Assessing the Impact of Military Technicians on Ground Equipment Readiness in the Army National Guard

Equipment readiness underpins the training and deployment of Army National Guard (ARNG) units. Using survival analysis regressions to quantify the causal effect of ARNG maintenance personnel on ground equipment readiness as proxied by the time required to complete maintenance work, we find that investments in maintainers result in economically meaningful and statistically significant reductions in the length of time ground equipment remains in a mission-incapable state. We find that adding one vehicle maintainer to each of the 472 Field Maintenance Shops studied would produce approximately 79,000 additional ready equipment days each year across the ARNG, holding constant all other staffing and features. Adding one vehicle and one electronics maintainer to each of the 81 Combined Support Maintenance Shops and Maneuver Area Training and Equipment Sites studied would produce approximately 25,000 additional ready equipment days each year across the ARNG, all else equal. Our results suggest that personnel constraints currently hamper the timely completion of equipment maintenance and impact overall equipment readiness levels in the ARNG.