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As the importance of cyber operations in national security grows, the U.S. military s ability to ensure a robust cyber workforce becomes increasingly important in protecting the nation. A particular concern has been the growing need for cyber warriors: highly trained and specialized individuals who engage in offensive and defensive operations. The authors seek to help those planning future training for cyber warriors by highlighting what can be learned from another specialty: defense language. While there is no perfect analogy between cyber personnel and another segment of the national security workforce, a number of similarities exist between the need for language skills and cyber warrior expertise, including the need for a highly specialized skill that requires extensive training, the critical role of the skill in mission effectiveness, a need to quickly build capacity, and a potentially limited pipeline of qualified candidates. In this exploratory study, the authors examine what the military services and national security agencies have done to train linguists personnel with skills in critical languages other than English and the kinds of language training provided to build and maintain this segment of the workforce. They draw from published documents, research literature, and interviews of experts in both language and cyber. Among key findings, the authors find that shared definitions and metrics are an important first step, training must be closely aligned with mission needs, efforts should focus on building a strong pipeline of candidates, and training must be aligned with overall workforce management efforts.

This report documents research examining requirements across all Air Force functional areas for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-degreed officers and officerequivalent civilians. It documents current STEM requirements, classifies disciplines as STEM or non-STEM, summarizes the prevalence of STEM degrees in the current officer-level workforce, and presents STEM requirements gathered from Air Force career field managers (CFMs) through a structured interview process. Based on the study findings, this report makes recommendations for improvements to the determination, documentation, and projection of STEM degree requirements. The research reported here was commissioned by the Air Force Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Integration, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition (SAF/AQX), and by the Director, Force Development, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Headquarters U.S. Air Force (HQ USAF/A1D) as part of fiscal year 2012 project Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and was conducted within the Manpower, Personnel, and Training Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE. This report should be of interest to Air Force leadership and staff involved in the policy and execution of officer accessions, civilian hiring, and the management of the STEM workforce., Project Air Force.

The overriding objective of U.S. military compensation policy is to attract and retain the force necessary to meet the nation s national security objectives. Whether and how military service affects earnings and an individual s likelihood of completing college one determinant of future earnings has implications for military policies related to compensation, recruiting, and retention. For instance, if an individual contemplating military service can be shown evidence that he or she will be well-served by the experience, it could make that person more willing to enlist. On the other hand, if there are economic hardships associated with military service, policymakers responsible for maintaining the force could use information on why this is occurring to help formulate policies to mitigate these hardships. Estimating the effect of military service is complicated by the fact that veterans are likely to be different from nonveterans in ways that are correlated with subsequent economic outcomes but are not observable to the researcher. In a 2011 study (Loughran, Martorell, Miller, and Klerman, 2011 [hereafter LMMK]), RAND researchers overcame this econometric problem by following the approach pioneered by Angrist (1998), in which applicants to the military who enlisted were compared with military-eligible applicants who chose not to enlist, controlling for the detailed covariates available on the military application record. LMMK examined the effects of military service on earnings and educational attainment for all U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force enlisted personnel and found that enlistment slightly increases the likelihood of pursuing higher education and increases earnings but with a substantial earnings dip in the period immediately following separation.

The Department of Defense (DoD) published its Department of Defense Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, 2012-2017 in 2012. The strategic plan contains three broad goals: (1) ensure leadership commitment to an accountable and sustained diversity effort; (2) employ an aligned strategic outreach effort to identify, attract, and recruit from a broad talent pool reflective of the best of the nation we serve; and (3) develop, mentor, and retain top talent from across the Total Force. Each of these broad goals is then broken into several narrower objectives, which in turn consist of one or more strategic actions and initiatives for accomplishing them. While the overall definition and goals are broad, the actions and initiatives are extremely specific. However, the document currently lacks structure: It does not suggest a prioritization among the actions/initiatives, objectives, or a timeline for accomplishing them. This report aims to discuss issues that DoD needs to consider in its implementation of the strategic plan and to provide a framework that DoD can use to organize its strategic initiatives. The framework categorizes the strategic initiatives specified in the strategic plan along three key dimensions -- compliance, communication, and coordination (the three Cs) -- and prioritizes them across time: short, medium, and long term. The framework can help all DoD components work toward the vision described in the strategic plan in a deliberate, synchronized effort by complying with current laws, regulations, and directives; communicating effectively to internal as well as external stakeholders; and coordinating efforts to ensure continuing change. This work is intended to supplement the final report of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC), From Representation to Inclusion: Diversity Leadership for the 21st-Century Military.

The defense acquisition workforce (AW) is charged with providing the Department of Defense (DoD) with the management, technical, and business capabilities needed to oversee defense acquisition programs from start to finish. This workforce comprises military personnel, civilian employees of DoD, and contractors who perform functions related to the acquisition of goods and services for DoD. In 2006, RAND National Defense Research Institute began to collaborate with DoD to develop data-based tools that would support analysis of the organic defense AW, which includes military personnel and DoD civilian employees, but not contractors. RAND published a report in 2008 (Gates et al., 2008) that documented the construction of the data set and the analytical methods used to examine these data. That report provided descriptive analyses of the organic AW based on data through FY 2006. This report updates Gates et al., 2008, by documenting revisions to the study methods, providing descriptive information on the AW through fiscal year (FY) 2011, and providing a user s manual for a projection model that can help managers explore what shape the AW could take in 2021 under different assumptions about the future. The value of the model and resulting projections is not so much in the specific numbers the model provides (including the examples presented in this report) but in the insights that managers can gain by manipulating the model to examine the possible effects of changes to the model parameters. To illustrate this value, we present some practical examples that describe how a manager can use the model to explore alternative assumptions about future workforce turnover or workforce management practices by modifying some of the default gain and loss rates in the model, which are based on the five-year historical averages. The examples illustrate the implications of such changes for the projections.

While workforce issues in general - human capital strategic planning efforts in particular-are important throughout the DoD, the AT&L workforce has received special attention. The strategic human capital plan for the AW, which is currently in its third revision (see DoD, Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2007), emphasizes several critical workforce issues: the eventual loss of retirement-eligible personnel and their knowledge, understanding the differences in the workforce generations (aging baby-boomers compared with Generations X and Y, for example), and coping with the increasing demand for workers educated in science and engineering. In 2006, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Director of Human Capital Initiatives (OUSD(AT&L)/HCI)), asked RAND to analyze DoD AW data. RAND's findings for OUSD(AT&L/HCI) are presented in Gates er al. (2008). While that inquity was under way, the United States Navy asked RAND to under-take a complementary analyis focusing on the DoN's civilian AW. The DoN asked RAND to provide a descriptive overview of the DoN civilian AW and conduct preliminary analyses of data related to specific workforce management issues of retention, professional development, and leadership. This report summarizes what we learned about DoN's civilian AW and these workforce management issues.