Army Maintenance - Operational Readiness Information For Small Unit Leaders

Unit Maintenance Operations are vital to the successless than that and you would fail to meet your
of any Army unit. No unit can fight and win on therequired OR rate.
battlefield without maintaining a high level ofFailure to maintain a high level of operational readiness
operational readiness. If the tanks, guns, artillery andis one of the fastest ways to get fired from your
rifles don't work, we cannot win the battle.job. Therefore, you need a basic understanding of
More importantly, all Army leaders have theunit maintenance and then you need to make it a
responsibility to maintain their assigned equipment.high priority in your unit.
This includes the "safekeeping" of the equipment andSome of the best things you can do to improve your
ensuring it is fully-mission-capable. In other words,OR Rate include:
could the unit deploy with their equipment right now?- Establishing Priorities
And, would it work?- Training Maintenance Personnel
In the Army, we use the term "operational readiness"- Develop and Implement a Maintenance SOP
to describe the posture of our equipment. In other- Place Command Focus on Motor Stables
words, your operational readiness rate corresponds- As a Leader, be Involved with Motor Stables
with the percentage of fully-mission-capable- Ensure Maintenance Personnel have required Tools
equipment. As of today, the Army standard is 90%.This is just a starting point. There are many other
For instance, if your unit has 20 tanks, your goal is togreat ways to improve your unit's operational
have 18 fully-mission-capable at any time. Anythingreadiness.