This report documents the findings of a project related to Army land policy and approaches to fulfilling Army needs for training lands. The Army has been criticized for its lack of a comprehensive land-use strategy to guide decisions and help set priorities for land policy initiatives. This document reviews the Army's current approach to establishing requirements and evaluates the policy changes that might occur with a comprehensive strategy. It differs from previous assessments in that it explicitly considers the political environment for Army land use. This report should be of interest to those concerned with Army environmental policy and questions of land use and military training. It should also be of interest to those concerned with potential future Base Realignments and Closures (BRACs) and the forthcoming efforts to renew three large Army parcels under Public Law 99-606. Large land parcels at Fort Bliss and two Alaska bases will be returned to the public domain unless Congress renews 99-606 by the year 2001.

The Army and the Department of Defense (DoD) have a long-term need to access land for training and testing. Both have been criticized for failing to determine their overall land needs, and for pursuing land expansions without a rational strategy. Critics charge that the military is involved in "land-grabs" driven by the inability to share resources across organizational boundaries within DoD. This report examines the physical and organizational boundaries of the DoD and Army land base, and it uses the Army as a case study of how land requirements are determined. The authors conclude that physical--not organizational--boundaries, along with advances in weapon systems, create the need for additional land. However, organizational and institutional boundaries prevent DoD and the Army from explaining this and forming a clear statement of the overall approach to determining land requirements. The authors recommend that the Army make its implicit strategy explicit, and they provide recommendations for more efficient use of the land base between major commands and services.

Recently, the Army forecast that it would experience a 4.5-million-acre training land shortfall by 2013 and proposed to purchase additional land adjacent to certain existing training ranges. This report reviewed the Army's approach for acquiring training; it: (1) evaluates the Army's approach to the acquisition of training land; (2) describes the Army's consideration of alternatives and assessment of the environmental and economic effects; and (3) analyzes the Army's effectiveness in communicating its approach for making decisions to pursue these acquisitions. This report focused on all 5 land acquisitions since 2002 at Fort Irwin, Calif.; 3 training sites in Hawaii; and the proposed expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in Colorado. Charts and tables.

In 1982 Ronald Reagan initiated the largest military buildup ever seen during peacetime. While the buildup focused on new weapons and increases in force structure, it also involved more intense use of existing ranges and greater demand for new land and airspace. Most of the land acquisition occurred in the West. In Idaho the U.S. Air Force requested 1.3 million acres to expand existing bombing ranges. The National Guard sought a 1-million-acre tank-training range in Montana. The U.S. Army proposed to expand the Fort Irwin tank range in California by 250,000 acres. But nowhere has the military's hunger for land created more concern than in Nevada. Proposals for use of Nevada's most plentiful resource include a 600,000-acre tank-training range and a 500,000-acre expansion of navy bombing ranges. The unrestrained procurement of public lands by the armed forces has caused considerable controversy among Nevadans and has raised public demand for active involvement in the planning process for military ranges. In Combat Zoning, David Loomis provides an objective analysis of the withdrawal of public lands for military use by all of the armed services. The primary theme that emerges from this study is that a lack of citizen participation in the development of military land-use plans is a weakness in the planning process for these lands. Loomis argues that public lands are the common legacy of all citizens; consequently, their participation in decisions affecting those lands is a right, not a privilege, even when national security is at stake. Military planners should seek out and welcome that participation. Combat Zoning provides the general public and land-use planners with a clear picture ofmilitary planning and how it has affected one western state. It applies lessons learned about participatory democracy at other levels of government and society to the military's long-standing reliance on technological procedures.

This book examines the human factors issues associated with the development, testing, and implementation of helmet-mounted display technology in the 21st Century Land Warrior System. Because the framework of analysis is soldier performance with the system in the full range of environments and missions, the book discusses both the military context and the characteristics of the infantry soldiers who will use the system. The major issues covered include the positive and negative effects of such a display on the local and global situation awareness of the individual soldier, an analysis of the visual and psychomotor factors associated with each design feature, design considerations for auditory displays, and physical sources of stress and the implications of the display for affecting the soldier's workload. The book proposes an innovative approach to research and testing based on a three-stage strategy that begins in the laboratory, moves to controlled field studies, and culminates in operational testing.