Page 107 - JSOM Fall 2025

FIGURE 1 The Total Force Fitness (TFF) wheel shows the eight FIGURE 2 The human performance optimization (HPO) spectrum
domains key to enhancing performance and sustaining health. highlights the range of capabilities associated with performing
mission-essential tasks (MET) and the activities and personnel
supporting Service members in each phase of recovery, restoration,
prevention, and optimization.
HPO Spectrum

Performance Optimization Unit Mission
Enhancement Enhanced Ability Essential
to Perform MET
Task List
(METL)
Build Individual
Internal Resources
to Exceed MET
Demands
Warfighter
Performance Prevention Mission
Sustainment Moderate/ Essential Support agencies and medical Embedded teams Leaders, frontline supervisors, and peers
Minimum Ability
to Perform MET Tasks Reduce Individual
Vulnerabilities that
Impact Internal
Resources to Match
MET Demands
Restore Individual
Internal Resources
to Match MET
The first step to addressing health and performance needs is Restoration Demands
Limited Ability
to clearly identify those needs within context. This simple as- Health to Perform MET Human
sertion becomes increasingly complicated when applied to the Sustainment Recovery Health
U.S. Military as a whole, which encompasses numerous career Limited Ability Recover Individual
Internal Resources
to be Healthy
fields working in dynamic environments on a vast scale. In to Meet Basic
Health Needs
an effort to meet the breadth and depth of health and perfor-
mance needs across thousands of Servicemembers, career-field
leadership, and health and performance personnel, researchers
often turn to large sources of quantitative data, or “big data,”
rather than qualitative or “thick” data. While this approach
does allow for breadth in scope that leaves room for some
specificity, it can lack the context often required to understand airframes at three different installations from 2020 to 2023,
nuanced relationships among the TFF domains or career-field this article aims to address these questions, highlighting those
considerations in context and may be divorced from commu- areas within each TFF domain along the HPO spectrum that
nity expertise and perspectives. 6–9 were common across sites and which components of the blue-
print would likely require a careful look specific to context at
Capability-based blueprinting (CBB) was built in an effort to an installation level.
address health and performance priorities from the bottom up,
beginning with career-field and unit perspectives at an instal- Background
lation level. With multiple capability-based blueprints com-
pleted, several questions remained: CBB was built in an effort to operationalize HPO and TFF and
execute the priorities outlined in the 2018 National Defense
• Can a bottom up rather than top-down approach be effective? Strategy. It was an effort to facilitate health and performance
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• Is it possible to retain some level of specificity while also personnel and unit/career-field leadership to cooperatively
generalizing to the overall career field, particularly in an address the health and performance priorities most impactful
environment where limited time and resources make con- to the mission readiness of those unit/career-field community
ducting multiple capability-based blueprints less feasible? members. It also emerged in response to the growing avail-
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• Do needs identified at the career-field/unit level reflect needs ability and placement of embedded health and performance
at other installations within the same career fields working assets. Embedded assets were placed to improve access but of-
other missions, for example? ten came with a lack of clarity on what those assets should tar-
• Can a capability-based blueprint for a specific unit/career get and how to do so in alignment with the communities they
field provide actionable insights for health and performance were embedded in. 12,13 CBB was designed to equip career-field
personnel, embedded assets, and career-field leadership that leadership with information they could use to advocate for the
is transferable? needs of their own communities, while also providing those
• Can lessons learned through CBB with conventional forces health and performance assets—many of whom have little or
provide any corollaries for similar roles in a Special Opera- no previous experience working with the military—with an
tions Forces (SOF) community? entry point to address high-priority community needs. 14

Using CBB conducted in collaboration with three Weapons Ar- The ever-changing landscape of warfare has heightened calls for
mament System (2W1) communities working on three different health and performance programs to bridge the gap between

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