DOD defines “readiness” as the ability of the U.S. military forces to fight and meet the demands of the National Military Strategy. DOD uses a variety of automated systems, review processes, and reports to collect and disseminate information about the readiness of its forces to execute their tasks and missions. Two of the primary means of communicating readiness information are the Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress— which is a classified product prepared by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness with input from the services, combatant commands, and Joint Staff and details military readiness on a quarterly basis—and the Joint Force Readiness Review, which is a classified product prepared by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and assesses the armed forces’ capability to execute their wartime missions under the National Military Strategy on a quarterly basis. The Joint Staff assesses the department’s overall ability to resource and execute the missions called for in the National Military Strategy. The overall assessments, which are classified, are based on joint and force readiness. Joint readiness focuses on the ability of the combatant commands to provide, integrate, and synchronize forces assigned to missions, while force readiness focuses on the ability of the force providers to provide forces and support capabilities. The military services organize their forces into units for training and equipping purposes. Joint guidelines require that commanders assess their units’ abilities to perform their core competencies, or their ability to undertake the wartime or primary missions for which they are organized or designed. These classified assessments are based on four distinct resource indicators—personnel, equipment availability, equipment readiness, and how well the unit is trained to conducts its missions. Joint guidelines also require joint and service unit commands to evaluate, in near real-time, the readiness of forces to accomplish assigned and potential tasks through the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS). The system provides the means to monitor the readiness of DOD components to provide capabilities to support the National Military Strategy consistent with DOD priorities and planning direction. Through DRRS, commanders, military service chiefs, and agency directors assess the ability of their organizations to accomplish a task to standard, based on their capabilities, under conditions specified in their joint mission- essential task list or agency mission-essential task list. In 2005, faced with a situation where its process for providing forces was not responsive enough to meet operational needs, and where the department was not able to provide funding to maintain the readiness of all its forces to do their full range of assigned missions, DOD established a centralized Global Force Management process. According to the department, establishment of the process enabled the Secretary of Defense to make proactive, risk-informed decisions on how to employ the force. The goal of Global Force Management is to allow officials to identify the global availability of forces and/or capabilities needed to support plans and operations. The department relies on Global Force Management to distribute the operational forces that belong to the military services among competing combatant commander requirements. Each combatant command documents its need for forces and/or capabilities, and then DOD uses the Global Force Management process in the following ways to meet identified needs. A portion of DOD’s operational forces are assigned to the combatant commands and positioned in the geographic combatant commander’s theater of operations to provide shorter response times. Combatant commanders have authority over forces assigned to them until the Secretary of Defense reassigns the forces. The combatant commanders receive additional forces to supplement their assigned forces through the allocation process. These forces are temporarily transferred to a combatant command to meet operational demands for both steady state rotational requirements that are planned in advance and emergent needs that arise after the initial allocation plan has been approved. They supplement a combatant commander’s assigned forces in order to mitigate near-term risk. The Global Force Management process also includes a process to apportion forces. Apportioned forces provide an estimate of the services’ capacity to generate capabilities along general timelines for combatant commander planning purposes. These are the forces that a combatant commander can reasonably expect to be made available, but not necessarily an identification of the actual forces that will be allocated for use when a contingency plan or crisis response plan transitions to execution. After more than a decade of conflict, recent budget uncertainty, and decreases in force structure, U.S. forces are facing significant challenges in rebuilding readiness. DOD officials noted that it will take a significant amount of time to realize improvements in readiness as the department works to address identified challenges. In addition, the individual military services, which train and equip forces used by the combatant commands, report persistently low readiness levels. The services attribute the low readiness levels to various factors. Specifically, The Army attributes its persistently low readiness level to emerging demands, lack of proficiency in core competencies, and end strength reductions. Even as the Army has brought forces back from Afghanistan, the Army faces increasing emergent demands that strain existing capacity, such as the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division in Africa to respond to the Ebola crisis. In addition, other factors contribute to readiness challenges, including a lack of familiarity among leaders and units with the ability to conduct collective training towards core competencies because the Army focused on counterinsurgency for many years. Finally, the Army is downsizing to an end strength of 980,000—about a 12 percent reduction in size. Army leadership testified in March 2015 that any end strength reductions below this level would reduce the Army’s capability to support missions identified in defense guidance. The Navy attributes its persistently low readiness level to increased lengths of deployments for aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships, which has created significant maintenance challenges. The Navy currently has 272 ships, a decrease from 333 ships in 1998—an 18 percent decrease. Even as the number of Navy ships has decreased, the number of ships deployed overseas has remained roughly constant at about 100 ships. Consequently, each ship is being deployed more to maintain the same level of presence. In addition, the Navy has had to shorten, eliminate, or defer training and maintenance periods to support high deployment rates. The Air Force attributes its decline in readiness to continued demands and a reduced force structure. For example, in 1991 the Air Force had 154 fighter and bomber squadrons, and as of December 2015 the Air Force had 64 fighter and bomber squadrons—a 58 percent decrease from 1991 levels. Further, its readiness level has declined because of persistent demand for forces, a decline in equipment availability and in experienced maintenance personnel, and the impact of high deployment rates on units’ ability to conduct needed training. The Marine Corps attributes its readiness levels to an increased frequency of deployments to support the sustained high demand for the force; gaps in the number of unit leaders with the right grade, experience, and technical and leadership qualifications; and training shortfalls, including a lack of sufficiently available aircraft to train to standards, resulting from over a decade of war. While the services have reported readiness shortfalls across the force, there have been some readiness gains in select areas, such as Army Brigade Combat Teams and Marine Corps Infantry Battalions. For example, beginning in fiscal year 2014, reported readiness levels for Army Brigade Combat Teams generally improved, but plateaued in fiscal year 2015. In addition, readiness levels for infantry battalions have improved over the past 5 years as infantry units resumed training to core mission-essential tasks after the end of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Though DOD officials indicated that overall demand has been decreasing since 2013—primarily because of the drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan—DOD has reported that the ability of the military force to rebuild capacity and capability is hindered by continued, and in some cases increased, demand for some types of forces. Additionally, DOD is responding to these global demands with a reduced force structure, which further impacts reported readiness. For example, from fiscal year 2013 through fiscal year 2016, active component end strength decreased by about 7 percent and reserve component end strength decreased by about 4 percent across the force. Combatant command demand has consistently exceeded what the services are able to supply. DOD has spent most of the last decade responding to near-term combatant command demands, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Combatant command officials we spoke with acknowledged that even though demand in support of U.S. Central Command operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had been decreasing, overall demand remains high and is likely to remain high in order to support global needs. For example, U.S. European Command officials noted that the command’s assigned forces are now staying in Europe and being used to meet the growing needs of the command, such as the response to Russian aggression, which officials noted has been the most significant driver of changes to the command’s needs since February 2014. Moreover, U.S. Pacific Command officials noted that their operational requirements have steadily increased to ensure adequate capability exists to address the increasingly unpredictable and provocative actions of North Korea and China. Global demands for select force elements, such as the Air Force’s personnel recovery units, the Army’s division headquarters, and the Navy’s carrier strike groups, have been persistently high. These high- demand force elements already face challenges in meeting service- established deployment-to-dwell ratios. For example: Units within the Air Force’s personnel recovery service core function have experienced challenges maintaining deployment-to-dwell ratio within the Air Force’s and Office of the Secretary of Defense’s stated goals of 1:2 and 1:5 for active and service component units, respectively. Specifically, the HC-130 fixed wing aircraft had a deployment-to-dwell ratio of approximately 1:1 for the active duty and 1:4 for the reserve component as of January 2016. The Army has experienced challenges in meeting the demand for division headquarters during fiscal years 2010 through 2015 and reports that it will continue to experience readiness challenges at the active component division headquarters level for the next few years.