Quantifying the Military Value of Training for System and Force AcquisitionDecisions: An Appreciation of the State of the Art

摘要

This paper reviews the state of knowledge that can enable military system andforce planners to quantify the military contribution of collective training in military units (i.e., unit training) designed to help the units succeed in battle. The purpose is to express the military value of hardware and of unit training in commensurate cost-effectiveness terms to ensure that the two are both considered and remain related to each other in system and force investment decisions. A review of the sparse relevant literature indicates that unit training under realistic conditions can increase key military capabilities of units from platoon to battalion size (and equivalents in the air forces) by factors of 2, on average. Hardware advances can increase military capability by like amounts if the requisite unit training is also provided. Without the investment in unit training the capability of a military unit should be discounted by about 50 percent. The training must be sustained continually to maintain system or force design capability. Since this will approximately double existing or new system life cycle cost over periods corresponding to a system life cycle, military budgeting and planning must be modified to account explicitly for unit training costs.