Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 102
C
urrent U.S. military strategy calls for an expeditionary force that is available for short-notice
deployments. This means that active component (AC) forces must conduct unpredictable mobilizations and deployments. In contrast, reserve component (RC) forces follow predictable mobilization and
deployment schedules. The Army now needs viable
courses of action to synchronize employment of the
RC in an Army Total Force (ATF) structure.
Background
The events of 11 September 2001 changed the way
AC and RC forces were mobilized and deployed, as evidenced by Operation Noble Eagle, Operation Enduring
Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dr. John
Winkler, in his 2010 article in Joint Force Quarterly,
describes the operational reserve with this statement:
The concept of an operational reserve, in
which Reserve forces participate routinely
and regularly in ongoing military missions, is
viewed as a fairly recent development. This
concept is distinct from an earlier view in
which the RCs were seen mainly as a “strategic
reserve” whose primary role was augmentation
and reinforcement of Active forces during a
major contingency—an event that was anticipated to occur at best once in a lifetime.1
Winkler further states that “key developments … in
policy and practice that governed the transformation
of Reserve forces and enabled the development of an
operational reserve recognized that the reserve components provide both operational capabilities and strategic depth to meet U.S. defense requirements across
the full spectrum of conflict.”2 With ongoing postwar
reductions to the Army end strength in the current
fiscally constrained environment, the ATF concept is a
particularly useful way for the RC to be leveraged as an
operational reserve.
With no long-war plans, the U.S. Army must change
the way it thinks about the roles of the RC as follows:
fully implement ATF strategies, concepts, and policies
integrate geographically colocated AC and RC forces
conduct ATF training at combat training centers,
regional training centers, and home stations
create additional multicomponent headquarters to
better utilize capabilities inherent to each component
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•
•
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Fully Implement Army Total Force
Strategies, Concepts, and Policies
The U.S. Army must change the way it thinks about
the roles of the RC by fully implementing ATF strategies, concepts, and policies. Senior leaders at the joint
and Army level are clearly calling for a better-integrated
ATF, and the current fiscally constrained environment
is a natural impetus for this change.
Several strategic documents discuss the role of RC forces as an
operational reserve, most notably
the 2015 Capstone Concept for Joint
Operations (CCJO); Army Directive
2012-8, Army Total Force Policy; the
former chief of staff of the Army’s
CSA Strategic Priorities; and, the
posture statements of the chief of
the Army Reserve and the chief of
the National Guard Bureau. Each
document identifies the requirement
for an operational reserve and the
need to integrate all of the Army
components.
The CCJO details how future
(Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Kendall James, Oklahoma National Guard)
forces require pervasive interoperA soldier negotiates one of the nine stations on an obstacle course 7 November 2015
ability, saying that “interoperability
during the Oklahoma Army National Guard Best Warrior Competition on Camp Gruber in
refers not only to materiel, but
Braggs, Oklahoma.
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March-April 2016 MILITARY REVIEW