Forecasting the Naval Officer Personnel Force Structure to Estimate Basic Pay

摘要

The objective of this effort was to provide a detailed description of the analysis and procedures used to formulate a model for forcasting Navy officer force structures and basic pay obligations. The model, which will be used to monitor the service age characteristics of the force and its costs in basic pay, is known as the Naval Personnel Pay Predictor, Officer (NAPPO). NAPPO relies upon historical USN, USNR, USNT, and All Navy (ALNAV) quarterly force structure files dating back to 1963. Time series analysis techniques were applied to these files to find a particular set of time series models that would be appropriate for forecasting the LOS marginal distribution of each array. Various combinations of these forecasts were then compared to obtain a 'best' forecast for the ALNAV LOS distribution. Additional statistical procedures, previously developed for the Naval Personnel Pay Predictor, Enlisted (NAPPE) model, were used for (1) deriving the interior of the force structure matrix given the forecasted LOS and inputted pay grade marginal distributions, (2) forecasting the force structure for personnel with less than 1 year of service or more than 30 years, (3) costing the force structure, (4) estimating average strength, and (5) validating the model. The statistical techniques employed in NAPPO proved to be highly accurate in producing estimates of officer basic pay. Validation results indicated forecasting errors of less that .3 percent for FY76, FY77, and FY78. NAPPO's predictions for mean LOS of the force also indicated a high degree of accuracy. As expected, the accuracy of the forecasts generally diminished as the forecast lead time increased.