With the end of the Cold War, the number, scope, and size of operations other than war have increased dramatically, and the United States has become an active participant in some of these operations. Senior administration officials have testified that multilateral peace operations are an important part of this administration’s national security strategy,albeit not the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. These officials have stated that the United States must be willing to act to preserve peace and stability in order to advance and protect U.S. interests in the world. This in turn demands that the United States encourage the successful conduct of multilateral peace operations and, when it is in the United States’ interests, participate in these operations. U.S. military forces have been participating in peace operations for almost 50 years, with limited numbers of personnel. However, as the number, size, and scope of peace operations have increased dramatically in the past several years, the nature and extent of U.S. participation have changed markedly. Recently, the United States has used much larger numbers of combat and support forces to respond to events in a number of locations, including Somalia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, and Iraq. (See table 1.1) For example, while the United States has approximately 1,100 military personnel committed to the Multinational Force and Observers for the 12-year operation on the Sinai Peninsula, starting in December 1992 it deployed approximately 26,000 to Somalia and approximately 20,000 to Haiti beginning in September 1994. While U.S. participation in peace operations has increased, the size of the armed forces has declined over the past 8 years. From a post-Vietnam War peak of 2.2 million in fiscal year 1987, the active armed forces have been reduced to an authorized level of 1.5 million in fiscal year 1995. Peace operations tend to be sustained rather than short-term operations and sometimes have required extended force commitments from the U.S. military services. U.S. military forces continue to maintain a 12-year commitment to the Multinational Force and Observers on the Sinai Peninsula, a 3-year commitment to Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, and were committed to Operation Restore Hope in Somalia for almost 2 years. Numerous units provide forces during these operations and are rotated to ensure a ready presence. During Operation Restore Hope, the Army rotated forces to and from Somalia approximately every 4 months. The Air Force tends to rotate its aircrew more frequently. In peace operations such as Provide Comfort, Provide Promise, Deny Flight, and Southern Watch, it rotated forces every 3 months. In addition to the forces deployed, additional forces are preparing to deploy or have recently redeployed. The continuing force drawdown has compounded challenges for the U.S. military in responding to extended peace operations. All four services have experienced reductions in personnel and equipment that have forced military planners to reevaluate how the services will respond to peace operations and major regional conflicts (MRC). For example, with the reduction in the number of overseas bases and forward-deployed forces in Europe, the Army and the Air Force have returned part of their Cold War-era European force structure to the United States and decommissioned some units. The forces that remained in the force structure, which once could have responded to peace operations from forward locations, now may have to be augmented by forces from the United States. The former Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, House Committee on Armed Services, asked us to review the suitability of the current U.S. force structure for peace operations. They wanted to know whether the U.S. military had the capabilities necessary to operate effectively in a peace operations environment, while maintaining the capability to respond to two nearly simultaneous MRCs. We did not assess whether the United States should participate in peace operations. We examined (1) the impact that peace operations have on U.S. military forces, (2) force structure limitations that may affect the military’s ability to respond to other national security requirements while engaged in peace operations, and (3) options for increasing force flexibility and response capability. To determine the impact of peace operations on U.S. military forces, we held discussions with personnel who participated in recent peace operations. We also reviewed after-action reports and situation reports and conferred with service, unified command, and Office of the Secretary of Defense officials to identify the units involved, their level of participation, the types of capabilities provided, and the problems encountered in providing these capabilities. In addition, we reviewed the before- and after-deployment personnel and equipment readiness reports of some participating units and interviewed (1) officials responsible for the readiness of these forces and (2) some of the forces that participated in these operations. To determine the effect on the Army of participating in peace operations, we reviewed the experiences of combat and support forces who participated in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia and in a number of other smaller operations such as the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai. However, we focused our efforts primarily on Operation Restore Hope, the largest Army peace operation deployment to date. We also reviewed the plans for employment of Army forces in Bosnia should a peace plan be implemented. The operations in Rwanda and Haiti took place after we completed the bulk of our work, so we were not able to fully address them. As a means of determining the effects of peace operations on the Air Force, we selected four of the specialized U.S.-based platforms identified by the Air Force as most affected by participation in peace operations, reviewed data concerning their participation, and interviewed aircrew and maintenance personnel involved in the missions. Similarly, we analyzed data and met with military personnel concerning heavily tasked Air Force units based in Europe. We concentrated our efforts on peace operations involving relatively large numbers of Air Force units, such as Operations Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq, Southern Watch in Southern Iraq, and Provide Promise and Deny Flight in Bosnia. For the Navy, we compared pre-Desert Storm Sixth Fleet aircraft carrier deployments in the Mediterranean area with current Sixth Fleet deployments where the U.S. Navy is supporting Operations Deny Flight and Sharp Guard. We also briefly reviewed Navy participation in Haiti and Cuban operations in the Caribbean. We focused on the Marine Corps’ participation in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia since it was the largest Marine Corps participation to date in a peace operation. To determine whether there are force structure limitations that may affect the military’s ability to respond to other national security requirements while engaged in peace operations, we held discussions with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and unified command and service officials, including officials associated with MRC planning. Using the national security requirements in the bottom-up review as our criteria, we obtained data describing the capabilities necessary to respond to a MRC within the initial days of conflict. We then compared this with the capabilities that had recently been used in peace operations and the total number of the same capabilities available in the active force. We also discussed the actions that would be necessary to disengage from a peace operation in order to deploy to a MRC with officials from each of the military services. To identify options for increasing force flexibility and response capability for peace operations, we reviewed pertinent documents and interviewed senior service, unified command, and other Department of Defense (DOD) officials to obtain information concerning proposed initiatives and options. During the course of this review, we did not examine the adequacy of the funding for DOD’s participation in peace operations or the impact of participation on DOD’s planned spending. We are examining these issues as part of a separate request of the Subcommittee on Military Readiness, House Committee on National Security, and will report the results separately. Our review was conducted primarily at Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine locations, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and component and unified command headquarters within the United States and Europe. We contacted by telephone any relevant organizations we did not visit, such as the 7th Transportation Group at Fort Eustis, Virginia; the Military Police Center and School at Fort McClellan, Alabama; the 57th Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada; the 27th Operations Group at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico; the 552nd Operations Group at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma; and the 7th Air Command and Control Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi. Our review was performed from August 1993 to July 1994 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We obtained DOD comments on a draft of this report. Peace operations have affected each of the military services differently. These operations heavily stress some U.S. military capabilities, including certain Army support forces such as quartermaster and transportation units and specialized Air Force aircraft, while having less impact on other forces, such as Army armored combat divisions and general purpose Air Force combat aircraft outside Europe. In the Army, a large percentage of certain support capabilities in the active component have been used for peace operations. Most of these support capabilities are in the reserves and, for the most part, the reserves have not been activated for use in peace operations. The adverse impact on these support forces has been further exacerbated because the Army frequently borrows people from one unit to supplement another that lacks sufficient personnel to deploy and assigns some personnel to the same operation more than once, or to consecutive operations, because of the high demand for their capability. In the Air Force, peace operations have placed considerable stress on the relatively limited number of forces providing specialized capabilities and on forward-deployed units in the European theater. The increased flying hours necessary to support these operations have resulted in extended temporary duty in excess of established goals, increased aircraft maintenance, cannibalization of home station aircraft, and missed training. Peace operations have not been as disruptive to the Navy and the Marine Corps.