In January 2011, the Secretary of Defense announced that the Army’s end strength would be reduced by 27,000 active duty military personnel beginning in 2015. According to Army officials, initial discussions regarding how these reductions should be made began as part of the 2014-2018 Total Army Analysis, but no decisions on BCT inactivations in the United States were made in 2011. As part of the early 2012 decision to further reduce its active component end-strength to 490,000, the Army determined that it would inactivate at least 8 of its 45 active component BCTs. According to the Army, it began more extensive analysis of its BCT organizational design, which included a series of vignettes addressing the full range of Army missions, simulated combat that examined multiple organizational options, and a strategic analysis focused on the ability of the Army to support force demands in plausible future campaigns. As a result of this analysis, the Army determined that it would inactivate 12 BCTs and reorganize the remaining BCTs by adding a third maneuver battalion to armor and infantry brigades located in the continental United States, among other additional capabilities.organization design, the Army has 45 active component BCTs with 98 maneuver battalions. Under the current Under the new design, the Army will reduce the number of BCTs to 33, but will still maintain 95 maneuver battalions by focusing reductions on headquarters organizations. According to Army officials, this reorganization will allow the Army to maximize its combat power within its reduced end-strength. The Army will conduct these BCT reorganizations concurrently with BCT inactivations and has cited some benefits of doing so, such as cost efficiencies that can be achieved by using inactivating BCTs to provide personnel, equipment, and infrastructure to BCTs that are reorganizing at the same installations. These BCT inactivations and reorganizations will take place within the Army’s stationing process. Stationing includes realignment or relocation, and those actions that determine the population at a particular installation. As such, it may involve activation or establishment, or inactivation or discontinuance, of force structure components at one or more military installations in support of operational requirements. The Army’s stationing process incorporates both a force structure component and an installation component. Army Regulation 5-10 on Stationing establishes the policy, procedures, and responsibilities for Army stationing actions that occur outside of the Base Realignment and Closure process. Under the regulation, the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans serves as the Army Staff principal proponent for directing and monitoring stationing activities, but a range of other Army staff directorates and organizations also have responsibilities within the process. In addition to providing instruction on administrative procedures for obtaining approval of stationing actions, Army Regulation 5-10 provides a framework for planning stationing actions, to include studying and analyzing feasible stationing options. This framework allows for some flexibility in regard to the factors that should be considered as part of stationing decisions. For example, the regulation identifies 28 stationing planning factors, such as operational considerations, for planners to consider as they identify, analyze, and evaluate stationing options, but recognizes that some planning factors may have little relevance for certain stationing actions. In addition, environmental analysis is generally a necessary element of the Army’s stationing process and Army Regulation 5-10 directs that stationing proposals are to be evaluated for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The Army’s military value analysis model is a possible input to the Army’s stationing process and has been a consideration in a number of prior stationing decisions, including the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure round. Based on tools used to analyze the military value of installations as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process, the Army developed a military value analysis model to support stationing decisions for six new BCTs that were established as part of the 2007 Grow the Army initiative, and has adapted that model for use in a number of other The Army’s military value brigade stationing decisions since that time.analysis model was developed by the Center for Army Analysis, which reports to the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Programs, and is a decision analysis tool that is designed to rank-order installations based on attributes that the Army has identified as being operationally important to the type of unit in question for each stationing decision. The Army’s BCT stationing decision regarding the installations at which to inactivate BCTs was informed by a number of quantitative and qualitative analyses, including a military value analysis of installations, an environmental assessment, and a qualitative analysis of different stationing options. The Army also obtained community input through listening sessions held at installations around the country, a practice that is not currently required by Army guidance, but which may provide some benefits for future stationing decisions. In May 2012, the Army established a BCT Reorganization Operational Planning Team for the purpose of conducting, facilitating, and overseeing planning and analysis to determine how to best achieve the targeted BCT reductions. This team was led by the Force Management directorate within the Army Staff and included stakeholders from across the Army Staff and other Army organizations, such as the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management and Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment, among others. Guidance from the Secretary of the Army and Director of Army Force Management identifying a number of specific stationing factors to be considered when assessing stationing options as part of the BCT inactivation decision process was provided to the BCT Reorganization Operational Planning Team. These key stationing factors for the inactivation decision were initially established in an information paper approved by the Secretary of the Army in November 2011 when the Army was planning for the reduction of at least 8 BCTs and then further defined and modified to account for potential BCT reorganizations in 2013. The stationing factors included some factors to be considered as part of the analysis conducted using the Army’s military value analysis model and other stationing factors to be considered as part of analyses occurring outside of the military value analysis model. To inform its BCT inactivation decision, the Army used its military value analysis model to measure the relative value of installations based on the requirements of BCTs. Stationing factors considered under the model’s analysis are specific to an installation’s ability to support a BCT, such as maneuver land availability or housing. These factors, also known as model attributes, were quantified as part of the military value analysis model in order to rank order the installations under consideration according to their military value. The 2013 version of the model used to support the recent BCT inactivation decision scored the 15 installations with BCTs based on 16 attributes identified by the Army as being operationally important to a BCT. Each attribute within the model has a formula or categorical definition that measures a certain characteristic (see appendix III for a full list of the attributes used within the current model and their definitions). The results of the formulas and categorical ratings for each attribute are converted to 0-10 scores for each installation. The attributes are weighted within the model based on their operational importance and ease of change relative to each other. For example, maneuver land is an attribute within the model and is considered to be of high operational importance, but additional maneuver land is not easily attainable, so that attribute is weighted more heavily than an attribute such as quality of life facilities, which can be improved through Army investment. Installations receive a score for each attribute based on collected data and then individual attribute scores are weighted and summed to produce the installations’ overall military value scores. For the recent decision, the 15 installations were then rank-ordered, with higher rankings indicating greater military value for stationing BCTs. Army officials emphasized that the results of the model were used only as a starting point for further analysis and were useful in comparing installations, but that the model cannot account for all of the factors that need to be considered in a complex decision, such as strategic considerations. The Army also identified other stationing factors, which were to be considered outside of the military value analysis model as part of a qualitative assessment of stationing options. These factors address issues beyond a particular installation’s capabilities and infrastructure that are not accounted for within the model, such as strategic considerations or immediate impacts on readiness. Table 1 shows the key factors identified for consideration outside of the military value analysis model as part of the Army decision. While some of the additional factors, such as strategic considerations, were addressed primarily through the qualitative assessment of stationing options, other factors required additional analysis, such as environmental analysis. To comply with environmental regulations and to address one of the stationing factors identified for consideration, the Army conducted a programmatic environmental assessment of the 21 installations and their associated maneuver training areas with the potential to gain or lose 1,000 or more military and civilian personnel due to the planned force reductions and force structure changes—the 15 installations where BCTs are currently stationed and 6 other installations that support major training schools or Combat Training Centers—to identify potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts of planned force reductions. The Army found that no significant environmental impacts were expected as the result of its proposed actions and, as a result, does not anticipate preparing a more detailed programmatic environmental impact statement related to its decisions. Army officials said that additional site-specific environmental analysis may be necessary once the force structure changes at affected installations have been finalized, particularly in instances where installations may experience some growth or where the types of units stationed at an installation may change, but this has not yet been determined. In particular, the Army did not assess the environmental impacts at Fort Benning of restructuring under the alternative that could lead to some degree of force growth as part of the programmatic environmental assessment because, as the assessment stated, there would not be a situation where Fort Benning would see a net increase in soldiers overall due to its lack of sufficient unrestricted maneuver land at that time to support the training needs of additional maneuver units.