The continuing need for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan means that the reserve will continue to be deployed more rapidly than it was designed to do, said Gen. Charles Campbell, commander of Army Forces Command.

For the reserve to remain a strategic reserve while continuing to use the current level of manpower in Iraq and Afghanistan would require the size of the active component of the Army to be increased to 790,000, he said.

“If you buy into the notion that we’re going to be in a persistent conflict, it puts into question the relationship between the standing army and the citizen-soldiers who augment the standing army,” Campbell said. “This is a significant undertaking and represents a significant paradigm change.”

The transition has a number of aspects, including adapting the training of the reserves, changing the way reserve forces are generated, improving incentives for reserve soldiers and their employers, adapting equipping policies for the reserve, making it easier for soldiers to switch back and forth between the active and reserve components, and adopting new legislation.

Those general themes involve many specific changes, some of which are already being implemented and others of which are still in the planning stages, Campbell said.

For example, the Army is considering increasing the amount of notice that units are given before they deploy from one year to two years, said Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, the commander of First Army.

In addition, the reserves are changing from a regionally oriented force, where each region of the United States has a full complement of units, to a functionally organized force. For example, all engineering units will be organized under an engineering command, said Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz Jr., chief of the Army Reserve.

The amount of training will be made more efficient, but increased, Stultz said. In contrast to the 39 days a year that the reserve now trains – the famous “one weekend a month two weeks a year” – reserve soldiers will now train for 45 days two years before a deployment and 70 days, including a single stretch of 29 days, in the year before a deployment. The goal will be to have all soldiers certified at the platoon level before they get to the mobilization station, so that training on echelons above that can begin then, he said.

Legislation that the Army is working on passing to aid the process of operationalizing the reserve includes increasing the number of full-time support staff for the reserve by 40,000 by Fiscal Year 2013 and possibly more after that; extend eligibility for the military TRICARE health insurance to one year before and six months after mobilization; and improving dental benefits, educational incentives and retention bonuses.

All of this will be very expensive, the panelists noted, and getting political support will depend on convincing citizens that it’s worth spending this much money for an extended war on terrorism. “This is an issue the nation has to address,” said Campbell.

POC:
John Grady
Director of Communications
Association of the United States Army
703-907-2613
jgrady@ausa.org