Table of Contents

iii PREFACE The purpose of this project, sponsored by the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Strategy and Requirements), was to assess requirements for peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief. The project was carried out in three phases. During Phase One, RAND was tasked to provide a comprehensive analytic description of events associated with peacekeeping, hu-manitarian assistance, and disaster relief. To accomplish this task, RAND developed a database, called Force Access, that would be suit-able to record and assess these events within the Department of Defense (DoD), Joint Staff (JS), and service staffs, especially the Army Staff. This database includes summary information for relevant op-erations conducted from 1990 through 1996, lists of units down to battalion/separate-company level for ground forces, and tables that link uniquely identified units to specific operations. Force Access provides a powerful combination of operational history and force structure within an easy-to-use relational database. Fully developed, it will offer an unprecedented look into past operations and a useful tool for exploring the implications for force mix and force structure. An overview of Force Access is given in Chapter Two, and a technical description is contained in Appendix B. During Phase Two, the sponsor exercised his option to restructure the project. In place of activities originally planned for Phase Two, the sponsor tasked RAND to produce a series of vignettes-general-ized descriptions of the types of operations described in Chapter Two-based on operations contained in the Force Access database. These vignettes are presented in Chapter Three. During the same phase, RAND was tasked to analyze the implications of these recur-ring operations, especially indications of stress on frequently tasked units of various types. This analysis appears in Chapter Four. During Phase Three, RAND was tasked to recommend changes in force structure and procedures that would improve the conduct of these types of smaller-scale contingencies without detracting from the nation's ability to wage major theater warfare. Such changes in-clude modifications to force mix and force structure across the com-ponents. They are enumerated in Chapter Five. This research was performed within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of RAND's National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center spon-sored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the unified commands, and the defense agencies. The prospective audi-ence includes decisionmakers and supporting staffs within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, but also the services for areas falling within their cognizance. Comments and inquiries are welcome and should be addressed to the authors (substantive questions: Bruce Pirnie; technical ques-tions: Corazon Francisco).