I__. - International Military Testing Association

A MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY (MOS)
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM: GOALS AND STATUS
Dorothy L. Finley and William J. York, Jr.
U.S. Army Research Institute Field Unit
Fort Gordon, Georgia
Threat, force modernization, doctrine, and force structure
often change in ways which influence what is required with .
respect to soldier performance. Responses to changes in soldier
performance requirements to assure adequate operation and
maintenance of the Army's inventory of systems often include
changes in MOS and CMF designs. These changes are, in this
program, called MOS restructuring and is the focus of the
program. MOS restructuring is defined as the addition or
deletion of tasks to an existing MOS, the merger or deletion of
MOSS, or the assignment of tasks to a new MOS.
The Army is faced with enlarging and more varied inventories
of equipment (older equipments often cannot be disposed of due to
the insufficient numbers of new equipments), reduced manpower
ceilings, and a reduced and changing manpower pool. The
decisions made about MOS and Career Management Field (CMF)
restructuring determine the number of soldiers in units versus in
training (given manpower ceilings), the number of operators and
maintainers needed to staff the equipments, the design of the
training system, and the levels of aptitudes required. Analyses
have demonstrated that what appears to be the best MOS
restructuring option with respect to one of these factors may be
a very bad option with respect to the other factors. The goal of
this program is to develop decision aids to facilitate the
identification of optimal, not suboptimal, MOS restructuring
solutions with respect to manpower, personnel, and training
resource considerations, and the requirements for unit
performance.
There are several considerations and constraints involved in
any action to restructure MOSS. A fundamental concern is task
and equipment commonalities and differences. One does not want
to assign a set of tasks to a soldier which are so different and
numerous as to impose a too large training requirement or
require too high a level of too many different aptitudes. One
does, on the other hand, want to assign a sufficiently large
number of tasks such the soldier will be fully employed and can
be flexibly assigned. This concern must be considered within the
Contexts of both requirements and constraints. Requirements
include such items as aptitude and gender job requirements,
manpower utilization and training requirements, and the need for
career progression opportunities. The constraints include such
items as manpower pool characteristics and size, manpower
ceilings, available training resources, geographical and