DOD planned to end fiscal year 1996 with about 234,000 active duty officers. Officers serve in warfighting positions as infantry commanders and fighter pilots and support positions as civil engineering officers, personnel officers, and veterinarians. About 108,000 officers (approximately 46 percent) are assigned to support positions. As shown in table 1, the number of officers the services planned to assign to such support positions in fiscal year 1996 ranged from about 6,800 officers (Marine Corps) to about 37,900 officers (Army). The services’ downsizing efforts continued at the time of our review and DOD planned to reduce officer positions by about 11,100 to achieve an end strength of about 222,900 officers between fiscal years 1996 and 1999. Civilian pay and benefits generally cost less than military pay and benefits (excluding special classes of employees, such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement personnel). As a result, the greater the number of positions converted, the greater the savings. In 1954, DOD issued Directive 1100.4, which requires defense activities to program the minimum number of personnel needed to meet national security objectives and to use civilians whenever possible. The guidance directs the use of military personnel for any one or more of the following reasons: Required training is only available in the military. The position is needed to maintain combat readiness. The position requires a general military background for successful execution. The law requires that the position be staffed by military personnel. The position must be military in order to maintain good order and discipline or exercise authority under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The position is needed to ensure adequate opportunities to rotate personnel from overseas locations or sea duty to tours of duty in the Continental United States (CONUS). The position must be military for security reasons in which the incumbent may be involved in combat, expected to use deadly force, or expected to exhibit an unquestioned response to orders. The position requires unusual duty hours that are not normally compatible with civilian employment. The services, the joint activities, and the defense agencies were all created and maintained to accomplish specific missions. These activities established staffing requirements at the time their missions were tasked to include determining which positions were military essential. Since the activities were established, staffing requirements may have changed as missions or doctrine changed, technological innovations were introduced, funding priorities changed, or major reorganizations were implemented. To respond to changes requiring additional personnel, commanders determined new staffing requirements and requested authorization from their major commands to fill the positions with DOD Directive 1100.4 available as guidance in determining which positions are military essential. However, there are no DOD or service systems in place to ensure the continued validity of previous decisions regarding the military essentiality of established positions in organizations not experiencing such change. Since the establishment of officer positions can be subjective and judgmental and the services generally prefer using military rather than civilian staffing, once the positions are established, neither the services nor local commanders have much incentive to revalidate the positions and these positions often remain categorized as military essential because they already are military. Our review of 32,155 positions (or about 14 percent of all active duty officer positions) indicated that about 9,500 were candidates for military to civilian conversion. We used criteria based on DOD and service implementing guidance to evaluate such positions as research and development officer and systems automation officer in the Army, comptroller and oceanographer in the Navy, and acquisition management officer and civil engineer in the Air Force. To identify candidates for conversion, we developed criteria based on the DOD directive and service implementing guidance. Our criteria consisted of four questions that reflect the substance of the DOD criteria and considered each position to be a conversion candidate when the answer was “no” to all four. The questions were as follows: (1)Is the primary skill or knowledge required in the position uniquely available in the military? (2)Does the position have a mission to deploy to a theater of operations in wartime or during a contingency? (3)Does any law require that the position be staffed by a military person? (4)Is the position needed to support the normal rotation of servicemembers deployed overseas or afloat to assignments in CONUS? As shown in table 2, our criteria generally agreed with DOD’s. Outside experts reviewed our criteria. The experts suggested modifications to the criteria, which we adopted. These officials believed that our criteria, as modified, adequately identified military to civilian conversion candidates. To apply our criteria, we judgmentally selected 37 career fields in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force and, using our criteria, evaluated officer positions in those activities planned to be on the service personnel rolls at the end of fiscal year 1996. We applied our criteria by comparing military position classifications contained in relevant service manuals to position classifications contained in the Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Where we found corresponding positions in each, we proceeded to our second question. To answer our second question, the services provided us with the information specifying the number of positions in each career field scheduled to deploy to a theater of operations in a contingency. We also considered all positions assigned to naval vessels or installations outside CONUS to be deployable and thus military essential. Next, we interviewed service officials to determine whether any laws required positions in our selected career fields to be staffed by active duty personnel. Finally, we used service rotation policy factors or related information to determine how many positions must be reserved as military to maintain sea to shore or overseas to CONUS rotation opportunities. The number of positions left after asking these four questions and excluding positions from further consideration became the number of positions that we believe are candidates for conversion. We did not validate the need for any of the positions evaluated. For purposes of our analysis, we accepted all positions shown on personnel rolls for fiscal year 1996 as needed. We also did not attempt to determine whether converted positions should be staffed by federal civilian employees or contractors. Our review of 7,184 positions in 16 career fields in the Army indicate that about 1,000 are candidates for conversion to civilian status, as shown in table 3. As part of an initial effort in 1995 to assign military essential codes to Army positions, the Army identified about 6,100 officer and enlisted positions that it coded as available for conversion to civilian status. However, Army officials were reluctant to provide us with additional details until the analysis has been validated. Army officials also told us that no conversions are planned until the Army is sure that it will be able to hire civilian personnel (despite the ongoing civilian drawdown) to execute the missions of the converted positions. Of the 18,713 commissioned officer positions we reviewed in the Air Force, about 6,800 are candidates for military to civilian conversion, as shown in table 4. Air Force manpower officials told us they believe that officers in OSD or joint duty assignments should not be considered to be conversion candidates because the Air Force does not control those positions. Our analysis included OSD and joint duty positions, but we considered them military essential based on our work with officials of the Air Force manpower office. However, some of these positions may also be candidates for conversion because lack of control over a position is not a military essential criterion and the Air Force would regain control over officers assigned to joint duty positions that were converted. Air Force manpower officials also told us that opportunities may exist for military to civilian conversions in certain of the service’s 38 field operating agencies. The Air Force assigned about 20,000 officers and enlisted personnel in May 1995 (excluding Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve personnel) to such field operating agencies as the Air Intelligence Agency, the Air Weather Service, and the Military Personnel Center. In 1996, the Air Force completed a draft study called the “Minimum Military Essential Threshold” study and concluded that between 7,118 and 12,473 officer positions were candidates for conversion (depending on the methodology used) in the same career fields that we reviewed. The Air Force’s study looked at a greater number of career fields and positions than we did and overall identified a range from 15,176 to 25,412 positions as potential candidates for conversion, depending on the methodology used. We reviewed 6,258 Navy officer positions and concluded that about 1,600 were candidates for military to civilian conversion, as shown in table 5. We were not aware of any large-scale military to civilian conversion analysis underway or completed by the Navy at the time of our review. However, we identified one study completed in December 1995 by the Naval Manpower Analysis Center that concluded that of 848 Judge Advocate General positions (in November 1995), 24 could be eliminated, 27 could be converted to other occupations, and 59 could be eliminated with their responsibilities transferred to contractors. If DOD converted all of the positions that we identified and maintained the existing grade structure, DOD could achieve annual cost savings of about $95 million in the converted positions. Assuming DOD converted about 9,500 positions and maintained the grade structure that existed prior to conversion, the Army could save as much as $10 million, the Navy as much as $16 million, and the Air Force as much as $69 million. Savings could be much higher if the services or DOD reviewed the approximately 76,000 support positions (staffed by officers) that we did not review and identified additional conversion candidates. We determined the average cost of military and federal civilian salary and benefits in pay grades O-1 to O-6 and general schedule grades GS-7 to GS-15 to estimate cost savings obtainable by converting positions from military to their roughly equivalent civilian pay grade. As shown in table 6, cost savings vary depending on the pay grade of the converted position. DOD and the services have been looking for ways to fund initiatives such as weapon systems modernization by saving money in current operations. For example, as we reported in July 1996, the military personnel accounts fund a sizable portion of DOD’s infrastructure, which DOD wants to decrease to help pay for modern weapon systems.