Maintaining an overseas military presence that is prepared to deter threats and engage enemies remains an enduring tenet of U.S. national military strategy and priorities. For example, the National Military Strategy notes that an overseas presence supports the ability of the United States to project power against threats and support the establishment of an environment that reduces the conditions that foster extremist ideologies. The strategy also notes that keeping an overseas presence serves to assure U.S. allies; improves the ability to prosecute the global war on terrorism; deters, dissuades, and defeats other threats; and supports transformation. The Chief of Naval Operations earlier this year underscored the continuing importance of forward-deployed forces, noting “Our forward rotations remain critically important to our security, to strengthening alliances and coalitions, and to the global war on terrorism. But it is clear we must make these rotations with purpose, not just to fill the calendar.” In early 2001, the Chief of Naval Operations recognized the challenge of accomplishing the Navy’s missions within its budget. In February 2001, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations established a task force to explore force structure options facing the naval service, noting that in order for organizations to remain vital and competitive “they maintain their options and seek innovative developments that may provide simpler, more convenient, or less costly alternative solutions to their needs.” One of the task force’s primary assumptions was that the Navy leadership understands that there may be insufficient procurement funds available to maintain current fleet size. Another assumption was that the demand for naval forward presence would remain greater than the supply, regardless of fleet size. Within a year, an operational studies group within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations noted that the need for alternative crewing approaches might be necessary to sustain the pace of global operations, especially in the global war on terrorism. More recently, senior Navy officials have warned that budgets will remain tight. In June 2004, the Secretary of the Navy stated that DOD will have less money for recapitalization because the defense budget will not continue growing at the rates it has in recent years. The Navy’s acquisition executive has also noted that the Navy is employing multiple strategies that eventually may reduce the number of ships, submarines, and aircraft it purchases, saving taxpayer dollars as it seeks more effective ways of employing its forces so that fewer of them can provide the capabilities needed to accomplish assigned missions. One such effort that may enable the Navy to sustain a high pace of operations within expected budgets involves the rotation of crews on and off forward-deployed Navy surface ships. While the Chief of Naval Operations stated earlier this year that the ideal fleet size would be about 375 ships, he also said that he is no longer willing to commit to any specific number of ships until the Navy completes a new assessment of ship requirements. The assessment, which started this year, will evaluate the potential impact on force structure requirements from keeping ships at sea for longer than standard 6-month deployments by rotating the crews on and off. He noted the Navy’s recent experience with keeping two destroyers on extended deployments, whereby these two ships provided the presence overseas that is the equivalent of 8 to 10 ships on normal deployment schedules. The amount of time a ship ultimately spends forward deployed in a theater of operations is affected by several factors in its employment cycle. These factors include length of a deployment, transit speeds and port calls, crew training and certification, ship maintenance requirements, and maintaining sufficient readiness for surging forces during nondeployed periods. The result is that a ship homeported in the United States and deploying to the Persian Gulf area for 6 months will normally spend less than 20 percent of its time in theater and that the Navy would need about 6 ships to maintain a continuous presence in the region over a 2-year period. As part of the transformation efforts to increase the fleet’s operational readiness and responsiveness, the Navy recently implemented a new operational strategy—called the Fleet Response Plan—that changes the manner in which it maintains, trains, mans, and deploys its ships. The overall objective of the plan is to create a more responsive force by sustaining a more level balance of training between deployments, instead of dropping to minimum rates of readiness upon return from deployment and then gradually rebuilding its state of readiness throughout a 12-month training cycle that follows major maintenance of the vessel. The plan also modifies long-standing forward presence policy of predictable, 6-month deployments to predetermined regions. This flexible deployment concept allows units that have attained high readiness to embark on deployments of varied duration—but still generally no longer than 6 months—in support of specific national priorities, such as homeland defense, multinational exercises, security cooperation events, deterrent operations, or prosecution of the global war on terrorism. These deployments provide what the Chief of Naval Operations calls “presence with a purpose,” and are intended to occur in less predictable patterns to keep potential adversaries off guard. In addition to the standard ship and crew employment cycle, the range of Navy crewing options falls into four major categories: (1) Sea Swap, (2) Horizon, (3) Blue-Gold, and (4) partial or graduated crew swapping. Each of these options can be implemented in varying ways and may have different advantages and disadvantages, but the Navy’s actual experience with nonstandard crewing concepts on surface ships is limited. Standard crew deployments use one crew per ship. Most of the crewmembers are assigned to the ship for 4 years, and it is common for crewmembers to deploy overseas on the same ship more than once. Standard ship deployments occur once every 27 months for a period of 6 months of which the ship and the crew are on-station for 3 to 4 months, depending upon whether the ship deploys from the east or west coast of the United States. Most Navy ships and their crews employ the standard crew deployment option. The Sea Swap option uses the same number of crews as ships. Notionally under this option, one of the ships deploys two, three, or four times longer than the standard time by rotating crews every 6 months at an overseas location. Ideally, all of the Sea Swap ships share an identical configuration, so crew performance and capability are not degraded because of ship differences. Because crews do not return to the ships on which they trained, under a four-ship Sea Swap option, some crews could serve on three different ships in just over 6 months and be expected to demonstrate combat proficiency on each one. A limited number of destroyers and patrol coastal ships have employed the Sea Swap option in recent years. The Horizon option involves one or two more crews than hulls, such as four crews for three ships or five crews for three ships. Crews serve for no more than 6 months on ships that are deployed for 18 months or more. Under a three-ship Horizon option, crews could serve on at least two ships in just over 6 months and be expected to demonstrate combat proficiency on each one. In addition, each crew would be without a ship for a period of time and stay ashore at a readiness, or training, center. This crewing option was employed on mine countermeasure ships during the 1990s. The Blue-Gold option assigns two complete crews, designated “Blue” and “Gold,” to a single ship. Most of the crewmembers are assigned to a ship for several years, and it is common for them to deploy overseas on the same ship more than once. Crew deployments would not exceed 6 months and are often of much shorter duration. An advantage with this option includes the crews’ familiarity with the ship. However, a disadvantage is that the proficiency can degrade since crews sometimes do not have a ship on which to train and must rely on mock-ups and simulators. The Blue- Gold option has been employed by the strategic submarine force and the HSV-2 Swift. Partial or Graduated Crew Swapping Partial crew swapping has been employed on a limited basis. The most notable use of this option involved the exchange of crewmembers between a ship based in Japan with a ship based in the United States in 1999. A variation on this theme is when portions of a ship’s crew are swapped out at regular intervals, for example, one-quarter of the crew every 2 or 3 months. The most significant advantage attributed to rotational crewing options is the more efficient use of a ship in an overseas operating area. This is accomplished by keeping the ship on extended deployments, ranging from 12 to 36 months or longer, while at the same time not increasing the crew’s time away from home. Top Navy officials, including the Chief of Naval Operations, believe that increased efficiencies from rotating crews enable the Navy to perform the same number of missions with fewer ships or to increase the number of missions with the same force size. For example, the Navy’s acquisition executive stated that if the Sea Swap option is employed on its next generation guided missile destroyer, the DD(X), the Navy might be able to reduce requirements from 24 to 16 ships and apply the savings toward the next generation cruiser. Disadvantages often associated with rotational crewing include increased infrastructure costs; deteriorating ship material condition and lack of ready access to maintenance support while on extended deployment; decreased readiness due to differences between ships; and decreased quality of life and other sociological issues for crew members, including the sense of less “ship ownership,” fewer port calls, and cultural changes. The Navy recently conducted a 2-year demonstration to determine if two destroyers could (1) provide more deployment time on-station and (2) maintain sailor quality of life while rotating crews. The Navy declared the demonstration a success, stating that the ships operated well while increasing their operational capability. In its report on the Sea Swap demonstration project, the Center concluded that the feasibility of the concept clearly was a success. However, the Center noted that there were problems and limitations.