we can actually get down range rapidly in support of a particular command is a pretty good proxy for readiness. It's also a decent indicator for those units whose usefulness to the total force may not be what it once was and for manpower that may need to be divested or shifted into other functions.
Which is a problem the AC needs to deal with immediately. By requiring the Active Duty Reserve Program Director to be responsible for NRRU unit training plan, it requires the AC supported command to actually think about how to employ the reserve forces that they have allocated to them, if and when the reserve force is called to fully mobilize.
"Measuring how many bodies we can actually get down range rapidly in support of a particular command is a pretty good proxy for readiness."
What good is this actually when the individual reservist has no idea what they are doing when they report to their AC supported command once mobilized?
"It's also a decent indicator for those units whose usefulness to the total force may not be what it once was"
This is achieved by identifying which AC supported commands can't justify their use of reserve manpower for the mobilized fight. The reserve billets will then be re-written to support the AC units that can justify a need for reserve manpower. This process of billet re-alignment has already been on-going the last couple years.
Suffice to say, there's a considerable delta between what CNR/CNRFC thinks happened with billet realignment and what actually happened at the pillar/enterprise/unit level. Moreover, the personalities, egos, and ambitions involved drove outcomes in the process that may not reflect reality. Numerous capabilities should have been realigned, but various personal rice bowls kept that from happening to the extent needed.
The Navy Reserve has a wide breadth and depth of capabilities. Many of them revolve around having motivated citizen sailors who are willing to make personal and professional sacrifices to do a job in wartime that may or may not involve some sort of specific skill or training. In an ideal world, commands would know exactly what they need, but given no one has a crystal ball into what the next mobilization might look like and anyone who says they do is full of shit. Subsequently, strategic initiatives that maximize recruiting, retention, and motivation of sailors is probably going to give the force a higher ROI than playing with metrics that are out of touch with reality.
It's not that simple either. The old model that had reservist focus solely on personal mobilization readiness: drilling at NRCs to complete CNFRC/DON administration requirements and medical readiness. This severely hurt retention and recruitment, because most people don't want to spend two days a month at the Navy equivalent of the DMV waiting on flu shots and computers to free up in order to complete your ATFP training.
In addition to hurting retention, it left a huge delta to fully train the reservist once mobilized. Long training once mobilized could be supported for long lead time IA rotations to Tampastan; but it is not sustainable for peer-to-peer conflict, when you have to immediately fully mobilize the ready reserve force in a short period of time.
Yes, the force will always need professionals to support the Active Force in crucial areas like civil construction, legal affairs, chaplains and medical support. However, those professional fields and hardware units already have defined roles and fairly ironed out training programs. This initiative is designed more for the bulk of the Ready Reserve that is not part of a commissioned hardware reserve unit or in a professional field covering a critical support role like JAG, Chaplain or Medical. Most of the Ready Reserve are attached to non-commissioned NRRUs that support an AC unit or temporarily assigned to a RSU manning pool waiting to get a billet in a NRRU. The MOB to Billet concept was created for the reservist serving in a non-commissioned NRRU supporting an active-duty unit.
While no one has a crystal ball and the next black swan will arise, it would be foolish to act like the most likely and most dangerous ECOAs don't need to be planned for and those plans do not have a role for the Ready Reserve. What Ukraine is re-emphasizing is that modern war moves quickly and when the balloon goes up at the time not of our choosing, the Ready Reserve needs to mobilize fast and already be trained to support their AC units for at least the most likely and most dangerous ECOAs. What is clear, is that the old Navy Reserve model will not work in an era of great power competition.
I actually know a few things about RC support to the Ukraine crisis. What it reemphasized to me is that although the AC needed a few specific skill sets, mostly they just wanted bodies who were good staffers (officer and enlisted) who could get there quickly and flex to do whatever job was put in front of them in a dynamic environment. Too much time emphasizing specific billet training leaves too little time to actually get to the gaining command for things like exercises and routine staff support (this is for OLW units). As to other pillars that support say surface forces, they need bodies to fill manpower gaps. Keeping them proficient in rate training is really important, but hard to do.
Consider an alternative explanation. Microsoft is the devil.
The problem is with the powerpoint. It is mind-numbing. Perhaps the idea was fine, to allow folks to create mini TV shows on their computer, but the way it is used. Tedious.
Tables in powerpoint come from the Microsoft spreadsheet program, so, of course math nerds get excited and graph and charts are everywhere. Metrics! Powerpoint is crap, so of course, only crap ideas will be communicated through powerpoint. The medium is the message.
Tell me your service's bureaucracy is too metric-driven without telling me your service is too metric-driven...
I'm in the Air Force, and we definitely suffer from the same numbers-induced myopia. Why are we so obsessed with the color green in PowerPoint?
It is, or should be, a little simpler. I know most of the ring knockers are engineers out of the Academy and they do love having a number to quantify things. But "readiness" outside number of people vs billets and completing training rotations isn't so objective a determination. My perception is that it goes down to the lowest unit and rolls back up. The Chief has his section in order and all ratings up to training specs (as NCOs do in platoons, with LTs in tow). The ward room makes sure all sections are ship shape and conducting maintenance and training to maneuver and fight the ship (Captains et al in Marine and Infantry units)...etc. All the way up the line. If you concentrate on individual unit readiness at each level, then the sum will be greater than the parts.
It's worse than just bad standards on the deckplate. Until last spring most NRRUs didn't even know what the mobilization to billet standards were because they had not been set by CNRFC for non-hardware units for two decades. Most non-hardware NRRU sailors just got their ITPs and JQRs for their mobilization billets this summer.
[The artillerist/ORSApod looks around confusedly, bemusedly holds up a finger, shakes his head, and gets back to flipping tables in Excel.]
was gonna say the same thing. you need to try and define readiness standards if you want to measure and compare. if not, all you get are wave functions.
new commander? readiness drops precipitously
over time, it improves
end of tour: best ship in the fleet
new commander? rinse and repeat
Units do well, what the boss checks....
- ORSA GUY
Sounds like a hospital staffed with interns and residents. Don't get sick July 1 to October 31. November 1 to May 15 is optimal, after that everyone is anxious to move on.
avoid the ER on Friday night, three day weekends
Waves - that's a good analogy. My experience (back in the days of the Annual General Inspection Army) was that every commander came in and immediately saw what was slacking, and worked to fix it. Meanwhile - the stuff that worked, started to slack. So the next commander came in and... wash, rinse, repeat. And you could see that in the AGI reports. Starkly.
Some new COs just change things to change things. Gotta do it their way instead of not fixing what ain't broke. I never looked forward to a change of command.
Get your navy reserve buddy to translate. BLUF The Navy Reserve knows it has a mobilization billet training problem. It sees the weather west of Wake getting bad. And it's executing this FLAILEX to get reservists mobilization to billet ready as fast as possible.
But it is data, and we know we must make data driven decisions. We may not know what the data really means, but it is data after all. We can probably even use AI to look at even more data, and therefore, make even better decisions.
DOD (collectively and at the individual service level) forgets the universal mantra of all data analysis: garbage in, garbage out.
Quantifiable readiness reporting is, has been, and likely will remain a boondoggle dog-and-pony show; a labor intensive exercise in smoke and mirrors designed to make the mil look like it operates one way while the reality is very much the other direction. I’d be shocked if any FOGO w/ OPCON of forces makes any sort of significant operational decisions on the back of these “metrics”.
It's a readiness data system collected for CNRFC SA not the AC OPCON.
Yes, I'm aware thx.
USNR has done more in the last three years to fix itself than the AC. Full stop. All the new personnel systems (pay, orders, etc) are being tested on NR first for one, and secondly each community has been realigning to plug-and-play its sailors directly into the AC mob/supported units. I’ve been on ADOS for over a year now and I can say without a doubt that personnel readiness on the AC side is not trending the right way.
Make fun of Engineers all you want, but I rather have a simple linear equation dictate business than superfluous mission statements and corporate buzzwords that PO3 Neversail cares nothing about.
Good Governance is the key to making the Subjective as Objective as you can. Define your assessment criteria to the best of your ability. This way you can have a common understanding of what does a value such as "2" means. Is that a good score or a bad score?
When you reduce things down to pure numbers, it provides the staff easier ways to put metrics in front of the boss. But when you factor in the coefficient of PROFICIENCY to these equations, you end up with an asymptotic curve that approaches zero. We always talk about integrating the USNR folks to mobilize our forces, but those discussion are usually devoid of such training terms. It is necessary to have the USNR forces and they are vital. But we need to focus on how we quickly build proficiency to improve integration so we truly have a READY FORCE.
This is actually a confused and flawed step towards trying to build proficiency for the reservist to mobilize to their AC support billet. For what it's worth.
LoL ... every one of these "tools" was the brain child of an Admiral or SES who wanted some "dashboard" ... The problem isn't even the tools. It's the fact the data is collected and submitted by humans.
Humans....with bosses....who are also humans
I am more inclined to believe that Senior Executive Service bureaucrats are responsible for most of the gobbledygook highlighted in this article.
It's actually getting pushed by CNRFC and the Chief of the Navy Reserve.
Training and qualifications are good but I've always valued what level of dedication is in a sailor's heart to overcome obstacles to perform their personal assignments. My job was to inspire that level of dedication and reward the same. These formulas don't assist with this strategy.
The problem is that the NR is in such a sorry state after two decades of IAs to CENTCOM that most reservists don't even know what their Blue Force personal assignment is, let alone how to do it. This Mob to Billet effort is a step in the right direction, albeit a very confused and flawed step.
"Uh, we can't sail coz half the guys have the flu, we can't get any fuel or weapons loaded because they think we're decommissioned, and we're missing an engine".
REPORT REJECTED
Management by dashboards of fake math. It’s in vogue in corporate America too.
Yeah it's called data "science" and it's most often detached from mathematical intuition.
Oh it's worse than detached --- it's pretends to process pretend quantities to produce pretend information.
Corporate and academic worlds. I look at dashboards (ooh look! We have a Tableau license!) and I say to myself, "Neato frito. Wonder if we collected any data on variables that might tell us _why_ the pretty graph looks the way it does?"
Nah... just slam all the great data into a topological & weight evolving artificial neural network and presto... sense - act- decide on steroids.
This is what CNFRC is forced to do since they don't trust their Reserve COs and need to justify their own existence.
"This is what CNFRC is forced to do since they don't trust their Reserve COs and need to justify their own existence. "
Why isn't this "trust" issue fixed instead of conjuring up some convoluted gibberish...
Good question. Ask the three star. The entire NR system needs to be scrapped in favor of NRRUs reporting directly to their supported Active Duty command for training and readiness. Local readiness can be serviced at the closest Joint Base to the member's home of record or by a civilian provider for medical readiness with proof of service forwarded to the Joint Base clinic for e-record updating. The NRC (former NOSCs) are antiquated time and resources pit that takes more out of the system than it gives back. The NRC personnel should be redistributed to the AC command, CONUS PSD or medical clinics as appropriate. But then that would require the Navy Reserve to smash its own rice bowl for the good of the country. And well bureaucracies are designed for self-preservation.
Agree on this. The NRC's (Former NOSC's) were a time suck when things needed to get done. I was attached to a reserve unit and we needed to send roughly 20 sailors (all ranks) somewhere essentially overnight on a holiday weekend oconus to essentially mob billets but on ADT (ADOS) funds. Finding whom owned arbitrary hard holds to get order through was a big problem
The biggest problem with gathering numbers is that you usually end up only getting what you measure.
This isn't smart and will create more an excessive admin burden while encouraging gun-decking and false reporting. The best way to judge reserve readiness would be a simple calculation to measure what percentage a unit's RUAD goes on AT every year: # of ATs complete/# of billets in the RUAD. That ratio incorporates fit/fill, medical readiness, CAI utilization, capacity of the supported command to absorb reservists, training readiness, etc. Instead, yeah, they had to create a monstrosity.
No, that won't work either because just doing AT does not capture whether a reservist actually can perform his mobilization billet. Most AC units will have their AT reservist performing COPS duties instead of whatever their actual mobilization billet is. In addition, until the last year and this new Mob to Billet concept was launched FIT/FILL on mobilization billets was completely F'ed, so tracking AT alone did not ensure that FIT/FILL was on track. So, while the reservist conducts AT they are no more ready to perform the job the Navy actually plans on them doing once mobilized. The above concept is a flawed and confused step towards actually getting the reservist trained to do their mobilization billet.
You (and the fit to fill initiative) assume the gaining commands actually know and can plan what they intend to do with reserve support once a war kicks off. Most of them have absolutely no idea; they just know that they need bodies. Measuring how many bodies we can actually get down range rapidly in support of a particular command is a pretty good proxy for readiness. It's also a decent indicator for those units whose usefulness to the total force may not be what it once was and for manpower that may need to be divested or shifted into other functions.
"Most of them have absolutely no idea"
Which is a problem the AC needs to deal with immediately. By requiring the Active Duty Reserve Program Director to be responsible for NRRU unit training plan, it requires the AC supported command to actually think about how to employ the reserve forces that they have allocated to them, if and when the reserve force is called to fully mobilize.
"Measuring how many bodies we can actually get down range rapidly in support of a particular command is a pretty good proxy for readiness."
What good is this actually when the individual reservist has no idea what they are doing when they report to their AC supported command once mobilized?
"It's also a decent indicator for those units whose usefulness to the total force may not be what it once was"
This is achieved by identifying which AC supported commands can't justify their use of reserve manpower for the mobilized fight. The reserve billets will then be re-written to support the AC units that can justify a need for reserve manpower. This process of billet re-alignment has already been on-going the last couple years.
Suffice to say, there's a considerable delta between what CNR/CNRFC thinks happened with billet realignment and what actually happened at the pillar/enterprise/unit level. Moreover, the personalities, egos, and ambitions involved drove outcomes in the process that may not reflect reality. Numerous capabilities should have been realigned, but various personal rice bowls kept that from happening to the extent needed.
The Navy Reserve has a wide breadth and depth of capabilities. Many of them revolve around having motivated citizen sailors who are willing to make personal and professional sacrifices to do a job in wartime that may or may not involve some sort of specific skill or training. In an ideal world, commands would know exactly what they need, but given no one has a crystal ball into what the next mobilization might look like and anyone who says they do is full of shit. Subsequently, strategic initiatives that maximize recruiting, retention, and motivation of sailors is probably going to give the force a higher ROI than playing with metrics that are out of touch with reality.
It's not that simple either. The old model that had reservist focus solely on personal mobilization readiness: drilling at NRCs to complete CNFRC/DON administration requirements and medical readiness. This severely hurt retention and recruitment, because most people don't want to spend two days a month at the Navy equivalent of the DMV waiting on flu shots and computers to free up in order to complete your ATFP training.
In addition to hurting retention, it left a huge delta to fully train the reservist once mobilized. Long training once mobilized could be supported for long lead time IA rotations to Tampastan; but it is not sustainable for peer-to-peer conflict, when you have to immediately fully mobilize the ready reserve force in a short period of time.
Yes, the force will always need professionals to support the Active Force in crucial areas like civil construction, legal affairs, chaplains and medical support. However, those professional fields and hardware units already have defined roles and fairly ironed out training programs. This initiative is designed more for the bulk of the Ready Reserve that is not part of a commissioned hardware reserve unit or in a professional field covering a critical support role like JAG, Chaplain or Medical. Most of the Ready Reserve are attached to non-commissioned NRRUs that support an AC unit or temporarily assigned to a RSU manning pool waiting to get a billet in a NRRU. The MOB to Billet concept was created for the reservist serving in a non-commissioned NRRU supporting an active-duty unit.
While no one has a crystal ball and the next black swan will arise, it would be foolish to act like the most likely and most dangerous ECOAs don't need to be planned for and those plans do not have a role for the Ready Reserve. What Ukraine is re-emphasizing is that modern war moves quickly and when the balloon goes up at the time not of our choosing, the Ready Reserve needs to mobilize fast and already be trained to support their AC units for at least the most likely and most dangerous ECOAs. What is clear, is that the old Navy Reserve model will not work in an era of great power competition.
I actually know a few things about RC support to the Ukraine crisis. What it reemphasized to me is that although the AC needed a few specific skill sets, mostly they just wanted bodies who were good staffers (officer and enlisted) who could get there quickly and flex to do whatever job was put in front of them in a dynamic environment. Too much time emphasizing specific billet training leaves too little time to actually get to the gaining command for things like exercises and routine staff support (this is for OLW units). As to other pillars that support say surface forces, they need bodies to fill manpower gaps. Keeping them proficient in rate training is really important, but hard to do.
Consider an alternative explanation. Microsoft is the devil.
The problem is with the powerpoint. It is mind-numbing. Perhaps the idea was fine, to allow folks to create mini TV shows on their computer, but the way it is used. Tedious.
Tables in powerpoint come from the Microsoft spreadsheet program, so, of course math nerds get excited and graph and charts are everywhere. Metrics! Powerpoint is crap, so of course, only crap ideas will be communicated through powerpoint. The medium is the message.