Readiness reporting for an adaptive army

The Army has developed an impressive capacity to adapt to emerging requirements by providing units with new capabilities rapidly and flexibly as units prepare for deployment through the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) process. The Army's ability to report on readiness throughout these adaptations, however, is challenged. The readiness reporting system is largely predicated on a bottom-up, deliberate process with known milestones and predetermined designs to which the Army would build readiness. As those targets are changed, for instance when deploying to a changing operational environment as was seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, the reporting system cannot easily keep up. The key challenge to readiness reporting is that Army units now routinely prepare for assigned missions that sometimes differ in meaningful ways from their designed missions. This study examines the Army's readiness reporting system in light of the increased adaptiveness demonstrated by Army units in the past decade. In this study we found that while the readiness reporting system still works as originally intended, the current readiness reporting system captures only a portion of the adaptations readily seen in recent years. The study offers recommendations to better reflect these adaptations in the readiness reporting system.