Penultimate C4ISR Challenge: Reducing Military Manpower and Total Operating Costs

摘要

Military officials, respected think-tanks and Congressional researchers are universal in their contention that the cost of military manpower makes up the largest part of the total ownership cost (TOC) of military systems across all the Services. These same officials also note that overall military manpower costs are the fastest growing accounts even as the total number of military men and women decrease. This challenge has been addressed at various conferences and symposia - including multiple times in the ICCRTS fora - and those who have studied the issue are universal in their opinion that 'something must be done' to reduce military manpower to reduce TOC. But thus far solutions and 'best practices' have been elusive. Network- Centric technologies combined with the emerging disciplines of human factors engineering (HFE) and human systems integration (HSI) offer the potential to realize significant manpower savings. But these network-centric methods and practices have been employed only sporadically to reduce manning and today remain extraordinarily underleveraged. We will offer a best-practices model and show how using these methods and practices have dramatically reduced manning for the U.S. Navy's DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer and will extrapolate these lessons learned for a community of best practices that is now emerging.