A systems analysis of the Army's tactical evaluation process

Abstract

In preparation to fight and win the nation's wars, the United States Army spends a lot of time and money on tactical training. While few doubt that the Army produces some of the world's finest tactical units, there is still room for improvement. The Army's current tactical evaluation process utilizes a series of subjective and uncalibrated metrics that describe the capability of military units. Leaders fail to see the value in the provided evaluation forms and formats and have begun developing alternative methods to evaluate and provide feedback to their units. The abandonment of a standard evaluation process has added to the inability to objectively or accurately compare units across formations and time. The current evaluation system depends almost entirely on one set of humans to monitor safety, performance, and provide feedback to the training unit for improvement. Humans in this system fatigue and fall prey to natural pressures to reduce standards and push units through training exercises regardless of undesirable performance. Additionally, internal pressure, organizational structure, and competition encourage units to exaggerate or inflate their tactical readiness reports. While this situation is widely recognized in the Army, the current evaluation system results in unreliable, and possibly inaccurate, outputs that are unusable for decision making. As a consequence of this system, the Army maintains very few ways to distinguish between the training levels and capability of tactical units. By examining the organizational structure, individual and unit incentives, and evaluation methods available for the Army to adjust, this document provides a method to compare and evaluate the possible alternatives.