Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Accession Calculator Model: Determining the Optimal Number of Junior Officer Accessions to Meet End- Strength Goals

摘要

The mission of the Naval Special (NSW) community is to provide a versatile, responsive, and offensively focused force with continuous overseas presence in order to have strategic impact in missions that include special reconnaissance, direct action, unconventional warfare, and combating terrorism. Currently, the NSW community has large manpower gaps within the officer corps especially, at the Lieutenant Commander rank. This gap threatens the operational readiness of the NSW community, which in turn affects our national security. This thesis presents the development of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Accession Calculator (BAC) which uses goal programming and Markov chain analysis to determine the optimal number of new accessions needed to enter the BUD/S training program to meet target end-strength goals for company grade ranks. By properly manning the junior ranks the Lieutenant Commander rank can be properly manned. The results demonstrate that the NSW community can closely meet target end-strength goals of 127 and 285 for Lieutenant Junior Grades and Lieutenants, respectively, with the 100 accessions to BUD/S every year. However, as the attrition rate fluctuates the number of accessions change. The most dramatic impact to BUD/S accession requirements is observed when attrition rate increases. Decrease in attrition rate show that small changes to accession requirements occur.