By taking cognizance of the special properties of our model, we may formulate an alternative functional equation which has the advantage of potentially requiring less than N periods’ data to obtain an optimal program; that is, it may be possible without any loss of optimality to narrow our program commitment to a shorter “planning horizon” than N periods on the sole basis of data for this horizon. Just as one may prove that in a linear programming model it suffices to investigate only basic sets of variables in search of an optimal solution, we shall demonstrate that in our model an optimal solution exists among a very simple class of policies.