Assessment of the Ability of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Services to Measure and Track Language and Culture Training and Capabilities Among General Purpose Forces.

摘要

The Defense Language Office (DLO) tasked MITRE Corporation and the RAND National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) to jointly address questions concerning the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD's) ability to measure and track language, regional expertise, and culture (LREC) training and capabilities for general purpose forces (GPF). The objective of this task is to provide information to policymakers about the available data to track LREC training and skills, as well as available information on how LREC affects readiness and mission accomplishment. To reach the stated objective, the following research questions were addressed: (1) According to the best available data, what is the relevance of LREC training and capabilities to overall unit readiness and mission accomplishment; (2) How does DoD currently track LREC training and capabilities of GPF; (3) To what extent does this tracking adequately reflect unit readiness and the ability to accomplish missions; and (4) How can DoD improve tracking of LREC training and capabilities to adequately reflect unit readiness. Chapter 2 describes the methodology and data used in the study. Chapter 3 addresses the first research question and uses available data to assess the importance of LREC training and skills for mission readiness and mission accomplishment. Chapter 4 addresses the second research question and addresses how DoD currently tracks LREC training and skills and whether or not that tracking adequately reflects mission readiness. Finally, Chapter 5 summarizes the findings and offers recommendations for linking LREC training and skills to mission readiness and success. In addition, we include four appendixes. Appendix A lists the policies and directives we reviewed for this analysis. Appendix B lists our interviewees, and Appendix C provides the interview questions we used. Appendix D details the confidence intervals for our analysis of the Status of Forces Survey of Active- Duty Members (SOF-A).