The U.S. Army Reserve soldier’s career development autonomy and agency are unmatched in the U.S. military. That is for a good reason, as the Army Reserve is the second-largest reserve component of the military, without the state-specific limitations of the Army National Guard. The Army Reserve must find a staffing sweet spot that balances the component’s requirements with enough flexibility for fulfilling civilian employment.
This structure most benefits those in the know and demands that Army Reserve leaders share their understanding of and experience in the component. Geography is a lynchpin in Army Reserve staffing and further enables a soldier’s agency. (In this context, “agency” is a soldier’s independent capability to act on their own will.) If a soldier’s civilian career takes them to a different part of the globe, the flexibility built into the Army Reserve staffing model supports that transition.
As part of the larger Army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign of 2023, the Army Reserve launched an “It’s Your Time” campaign to increase understanding of the capabilities of the Army Reserve and how they can contribute to advancing military and civilian careers. Taken a step further, “It’s Your Time” in the Army Reserve because the opportunity to write your own story with yourself as the primary author is something you won’t find anywhere else in the military. It is an undervalued and lesser-known strategic advantage.
The elasticity of membership is the first lens to use to understand an Army Reserve soldier’s agency in their military career. Most Army Reserve soldiers serve part-time as Troop Program Unit soldiers. However, the Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA) program offers another form of membership in which soldiers contribute part-time for authorized agencies outside the Army Reserve’s major subordinate commands.
Meeting Needs
The objective of the IMA program is to facilitate rapid expansion of the active Army wartime structure to meet military manpower requirements when necessary. The IMA program enables soldiers to work with organizations such as the Defense Logistics Agency, the Joint and Army staffs and many others in a part-time capacity.
IMA organizations and the Army Reserve’s major subordinate commands often offer full-time opportunities through Active Duty Operational Support orders. This type of service and duty status is voluntary, unlike an involuntary mobilization in support of contingency operations.
In 2022, the Army Software Factory launched Carrera. In this online application, members of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve can browse all the Active Duty Operational Support opportunities across the Army (nearly 1,600 at this writing). Much like the elasticity of membership contributes to a soldier’s agency in the component, so does the ability to serve full-time. Active Duty Operational Support opportunities are often a result of emerging requirements.
In these cases, Army Reserve soldiers work on the most challenging and important operations at any given time. There was a medical professionals surge during the COVID-19 outbreak; logisticians support Operation Warp Speed; and Army Reserve soldiers helped set up V Corps’ new garrison headquarters in Poland.
In addition to thousands of Active Duty Operational Support opportunities, over 16,000 Army Reserve soldiers serve in the Active Guard Reserve program. Active Guard Reserve soldiers serve full-time on active duty in units and organizations of the Army Reserve, or that directly support the Army Reserve.
Most Regular Army opportunities for technical skills and skills outside combat arms exist in the Army Reserve. Medical, civil affairs, military police, intelligence, logistics and other sustainment capabilities rely on the part-time professionals in the Army Reserve.
Also, like the Regular Army, NCOs in the Army Reserve can instruct, recruit and serve as drill sergeants. The Army Reserve training enterprise is composed of elements that support the institutional, collective, mobilization and functional training of Army Reserve soldiers.
Pathways Provided
Three commands provide pathways to broadening assignments and certification as instructors, drill sergeants and observer coach/trainer-qualified personnel. The 80th Training Command (Total Army School System) primarily augments U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command schools, including MOS and Additional Skills Identifiers reclassification and mobile training team courses, NCO Professional Development System courses and reserve component versions of Captains Career Course and Intermediate Level Education courses. Select officers and NCOs assigned to the 80th Training Command and its subordinate units can attend the Army Basic Instructor Course and pursue a pathway toward instructor certification (and the three levels of the Army Instructor Badge).
Similarly, the 108th Training Command (Initial Entry Training) supports Army training centers with drill sergeant augmentation, as well as adjunct professors of military science and cadre who support the ROTC programs of the U.S. Army Cadet Command.
For senior NCOs, post-command captains and field grade officers, the 84th Training Command offers opportunities to attain certification and serve as observer coach/trainers to support collective training exercises. The command’s Mission Command Training Program detachments provide staff and Mission Command support primarily for battalion and higher-echelon exercises, while Training Support Battalions support company and below exercises.
Serving within the Army Reserve training enterprise allows Army Reserve soldiers to pursue broadening opportunities. Each of these commands also provides key developmental opportunities at the company, battalion and brigade levels.
Opportunities for additional broadening through education also abound. Strategic broadening seminars, additional professional development education and the U.S. Army Human Resources Command’s broadening opportunity programs are available to Army Reserve soldiers. The Harvard Strategist Program, Congressional and White House fellowships and broadening seminars at Syracuse University in New York, Indiana University, the United Kingdom Defense Academy and the University of Louisville, Kentucky, are open for application each year. These programs, coupled with the flexibility and elasticity of membership, enable Army Reserve soldiers to experience the best of what the Army offers.
Necessary Flexibility
In a March 2023 Military Review online article headlined “We Hear You!,” Lt. Gen. Milford Beagle Jr., commander of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, and his co-authors discuss how junior officers can reframe their dissatisfaction with balancing Army requirements with personal balance.
The authors propose a “sine wave” model for balancing these demands, peaking during key developmental periods.
Beagle and his co-authors observe, “The Army’s demands on people’s time wax and wane over the scope of their careers. … The low points of the sine wave allow officers and their families to breathe, and they allow for reflection on what they have experienced.”
Applying this construct, the Army Reserve allows its members to continue serving while adapting their experiences to fit the sine wave of requirements and work-life balance.
This staffing framework isn’t perfect by any means; it benefits those who know and understand it. It’s harder to share that knowledge with a part-time force. There are plenty of Army Reserve soldiers “homesteading” and hiding out in comfortable positions, with few redress options for the component. The major subordinate commands often fall short of staffing their battalion commander positions each year.
But it is the framework we have, and it has tended to work more than not. Choice and autonomy are not usually associated with a military career in the minds of young Americans.
However, if there’s one place within the military where they can discover these qualities most, it’s undoubtedly in the Army Reserve.
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Lt. Col. Gustavo Agosto-DaFonseca, U.S. Army Reserve, is the commander of the Special Troops Battalion, 77th Sustainment Brigade, Fort Dix, New Jersey. Previously, he served as executive officer to the deputy director of operations and strategy, Headquarters, Department of the Army. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Capt. Rick Bowman, U.S. Army Reserve, serves as a congressional liaison at the Office of the Chief of Army Reserve, Fort Myer, Virginia. Previously, he served as a Defense Fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives. He deployed to Kuwait.