A RAND Corporation study undertook a literature review and analysis of several case studies to examine factors that could increase the likelihood of success in integrating active and reserve component military staff organizations. The resulting best practices can serve as a framework for undertaking and assessing these integrations.

While all U.S. military services have strived to achieve greater total force integration and a stronger total force culture across their active and reserve components, significant impediments limit the achievement of these objectives. Thus, the issue continues to capture the attention of policymakers who seek ways to overcome these impediments and facilitate greater integration. This priority has been addressed most recently by national commissions addressing the future of both the Army and the Air Force. While each of these sets of proposals provides ideas for enhancing integration and providing a greater total force culture, the proposals are neither complete nor fully reflective of all potentially relevant policies and practices. Further, the policy prescriptions are service specific and do not reflect broader insights that cut across services. Last, none of these efforts clearly define the desired purpose and end state for integration against which integration initiatives can be evaluated. For these reasons, a more comprehensive analysis is needed of policies and practices that can contribute to the ultimate objective of improving total force integration and achieving a total force culture. The objective of this study is to provide insights on policies that can foster cross-component integration and incentives for cross-component service that contribute to the most effective total force possible and benefit individual service members, as well as both the active and reserve components. The focus of this report is on factors that can increase cross-component knowledge and awareness, which contribute to achieving the larger goal of cross-component integration.

This report reviews the implementation of the Army's Total Force Policy. The Army has made progress in integrating the Regular Army, Army National Guard, and U.S. Army Reserve, but budget constraints have limited implementation.

Increased use of the reserve component has renewed interest in the question of the appropriate number of reserve component general and flag officers. RAND researchers conducted a review of requirements for reserve component general and flag officers.