​​​​​​​Force integration addresses the strategic challenges faced when implementing new capabilities while simultaneously balancing current and future preparedness within a cost-conscious organization. At the strategic level, leaders are concerned with developing and integrating capabilities for the long term by creating policies, strategies, plans, and programs that integrate the capabilities development enterprise. They must also decide when to divest older capabilities to free up resources for needed modernization, sometimes by accepting risk in the near or mid-term. This requires an understanding of the capabilities, process and timelines of the acquisition enterprise. At the tactical level, leaders are concerned with receiving, integrating, and training personnel to utilize improved capabilities to accomplish assigned missions.

Across the Services, force integration includes more than just man/train/equip. It also accounts for funding, facilities, sustainment, basing, readiness and planned or potential employment. Effective alignment and sequencing of decisions from end to end enable force integration that generates readiness within the Service’s readiness models.

People are priority #1 in the Army, and while people are the individual faces of a Service, manpower spaces document the requirements of each organization. The Army’s People Strategy integrates personnel policy from recruitment to retirement with talent management processes intended to maximize the value of individual knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Effective talent management generates retention and maximizes readiness to satisfy global force management demands. The manning and training systems must also be fully integrated with modernization and fielding decisions.

While some systems and planning horizons may differ across the DoD, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Marine Corps all manage their equipment requirements under DoD instructions and federal acquisition regulations. Therefore, the Services have similar systems and processes to forecast future requirements, develop plans and programs, procure and distribute equipment. Reserve component forces are equipped as part of their parent Service and are included in all equipping activities.

This rack contains resources pertaining to the integration and onward movement of personnel and materiel into trained and ready forces for combatant commanders. 

​​​​​​​– Fred Maddox

Shelf RI.00 — General

This shelf contains resources pertaining to processes and systems for managing the force generation processes — which is the ability to pre-plan force integration requirements (e.g., “Patch Charts”) so that combatant commanders can rely on the flow of trained and ready forces to their theaters.

Faculty Publications:

• Yuengert, Lou. Force Integration, 2023. Available on request.

Laws, Policies, Memos, and Regulations (sorted by regulation number):

• Army FM 100-11, Force Integration, 1998.

Strategies and Reports:

• Dabkowski, Matthew, Michael J. Kwinn, Kent Miller, and Mark Zais, “Unit BOG: Dwell…A Closed-Form Approach,” Phalanx 42, no. 4 (December 2009): 11-14.
  • ​​​​​​​Article was funded by the Army G-1 and is therefore in the public domain.
• Pendleton, John H., ARMY READINESS: Progress and Challenges in Rebuilding Personnel, Equipping, and Training, statement of John H. Pendleton, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, 116th Cong., 1st sess., Report #GAO-19-367T (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, February 6, 2019), https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-367t.pdf

Commentaries (inclusion does not represent endorsement):

• Kennedy, James and Cecil E. Wolberton. “Force Integration: The Process and Challenges,” The Field Grade Leader, December 23, 2018, http://fieldgradeleader.themilitaryleader.com/force-integration/
• Pendleton, John H. ARMY READINESS: Progress and Challenges in Rebuilding Personnel, Equipping, and Training, statement to 116th Cong., 1st sess., Report #GAO-19-367T (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2019).

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Title image credit: U.S. Army photo, public domain.