Several major activities related to combat readiness will engage military psychologists for at least the remainder of the decade. The psychologist's role in dealing with problems of acquisition, retention, assignment, training of servicemembers, human factors engineering, and organizational productivity is discussed.During the symposium "What is Military Psychology" held at the 1979 American Psychological Association convention, Arima reminded his audience of Chason's observation that the "orientations of psychologists involved in military psychology are broadly representative of psychologists who work in civilian sectors" (Arima, 1980, p. 1). In many respects, the U.S. Military community is a microcosm of American society. As with their civilian counterparts who are involved in a diversity of professional concerns, psychologists who serve in the Department of Defense (DOD) work in a variety of areas that require expertise in the many subfields of professional psychology.The purpose of this article is to provide the non-DOD psychologist with a general understanding of the major current and future activities of their military colleagues. The article in no way purports to reflect official DOD policy but rather provides the authors' personal and, no doubt, somewhat subjective views of several important behavioral science problems that will face DOD psychologists for at least the remainder of this decade. Our emphasis is, primarily on research and development, organizational skill development, and ergonomic issues rather than on clinical-practice. This restriction is not intended to underemphasize the important role of clinical practice in the military context. Rather, clinical psychologists working in military activities perform functions that closely parallel those of their civilian professional counterparts-individual psychological assessment, psychotherapy, biofeedback, consultation, and so forth. The major differences between the civilian and military clinical settings are that the clinician in the military, probably more than his or her civilian counterparts, works within the traditional physical health care system and has more ability to influence the client's working and living situation because of the "total environment" nature of the military institution.The directions for research in military psychology derive primarily from defense doctrinal assumptions about the nature of anticipated combat situations. It is assumed that in a future combat situation, the American military force will confront an aggressor whose force is numerically superior and who is equipped with greater firepower potential than its own. Further, the military must plan for a "come as you are" war in which there will he no protracted initial buildup of personnel and armaments such as occurred in World War II and Vietnam. American counterstrategy is predicated on the assumption that the major quantitative superiorities of the enemy can be overcome by the qualitative advantages of personnel, leadership, training, and equipment of the Amer...