Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 91

REGIONALLY ALIGNED FORCE

soldiers can prepare on short notice. The 2nd ABCT
developed a useful preparation tool known as Dagger
University to facilitate soldier administrative preparedness for deployment. The design of a predeployment
program for all regionally aligned forces would be well
served by being based on this model.
Life-cycle personnel management procedures
aimed at assigning and retaining personnel with
specialized skills are needed to improve continuity.
The Army needs to adjust its human resources system
significantly to focus on carefully managing personnel
with special skills for specific geographical areas. Such
management should focus on ensuring soldiers with
skills such as languages or experience with the repair
and maintenance of foreign equipment and weapons
are assigned and retained in regionally aligned units.
Additionally, personnel with specialized skills should be
able to remain assigned to regionally aligned units for
longer periods than policy now allows. This would help
ensure the life-cycle personnel management system optimally supports regionally aligned rotations. It would
ensure soldiers with invaluable skills or experience related to the designated geographical areas were properly assigned to increase host-nation confidence and trust
through the continuity of long-term relationships.
Changes to the human resources system would also
give units designated as regionally aligned forces time
to adjust and reset as personnel with less common skills
rotated out in a slower, more deliberate manner.
Efficient business rules are needed to facilitate
timely allocation of forces and ongoing support
arrangements for missions. The fourth, and most difficult, challenge is the need to meet short-term mission
requests in a timely manner and to provide units with
an adequate support base over the duration of their
tour of duty. To do this, Department of Defense and
Army planners need to improve the business rules for
allocating regionally aligned forces to increase efficiency and improve tasking and synchronizing alignment of
supporting forces to a region.16
Foremost among issues adversely affecting the regionally aligned forces process is the current system for assignment and allocation of forces. It is complicated, inconsistent, and sometimes illogical, which inhibits efficient
management of the regionally aligned forces process. For
example, the 2nd ABCT was allocated to USAFRICOM
but assigned to 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas.
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2015

This led to a host of issues related to command and
control, funding for operations, and establishing effective
communication across all units involved.
With available resources, 2nd ABCT was efficient in responding to short-notice taskings from
USAFRICOM. Successful missions occurred in this
order: first, 2nd ABCT was available; second, 2nd
ABCT received a general administrative message from
USARAF; third, one to two weeks of email traffic
passed between the two headquarters; and finally,
troops boarded an airplane to Africa to perform the
mission.17 USARAF staff worked directly with 2nd
ABCT and its headquarters on such deployments and
kept FORSCOM fully informed.
However, meeting short-notice taskings became
problematic when USARAF lacked the means to reach
back to the generating force for augmentation. Much
of the difficulty was caused by a complex process for
requesting forces.
The process for requesting forces works for larger, programmed missions forecast well in advance.
However, challenges can arise when attempting to
respond to requests on short notice, and short-notice
taskings are the main mission of regionally aligned
forces. The business rules typically used to initiate and
approve a request for forces make the process lengthy.
This leads to challenges of preparing for deployment by
the time the task is assigned to the designated unit.18
The request for forces process and the regionally aligned forces process support the needs of the
Department of State and host-nation requirements.
USAFRICOM; USARAF; Headquarters, Department
of the Army; and the Department of State can request a
regionally aligned unit for a specific mission. The mission
must be accepted and the specific requirements agreed
upon by the nation in which forces will serve. In the case
of USAFRICOM, if the action is best suited for the Army,
it is tasked to USARAF. After analysis of requirements,
USARAF prepares and forwards additional requests for
forces through USAFRICOM to F