Military Workforce Dynamics and Planning in the Italian AirForce Armenia S. (1) , Centra A. (2) , Cesarotti V. (3) , De Angelis A. (4) , Retrosi C. (5) (1) CATTID, Sapienza University of Rome, P.le Aldo Moro, 5 - 00185 Rome, Italy, - armenia@cattid.uniroma1.it (2) Lt.Col. It.A.F., – Staff and Workflow Manager, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, 7010 Casteau Belgium, +393201843265 - andrea.centra@am.difesa.it (3) Dept. of Industrial Engineering, Tor Vergata University of Rome, via del Politecnico, 1 - 00133 Rome, Italy – cesarotti@uniroma2.it (4) Lt.Col. It.A.F., – Teacher of Operations Planning at the Joint Services Staff College of the Italian Armed Forces, Piazza della Rovere, 83, 00165 Rome, Italy, +393351586592, angelo.deangelis@am.difesa.it (5) Ufficio Europa, Provincia di Latina, via Costa, 1 - 04100 Latina, Italy - clarissa.retrosi@gmail.com ABSTRACT In the past 15 years the Italian Armed Forces have undertaken a massive change process, trying to transform and modernize the military instrument of power. The abolition of conscription, the consequent “professionalization” of the workforce and a drastic reduction in the overall personnel strength are the main features of this endeavor. With regards to the latter aspect, Human Resource Management and Military Workforce Planning have become of crucial importance in the efforts to meet the requirements introduced by a State Law in 1997. January 1st 2015 is the deadline to reach the target personnel strength for each service and a newly defined internal balance of promotion rates and number of people in every rank. This paper aims at describing where does the Italian Air Force stand in terms of workforce planning and , limiting its insight to the “aircrews” service branch (pilots and navigators), will describe the impact of the above mentioned transformation. Additionally the goal is to explore potential management policies able to guarantee the achievement of the given objectives. Keywords: Human Resource Management, Military Workforce, Workforce Planning, Career Advancement, Organizational Change, System Dynamics, Policy Modeling, Computer Simulation 1. INTRODUCTION Military structures are typically closed and hierarchical: they are closed in the sense that there is only one entry point, which goes through recruitment; they are hierarchical because career advancements can only happen step-by-step, along the pyramidal rank chain. Given these conditions, our aim is to model one of such structures (the one of the Italian Air Force) in order to reproduce its dynamics and simulate the outcomes of possible scenarios. To this end we will introduce a “workforce planning tool” which will allow us to test system responses to changes instigated by management decisions (policy assessment).