Manpower, Personnel, and Training Methodology: Myths and Realities
Authors: Graine George N. 
Published: January 2012

For military personnel planners life seemed so simple in the days when there was a draft. Now, not only do we have personnel costs and weapon system life cycle costs that are rising dramatically into the billions but there is also a predictable drop off in the population eligible for military service through the 1990's. To complicate matters, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have frozen military manpower to the 1984 levels. In essence, this means that the defense establishment may be prevented from adequately supporting the operation and maintenance of many new systems currently under contract as well as shelving its plan to buy more technologically improved systems. More to the point of this panel session is the fact that supportability of new systems in terms of human resource requirements is often not addressed before the program decisions concerning new hardware procurements are made. The price tag of manpower, personnel, and training (MPT) is estimated at close to 60 percent of the life cycle cost of a weapon system.

Each service is in the process of developing a comprehensive solution to an extremely difficult problem; that is, how to cope with the moving target of military personnel management. The panel members will discuss MPT problems and solutions unique to his branch of service. As in any ambitious program of the magnitude of this one, a number of myths and misconceptions have sprung up for one reason or another. Each panelist will attempt to dispell the voodoo-like personnel management considerations associated with the new process. Panacea or placebo, dogma or duplicity, and methodology or model, all will be discussed.

Commander, George Council will present a paper on “Supportability: Pay Now or Pay and Pay and Pay Later.” The Navy is the farthest along in its quest to improve total personnel management. The process called the HARDMAN methodology (for military manpower/hardware integration) represents a giant leap forward to improve human resource considerations during the weapon system acquisition process. It identifies, through analytic procedures, early estimates of MPT requirements for planning purposes. In the process of accomplishing this, it improves communications within the MPT community, and provides early feedback for developing a training concept, and influences system operational and maintenance philosophies.

Major Michael Smith in his paper on “Crisis in Transition” will indicate a different approach. The Air Force was an early leader in analytical personnel subsystems efforts. A HARDMAN-like program called CHRT (Consolidated Human Research Technology) and an improved version called ASSET (Acquisition of Supportable Systems Evaluation Technology) have been discarded. Both of these laboratory programs have since led to a more human engineering oriented approach using technology as the key driver along with computer-aided design to help determine MPT factors.

Dr. Daniel Risser's paper, “Army HARDMAN: Its Origin, Evaluation, and Implementation to Date,” shows the outgrowth of MIST (Man Integrated System Technology) into the Army version of HARDMAN. While similar to the Navy's approach, the Army Research Institute is going to provide the Army with an objective, independent assessment of the validity and reliability of the HARDMAN methodology, including recommendations where improvements are needed. It will provide projections for MPT requirements for new Army systems during their material acquisition process.

Lastly, we should always remember, depending on which service one works for, to fly before buy, trudge it before budget, and sail before sale.'