Guard and reserve must continue to build strong partnerships
Guard and reserve must continue to build strong partnerships
The commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces Command said the Army’s future success "depends on us staying together" as the service winds down combat operations in Iraq and positions itself for the future.Gen. David Rodriguez, speaking Oct. 22 at the Maj. Gen. Robert G. Moorhead Guard and Reserve Breakfast before the official opening of the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition, said his command’s requirement to provide trained and ready soldiers for the spectrum of missions requires "maximizing training resources" and "inculcating all the lessons we learned in the last 11 years" for the active force, Army National Guard and Army Reserve.He told the National Guard and Army Reserve audience that he wants to build on the strong partnerships that the two reserve components have built over the last 20 years with foreign military services and foreign governments, and their expertise in crisis response and drug interdiction and "many, many other missions" in the future.The biggest change for the future has the Army aligning its units regionally with combatant commands.According to Rodriguez, this means more joint training exercises to prepare for missions designed by the regional commands.Pointing to the Total Force Policy, he added that active component forces will return in 2013 to the Balkans peacekeeping mission, where it left in the early 2000s as combat operations grew in Afghanistan and Iraq.