The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020 directed the Secretary of Defense to report on food insecurity among members of the armed forces and their dependents. The directive includes the following elements: an assessment of the current extent of food insecurity among not only service members and their dependents but also those living on post and presumably not receiving the basic allowance for housing (BAH); participation in food assistance programs; barriers to accessing this assistance; a description of other sources of income to meet basic needs; an assessment of the feasibility and advisability of a basic needs allowance (BNA) for low-income members; and three sets of recommendations (for policies, programs, and activities) to address food insecurity among military families. RAND researchers examined these elements and developed answers, along with listing areas requiring additional analysis.

The joint U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)-Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Integrated Disability Evaluation System is the process by which DoD determines fitness for duty and separation or retirement of service members because of disability. Service members who are evaluated for disability undergo a comprehensive medical examination to document all medical conditions and receive a disability rating for every condition documented during the exam. DoD and the VA use these ratings to determine the amount of disability compensation service members receive if they are determined to be unfit to continue serving and consequently medically discharged. Proposals for reforming the DoD compensation system have been considered in the past, but a rigorous evaluation of what those alternatives might look like and how they would affect service member benefits and costs to DoD has not been conducted. In this report, the authors describe their evaluation of four hypothetical alternative disability compensation approaches that would support a simpler disability evaluation process: compensating based on the current objectives of the DoD system (and using current benefit formulas), compensating on the basis of a military career, compensating on the basis of unfitting conditions, or compensating similar to U.S. allies. Each alternative reduces reliance on disability ratings for determining DoD disability compensation and focuses primarily on a single decision about whether a service member is fit to perform his or her duties. The authors evaluate the potential effects of each alternative on service member compensation, processing times, end strength, lost skills and experience, and readiness.

This thesis attempts to put arms transfers and the modern defense industry in historical context by identifying the drivers of change in the trade and production of arms over time. To this end, a review of the literature on the arms trade up to the Second World War comprises the first part of the study, presenting a largely qualitative overview of shifts in the flow of arms, the location of the world’s arms-producing centers, and changes in attitudes towards transfers as they have affected the trade. The second half of the study provides a data-driven analysis of trends in the international arms trade since 1950. As in the previous half, its focus is on developments in the supply and recipient side of the market, in addition to the global events that have impacted arms production. The final section of the thesis concludes, providing some of the policy implications of the findings.

In this report, researchers update and extend an earlier study to document the views of employers of reserve component (RC) members and reevaluate Department of Defense (DoD) policy, federal legislation, and state legislation. For this study, the researchers integrated the res...

The defense acquisition workforce (AW) is responsible for providing acquisition, technology, and logistics support for products and services to ensure that the U.S. military is an effective fighting force. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment has directed the deployment of a comprehensive workforce analysis capability to facilitate assessments of the AW, and RAND researchers have aided in this effort by providing reports with updates on workforce gains and losses, as well as targeted analyses of specific topics of interest. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) began implementing the Back-to-Basics (BtB) initiative-the most significant change to the defense AW management infrastructure since its inception in the early 1990s. In this report, the researchers provide an update to their previous work and a final characterization of the pre-BtB AW. They present a descriptive overview of the AW as of the end of fiscal year (FY) 2021, describe changes to the AW over time, discuss the potential implications of a recent transition for the workforce, and identify opportunities for the collection of new data that could support decisionmaking.

This report summarizes the results of a congressionally mandated independent review of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)'s use of the two-year probationary period for new appointments to the Senior Executive Service and competitive service.