Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, DOD has launched two major overseas military operations related to the Global War on Terrorism: Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and certain other countries, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, which includes ongoing military operations in Iraq. In both cases, operations quickly evolved from major combat operations into ongoing counterinsurgency and stability operations, which have continued to require large numbers of forces, ranging from about 138,000 personnel to about 160,000 personnel from 2004 to the present. These operations have required large numbers of forces with support skills, such as military police and civil affairs. While some of these skills have been in high demand across the Army, some skills, such as civil affairs, reside heavily in the Army’s reserve components and sometimes in small numbers of critical personnel. Reserve forces may be called to active duty under a number of authorities. As shown in table 1, two authorities enable the President to involuntarily mobilize forces, but with size and time limitations. Full mobilization, which would enable the mobilization of forces for as long as they are needed, requires a declaration by Congress. On September 14, 2001, President Bush declared that a national emergency existed as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and he invoked the partial mobilization authority. As table 1 shows, this authority restricts the duration of reservists’ active duty to 24 consecutive months. OSD implements the activation of reservists for Iraq and Afghanistan under this partial mobilization authority. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, who reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, is responsible for providing policy, programs, and guidance for the mobilization and demobilization of the reserve components. On September 20, 2001, OSD issued mobilization guidance that among other things directed the services as a matter of policy to specify in initial orders to reserve members that the period of active duty service would not exceed 12 months. However, the guidance allowed the service secretaries to extend orders for an additional 12 months or to remobilize reserve component members as long as an individual member’s cumulative service did not exceed 24 months. The services implement the authority and guidance according to their policies and practices. To meet the continuing demand for ground forces, in 2004 the Army extended the time that reservists must be deployed for missions related to Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom. DOD’s and the Army’s current guidance states the goal that soldiers should serve 12 months with their “boots-on-the-ground” in the theater of operations, not including the time spent in mobilization and demobilization activities, which could add several more months to the time a reserve member spends on active duty. Further, senior DOD officials state that under DOD policy, a reservist may not be involuntarily deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan more than once. Since September 11, 2001, there have been several rotations of troops to support Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Currently, DOD refers to troop rotations based on troop deployment dates, although deployments overlap calendar years. For example, the rotation of troops that deployed or are scheduled to serve from calendar years 2004 through 2006 is known as the 04-06 rotation. The 05-07 rotation is composed of troops expected to deploy and serve from 2005 through 2007. DOD recently identified troops to deploy to either theater from 2006 through 2008 in the 06-08 rotation. DOD recently has started planning for the 07-09 rotation to identify forces for deployments from calendar years 2007 through 2009. In response to the new security environment, in May 2005 the Secretary of Defense approved a new integrated force assignment, apportionment, and allocation process, known as Global Force Management. The new process is designed to identify capabilities or forces to conduct operational missions. The Secretary tasked the Joint Forces Command with responsibility for developing global, joint sourcing solutions for conventional forces in support of combatant commander requirements. A Global Force Management Board, composed of general officer/flag officer- level representatives from the combatant commands, the services, the Joint Staff, and OSD, guides the process by reviewing emerging force management issues and making risk management recommendations to the Secretary of Defense. Under the Global Force Management process, combatant commanders determine the capabilities they will need to support ongoing operations, including identifying the numbers of personnel and specific skills required to generate the capabilities. In generating their operational plans, the combatant commanders consider whether private contractors or civilians rather than military forces could provide any of the desired capabilities. For missions that require military forces, the combatant commanders request the forces needed to provide the military capabilities from the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reviews and validates the requirements. When the requirements are validated, the Chairman sends the requirements for conventional forces to the Commander, Joint Forces Command, and to the Commander, Special Operations Command, for special operations forces such as civil affairs and psychological operations. The commanders, Joint Forces Command and Special Operations Command, are responsible for identifying the forces that can be deployed to meet the requirement considering global risks. The Army Forces Command, which reports to the Joint Forces Command, is charged with identifying the Army units and personnel that can be deployed to meet the requirements of the combatant commanders. The Army Special Operations Command, which reports to the Special Operations Command, is charged with identifying Army units and personnel to be deployed to support combatant commanders’ requirements. The Secretary of Defense reviews the commanders’ force sourcing recommendations and approves or disapproves them. Ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have created continuing high demand for certain combat support and combat service support skills, including military police, engineering, and civil affairs, and officials charged with sourcing future rotations have a limited view of what personnel remain available for future rotations. While dynamic operational requirements complicate force-planning efforts, the department will be increasingly challenged to identify forces for future rotations from a diminishing supply of readily available personnel under current deployment policies. The supply of personnel already trained in high- demand skills and eligible to deploy has decreased as operations have continued because many personnel with these skills are reservists whose deployments and duration of involuntary active duty service under the partial mobilization authority are limited by DOD and Army policy. A primary strategy used to meet requirements has been to identify personnel from other Army skills or from other services that can be reassigned or retrained with high-demand skills. However, DOD officials charged with identifying forces for future rotations have not had a source of readily available, comprehensive personnel data on deployment histories and skills across the services. Lacking such information, DOD officials developed a labor-intensive process involving a series of conferences with service representatives, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Forces Command where officials identify actions the services can take to meet the combatant commander’s requirements. DOD is taking steps to consolidate personnel, deployment, and skill data to support force management decisions through a new defense readiness reporting system. Until DOD systematically integrates such data into its process for identifying forces, it will continue to use an inefficient process and make important decisions about how to meet the combatant commander’s requirements based on limited information. Further, without complete, reliable, and accessible data that provide greater visibility over its available forces, DOD will lack analytical bases for requesting changes in or exceptions to current deployment policies when needed. As operations have evolved from combat to counterinsurgency operations, requirements for forces with some high-demand skills—especially combat support and combat service support skills—have initially exceeded the number of Army personnel trained and available to deploy. As a result, DOD has relied increasingly on reassigning and retraining personnel to meet combatant commander requirements. The skills where requirements have initially exceeded the number of trained personnel include transportation, engineering, military police, quartermaster, military intelligence, civil affairs, signal corps, medical, and psychological operations. Many of these high-demand skills reside primarily in the Army’s reserve component. Reservists serving in Afghanistan and Iraq have been activated under a partial mobilization authority that enables the secretary of a military department, in a time of national emergency declared by the President or when otherwise authorized by law, to involuntarily mobilize reservists for up to 24 consecutive months. DOD policy implementing the mobilization authority states that any soldier who has served 24 cumulative months during current operations is ineligible for any further activation unless the reservist volunteers for additional duty. Further, DOD’s policy is that no reservist should be involuntarily deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan more than once, according to senior DOD officials. Consequently, as operations continue and the number of reservists who have already deployed increases, it is likely to become increasingly difficult for DOD to identify reserve personnel skilled in high- demand areas who are eligible to deploy. One of the primary strategies DOD has used to meet requirements for some high-demand skills has been to reassign and retrain Army or other service personnel. The percentage of requirements that have been filled by reassigned or retrained Army personnel to some high-demand skills has increased as operations have continued. In addition, the combatant commander’s requirements for Army skills increasingly have been met by retraining personnel from the other services under Army doctrine. The strategy of reassigning and retraining available personnel from other services to fill combat support and combat service support requirements supports the department’s goal of deploying all reservists at least once before any are involuntarily activated for a second time. This will likely continue to be a primary strategy for providing high-demand forces as operations continue and the pool of skilled personnel who have not deployed continues to diminish. However, DOD officials charged with identifying the personnel who could be reassigned or retrained to meet requirements were challenged because they did not have information that linked data on personnel who remained eligible to deploy and their skills across the services.