Military Readiness, Operations Tempo (OPTEMPO) and Personnel Tempo (PERSTEMPO): Are U.S. Forces Doing Too Much? Page: 24 of 81

                                
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Comparing Navy and Air Force approaches. Each service necessarily tailors
its respective forces and deployment guidelines to the requirements of the missions
it performs and the levels of readiness required of its forces. The Navy, which rotates
forces forward to overcome the lagtime involved in deploying forces to a fast-
breaking crisis by sea, keeps forward-stationed forces at high readiness while units in
home-port are in varying states of readiness. The Air Force, whose forces deploy into
combat within 48 hours of notification maintains high levels of readiness across the
force.  These differing requirements are reflected in the OPTEMPO    and
PERSTEMPO of each service.
Navy PERSTEMPO Rules. The Navy has stringent rules regarding
PERSTEMPO but an individual measurement system is not employed. There are
three tenets of the Navy policy:
" Deployments will be no more than six months from the time they depart
homeport until the time they return to homeport.
" The turn-around ratio, that is, the number of days at home compared to the
number of days on a deployment, will not exceed 2.0/1. (Note: the Navy
defines a deployment as 56 days or more at sea.)
" 50% of a sailor's time over the past three years must have been spent in
homeport.
Waivers to this policy require approval of the Chief of Naval Operations. In 1996,
according to the Navy staff, there were only 5 waivers granted Navy-wide and these
were to take ships for required maintenance to facilities away from homeport. In
1997, there has only been one waiver, again for maintenance.
According to Navy officials who track PERSTEMPO, the Navy's turn-around
ratio that is, the time between deployments must more than double the time spent on
the last deployment averages between 2.4-2.6 to 1 although some aviation units may
be closer to the 2.0 limit. While it is true that the turn-around ratio has diminished in
recent years, it still remains well-above the Navy goal for most units.
Individual sailors may, at times, experience higher PERSTEMPO if
reassignments occur between deployments. A sailor coming off a deployment that is
reassigned to a ship preparing for a deployment is likely to be hard pressed. The Navy
does not track individual PERSTEMPO, but, based on the rules for unit deployments,
the maximum three-year average for most sailors should be around 180 days.
Air Force PERSTEMPO Policy. The Air Force has no specific rule regarding
PERSTEMPO. Air Force policy is that, as a goal, individual PERSTEMPO should
not exceed 120 days per year. This policy is consistent with the Navy's more
stringent 2.0:1 turnaround ratio in that 120 days away plus 240 days at home roughly
equals one calendar year (See figure 4 below). The Navy uses deployments, any
continuous sea duty that exceeds 56 days away, to measure the 2.0:1 ratio. Figure
5 shows the effect of additional activities away from home station on Navy
PERSTEMPO. The Navy policy of 50 percent of one's time spent at home over the
three preceding years ensures that additional activities don't take sailors beyond a