Defense Readiness Reporting System

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 (NDAA 1999) added Section 117 to United States Code Title 10, which directed the Secretary of Defense to establish a "comprehensive readiness reporting system" that would "measure in an objective, accurate, and timely manner" the capability of the U.S. military to carry out the National Security Strategy, Defense Planning Guidance, and the National Military Strategy.

Additionally, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (NDAA 2000) directed an independent study of the requirements for this comprehensive readiness reporting system, resulting in an Institute for Defense Analyses report titled "Independent Review of DOD's Readiness Reporting System" released in November 2000.

The overarching intent behind the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) is to help answer the question "ready for what?" by providing both capability and resource data in an improved readiness reporting tool to broaden DoD-level readiness assessments.

DRRS represents a shift in how the Defense Department.....

Thinks of readiness

  • Beyond narrow resource accounting
  • Synonymous with capability—What can forces do?
  • In the context of assigned missions

Measures force status

  • Focus on forces and missions
  • Includes Joint, support, operational units, and Combat Support Agencies

Assesses risk

  • Uses collaborative tools linked to near-real time data
  • Requires operational context based on assigned mission

Responds to deficiencies

  • Builds in the identification of mitigation strategies
  • Considers readiness reporting, risk assessment and adaptive planning as one large, iterative process


DRRS is mission focused …

Detailed views of unit personnel and equipment

  • Insights in force “availability”
  • Includes Joint organizations
  • Includes installations, facilities, ranges
  • Informs risk mitigation/Alternative Course of Action analysis

DRRS enables and supports Global Force Management while maintaining an inventory of individuals who possess special skills.

Famous quotes containing the words defense, readiness, reporting and/or system:

    For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
    For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God
    to him exceedingly.
    Christopher Smart (1722–1771)

    Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.
    Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)

    We now come to the grand law of the system in which we are placed, as it has been developed by the experience of our race, and that, in one word, is SACRIFICE!
    Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)