The Impact of Operation Tempo: Issues in Measurement

Abstract : Military leaders have repeatedly expressed concern about the toll operations tempo (OPTEMPO) takes on soldier and unit readiness. In a model of OPTEMPO developed by Castro and Adler (1999), peak soldier and unit performance are associated with an optimal level operational demands ( e.g., OPTEMPO), and lower levels of readiness are associated with both lower and higher levels of OPTEMPO. Support for the model was found in a series of psychological screening assessments with U. S. soldiers. For example, when operations tempo was defined as the length of a deployment to Bosnia, greater rates of psychological distress were associated with longer deployments. In contrast, when operational tempo was defined as previous deployment experience, psychological distress rates were lower. Clearly, the operational definition of OPTEMPO is a critical task that is vital to understanding the impact of the pace of operations on soldiers. In an in-depth examination of the OPTEMPO model, we are conducting a two-year study of 10 units across the US Army in Europe. Measures of OPTEMPO include daily work variables such as the average number of hours worked per day and the number of hours worked per week. There are also measures that describe the tempo of a soldier's military experience, including total number of military deployments, deployment intensity (number of deployments/ number of years in the military), and training intensity (number of days on training exercises in the past six months). By addressing these diverse measures of OPTEMPO we hope to identify key variables, as well as moderating variables, that provide evidence for the OPTEMPO-Readiness Link.