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Or why the military is just another employment category to be dealt
with by central management and the bottom line. Full timers becoming part timers, some laid off by
technology improvements, some part timers becoming full timers. Again, suggestions of short term military
service for all young men has been considered. Karen Watters Cole U.S.
Military Considers Limits on Role of the Reserve Forces
By Thom Shanker, NYT, 01.26.03 WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 — Citing problems with the mass call-up
of Reserve and National Guard forces, Pentagon leaders are rethinking the way
America goes to war, even questioning whether relying on these citizen soldiers
to perform some crucial duties hamstrings urgent military operations. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld now openly expresses
unhappiness with how military mobilizations — for the war in Afghanistan, for
domestic security and now for a possible war with Iraq — have been planned and
carried out since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He says they caused needless hardship for too many members
of the Guard and Reserve, for their families and for their employers. "They're perfectly willing to be called up, but they
only want to be called up when they're needed and for something that's a real
job," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"And they prefer not to get jerked around and called up two or
three or four months before they're needed, and then found they're not needed
and sent back home with a `Sorry about that.' " As the Pentagon orders the largest mobilization since the
Persian Gulf war of 1990 and 1991, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said he was reviewing decisions dating to the post-Vietnam era
that removed many important missions from the active-duty military, reassigning
them to part-time forces. "We need to look at that mix very carefully and see if
we put, in some cases, 100
percent of our capability
in the reserve component," General Myers said. The current approach has
created a situation where "you can't even do some of the things you need
to do day to day without calling up the reserves," he added. For example, in devising war plans for Iraq, a desert nation
that fired chemical weapons against Iran and its own population, planners had
to wrestle with the fact that 100
percent of the Army's water supply battalions and 100 percent of its chemical brigades are in the reserve arm. Almost all Army civil affairs personnel who help rebuild
war-torn nations reside in the reserve arm, as do more than 80 percent of medical brigades and psychological operations units. Two-thirds of the military police battalions — an increasingly important mission in an
era of heightened terrorist threat — are in the reserve arms. Just as Army reservists and National Guard members have
joined in operations in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Kuwait and South Korea, Air
Force reservists and National Guard pilots patrol skies over Afghanistan and
bomb Iraqi air defenses in the "no flight" zones. Full-time Air Force crews fly 92 percent of the bomber
assignments,
a holdover from their cold war nuclear missions, but active-duty crews fly only 61 percent of
fighter sorties,
and fewer than half
of the tanker, airlift and rescue missions. The Naval
Reserve provides 100 percent of the personnel for important maritime
assignments,
including logistics support squadrons and heavy logistics support, and for a
crucial port security job called mobile inshore undersea warfare. Similarly, military intelligence staffing has shrunk 27
percent
since the gulf war, and reservists are essential to continuously staffing intelligence centers around the country that compile data and
write analyses. While American military victories in conflicts including
Iraq and Afghanistan helped exorcise other ghosts of Vietnam, the heavy
reliance on the National Guard and Reserve remains a legacy of the armed
service's frustration with that war. Angered that President Lyndon B. Johnson, and then President
Richard M. Nixon, declined to call up the reserves during the Vietnam War for
fear of generating greater opposition to it, Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, the Army chief of staff, shaped the post-Vietnam mix of active and reserve
forces to make sure that when America next went to
war with its new all-volunteer force, hometown America would have to go along
too. This dependence on reserve components only grew after the
end of the cold war and the decision to cut the military. The Pentagon and Congress wanted to
keep as much tooth in the active force as it could afford, and pushed missions
in the logistics tail to the reserves. But mass mobilizations in the past year and a half raised
concerns at the Pentagon and, just as important, on Capitol Hill. Many look to streamline the system to
more nimbly counter the unpredictable terrorist threat. Others are going further, asking whether
the number of active-duty personnel is too small — which translates directly
into budgets — if the American military cannot fulfill global commitments
without relying so heavily on the Guard and Reserve. "In the aftermath of Sept. 11th, we realized that the
enemy was on the doorstep, that we would not have warning, might not have time
to mobilize and train for a great length of time, because the world had
changed," said Thomas
F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs. Mr. Hall has completed the first phase of a broad review
that includes asking whether some of the capabilities now in the reserve
component should migrate back to the active force. In the conflicts facing America, specialties assigned to the
reserve component "are the kind of people we use every time," Mr.
Hall added. " We are going
to the well
time and time again with the same units each year. We are simply going to have to change that." Any suggestions to move skills in the reserves back to the
standing force would slam against budget constraints capping the numbers of active-duty military. The first draft of Mr. Hall's review has gone to the armed
services for analysis and comment, and officials are hinting that it could be
the Army — which is providing the bulk of the Guard and Reserve call-ups — to
first feel the pressure. Some of
Mr. Rumsfeld's senior advisers have advocated moving some of the Army's
brigades — or even divisions — into the reserve to free up money for new technologies, or those personnel slots could now make
room for moving the high-demand reserve specialties back into the standing
Army. "We are in line with the secretary of defense's
intent," an Army official said in a statement. "It is premature at
this point to specify the `what' and `who's.' We are studying how best to do this in a manner which
creates efficiencies above our current `Total Army' capabilities." Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University professor who
specializes in
military sociology,
advocates short-term
military service
that could take the burden off the reserves and save money. Per capita personnel costs in the military have doubled since the end of
the draft, he said, and the offer of a short-term tour might attract young
people wary of a long commitment.
They could serve in important jobs that do not require specialized
combat skills or bonuses, like military police. The Air Force has tried to lessen the stress on its reserve
component by first seeking volunteers for missions, said Lt. Gen. James E.
Sherrard III, chief of Air Force Reserve, although that has not always been
possible as the global campaign against terror has accelerated. But cultivating its reserve arm is an
economical way to fulfill Air Force requirements, he added, and to recapture
investments made in training air and maintenance crews after they leave active
duty. Lt. Gen. John B. Conaway served the first President George
Bush as chief of the National Guard Bureau, overseeing the mobilization of
nearly 80,000 National Guard members for service in the gulf war. About 265,000 Guard and Reserve members
were summoned to duty then. "The Guard and Reserves can do things for long periods
of time in smaller numbers, and in large numbers for a short period of
time," said General Conaway, now retired. "The
rule should be
that overseas, the
active-duty folks are first in and last out.
The Guard
and Reserve should be last in, first out. That didn't happen in the desert the first time
around. That was kind of abusing
them. That was a lesson we learned." Senior Pentagon and military officials say that should
President Bush order America to war with Iraq, a number on the scale of the 265,000 mobilized in the gulf war would be called up for
combat and combat support, for postwar patrols of Iraq and, in particular, for
domestic security and force protection missions. Senior military officers say Mr. Rumsfeld has scrutinized
draft deployment orders closely and has redrafted or sent back for revision a
number of recent orders for forces flowing into the Persian Gulf region. Speaking this week to the Reserve Officers Association, Mr.
Rumsfeld described a system in which deployment orders are "not managed skillfully in a single place," with a system that "moves people in
big lumps — meaning it's going to be imprecise as to who's needed, where,
when." Mr. Rumsfeld concluded, "So we're going to have a very
careful look at that subject and do it a whale of a lot better next time." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/politics/26RESE.html |
