The U.S. Army Reserve is keeping pace with the Army’s transformation and working to posture its warfighter-enabling capabilities for large-scale combat operations.

While sweeping transformation efforts gain momentum and take effect across the Total Army, Lt. Gen. Robert Harter, chief of the Army Reserve and commanding general of U.S. Army Reserve Command, said Army Reserve formations and capabilities are getting a hard look at how they can be maximized for the challenges of future combat.

As the proliferation of new threats, coupled with the advancement of technology, changes the character of modern warfare, the Army Reserve must ensure that its soldiers are equipped with capabilities that will allow them to perform their missions and survive on the battlefield, Harter said.

“We are all transforming,” he said in July. “What’s going on on the battlefield of Ukraine with Russia reinforces that. We’ve got to think about a different way of doing business.”

From transportation missions to fuel delivery to medical evacuation to how Army Reserve soldiers will maneuver on the battlefield, Harter is examining everything with a view toward optimizing the specialty skills Reserve soldiers bring to the fight, pointing out that “there is no large-scale combat operation scenario that doesn’t involve the Army Reserve.”

Aviation Cuts

The most visible and immediate evidence of transformation is the divestment of the Army Reserve’s two aviation brigades, a move that is slated to begin in fiscal 2026 and take about two years to complete.

The units, whose assets include helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, are the 11th Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade headquartered at Fort Carson, Colorado, with units in Texas, California and Kentucky, and the 244th Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, with units in South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

Harter acknowledged that the Army’s decision to eliminate the brigades represents a massive change for the more than 4,000 aviators, repairers, crews, support and medical evacuation personnel assigned to the units. But he gave his assurance that soldiers impacted by the cuts will have the chance to continue their military service in other units, to include in the Regular Army and the Army National Guard and even retrain into other MOSs.

To help soldiers who want to continue to serve, other initiatives are in the works such as a portal with links to opportunities across the Army, Harter said.

Pilots in training will be able to complete flight school, but flight school cadets or candidates who have not started their training are being offered options to pursue other career fields, Harter said.

Collective Training

To retain and make use of Reserve pilots who have thousands of flight hours and countless hours of aviation experience, he said, a plan is being considered that would integrate aviators with active-duty or National Guard units located near existing Reserve aviation units, such as Fort Carson or Fort Hood, Texas. “They could train with their active-duty counterparts or even Guardsmen and fly those aircraft,” Harter said. “Then you’ve got some strategic depth without the cost of maintaining the aircraft.”

As he works through the turbulence of divesting the Reserve’s aviation units, Harter is preparing his soldiers for combat operations through more collective training partnerships with active-duty and National Guard units.

Making that happen was a top priority for Harter on Aug. 1, 2024, when he took the oath to lead the Army Reserve. At the time, he believed that, because of escalating global threats, Reserve troops wouldn’t have the luxury of getting a head start when shots are fired. He still believes it.

“The world is crazy,” he said, pointing to the need for collective training with the other Army components. “It’s continuing to make sure that we’re posturing right, getting kids to ranges, driving on that training, getting the right leaders in place.”

The Reserve’s largest-ever training event, Mojave Falcon, took place in May and June as Reserve troops trained in a multi-echelon, geographically dispersed operational environment to support an active-duty unit at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.

Some 10,000 Army Reserve soldiers supported the exercise from Fort Hunter Liggett, California, where military police established an internment camp, and at ports in Long Beach, California, with quartermaster fueling operations at five locations in the U.S. and at the National Training Center, Harter said. At the NTC, there was a Reserve logistics battalion, a combat hospital and engineers in “the box,” as the center’s main training area is known, he added.

“It was all one big scenario, all integrated, and we’re doing it next year at Fort Polk,” Harter said of the Louisiana installation that’s home to the Joint Readiness Training Center.

Essential Enabler

In Operation Sentinel Justice, as next summer’s exercise is called, Army Reserve and Army National Guard soldiers will integrate, with some units supporting the exercise from Camp Shelby, Mississippi, Harter said. “We are looking at more multicomponent integration,” he said, adding that such collective training is something “we need to make more habitual, that’s just how we’ve got to train.”

The large-scale training events that integrate Reserve soldiers with the Army’s other components also address how the Army Reserve will modernize its legacy mission of opening operational theaters for the Army and the joint force.

Eight of the Army’s 14 expeditionary sustainment commands and 95% of the Total Army’s bulk fuel line haul capacity reside in the Army Reserve, making it an essential part of setting a theater, Harter said. The Reserve also is home to more than 90% of certain theater-level enablers, the soldiers and units that provide the earliest operational capabilities, such as engineers, sustainment, medical support and signal.

Using fuel delivery as an example, Harter recalled that on a recent visit to a quartermaster battalion during a collective training exercise, he learned that his soldiers had set up a “fuel farm,” a facility where 50,000-gallon bags are placed on open ground to support vehicles, generators and other assets on a camp.

“You burn them up, it’s tactical, it’s forward, but you’re not moving that. It’s a giant target, we can never do that again,” Harter said, explaining that the solution, though not yet doctrinal, could be to keep the fuel in tankers. “We need more tankers, maybe you have some shelters you can back the tankers in, you get overhead cover and then you move out, because putting that kind of sustainment on the ground? Wow.”

Harter also is working to address how his troops will mitigate risk on a battlefield where the U.S. and its allies no longer have air superiority, which they had during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the solution lies in autonomous capabilities for resupply and medical evacuations. But for those times when his soldiers are on the move in a volatile environment, “We need counter [unmanned aerial systems], more protection assets, even air defense assets, because with our sustainment and logistics and engineer capability and hospitals, you’ve got to have the ability to protect those formations, and we really don’t have that right now,” he said.

Harter’s staff is generating some “out-of-the-box” solutions to how the component “does business” by analyzing structure, organizations, posture and resources, all in a bid to enhance combat readiness and “to make sure we’re doing right by the nation,” he said.

Recruiting Woes

But as Harter looks ahead, he is dogged by a stubborn past, namely that the Army Reserve for at least eight years has missed its recruiting mission.

The Army’s fiscal 2026 budget request of $197.4 billion calls for end strength increases in the active-duty Army and the Army National Guard but revises the Army Reserve end strength down to 172,000 from the 175,800 authorized in fiscal 2025.

Still, some areas of the Army Reserve need increases in manning, and Harter acknowledged that “it’s hard to recruit an Army Reserve soldier. We have no combat arms formations.”

“A lot of young men and women want to go infantry or armor, they want to go active duty, and if they don’t, the National Guard has incredible benefits across every state,” Harter said.

U.S. Army Recruiting Command, which in May celebrated having met and exceeded the active-duty Army’s recruiting mission four months early, is the same organization that recruits for the Army Reserve, but the Reserve mission isn’t getting met, he said. “They continue to miss our mission by about 4,000 recruits a year, so they’re delivering about 70%, and it’s been that way for the last eight to 10 years,” Harter said, adding that he is working closely with Recruiting Command to hash out a solution to get the number of soldiers he needs.

The service’s end strength requests are part of the Army Transformation Initiative, announced May 1 by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, that aims for big changes across all three Army components.

As part of the initiative, Harter has been working with Army leaders and planners on setting the right course for the Army Reserve, while keeping his finger on the pulse of the force and ensuring his troops are prepared for combat. The Army’s leaders and planners “have been great, they understand what we bring to the table, and they understand that they can’t do what they need to do without us,” Harter said.

He cautioned that while the Army Transformation Initiative brings an uncomfortable churn to the status quo, he encouraged his troops to see the changes as an opening for new opportunities.

“We’ve got to take care of our folks, because if there’s one thing that [Army Transformation Initiative] is, it’s fast,” Harter said, comparing the speed of the initiative to “building the airplane in flight.”