Using simulation and optimization to inform army force structure reduction decisions

Given constraints dictated by the current fiscal environment, the Army has been directed to reduce its total personnel strength from around 1.05 million across the active duty, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve, to a maximum of around 980 thousand personnel. In particular, the active duty Army will have to drawdown to around 450 thousand personnel. In this paper we discuss a methodology the Army is using to help inform decisions about how to execute this drawdown. We describe a simulation-based optimization that identifies potential cuts to a large subset of the active duty Army's total strength.