CRS report via The Fundamentals of Military Readiness, October 2, 2020: “Each year the Department of Defense (DOD) requests and Congress authorizes and appropriates billions of dollars in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding to support what the DOD calls readiness. Additionally, other types of defense appropriations may be used to contribute to producing, sustaining, or otherwise enabling readiness. DOD defines readiness as“the ability of military forces to fight and meet the demands of assigned missions.” What precisely this means is a matter of ongoing discourse among congressional leader sand defense officials a like…This report applies the analogy of a production line to explain the process.The readiness production process includes three fundamental parts:

• Building initial readiness. This includes providing initial training and testing along with proper resourcing, so that warfighters can progress to advanced training.
• Increasing readiness. This includes providing advanced individual and unit training, testing, and proper resourcing, so that warfighters are qualified and resourced to deploy with their operational units.
• Sustaining readiness. This includes the continual training and resourcing of units, prior to and following deployments, in order to ensure units remain ready for future assigned missions…”