Lanterna Rally

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

In September 2004, the active-duty enlisted component of the United States Air Force consisted of about 298,000 airmen. These airmen performed duties in about 200 specialties. Because the relationships between job requirements and personnel management policies are so complex, dedicated enlisted strength managers have never matched the inventory of people, by Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) and grade, to manpower requirements. There are structural obstacles that impede achieving this goal. The three major independently managed systems the Air Force uses to determine manpower strength currently tend to function in isolation. These systems are as follows: (1) the manpower system, which sets requirements for each grade and AFSC combination; (2) the strength management system, which establishes targets for overall strength, recruiting, retraining, and bonuses; and (3) the enlisted promotion system, which determines the annual number of promotions for each grade in the aggregate and in each AFSC. Because the current organizational structure lacks broad coordinating and control mechanisms, actions taken to control one system often adversely affect another. The authors lay the foundation for a discussion of policy changes that would better synchronize these systems. They propose a methodology that would marginally modify grade authorizations within skill levels to make it possible to better achieve manpower targets. Each specialty would retain the same number of authorizations within each skill level, and the aggregate solution would maintain the same total number of enlisted authorizations by grade. This would help the manpower community follow the policy of equal selection opportunity while also taking personnel management system capabilities into account.