Pucker up, Reservists
The Stars & Stripes recounts a discussion that Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve had with 75 reservists with the 7th Civil Support Command at a town hall meeting last week at Daenner Kaserne in Kaiserslautern.
“The word I’m getting from the very top is, ‘Hey, we don’t want to touch the Reserve; you’re too important. We’re going to rely on you even more.”
“What it means is, you’re more relevant than ever,” he said.
He says that like it’s a good thing. It’s been my experience that most soldiers who go into the Reserves aren’t looking for the full time employment of the active duty force. They’re looking to transition to civilian jobs and finish college after doing all of that full time stuff for several years. But, here it looks like the Defense department and the Obama Administration is planning on filling the deployment gaps caused by drawing down the active force with Reservists who are going back on rotation schedules.
Yeah, if all things remain constant, it’s a good plan…well, except for when Reservists start leaving when their hitch is up because they’re tired of not being civilians, and recruiters can’t fill the positions, because they discover that folks who want to be deployed would rather be on active duty, not ripping up their roots every other year to deploy on some AfriCom deployment to hand out MREs to AIDS patients.
The goal, he said, is to create a five-year model in the Reserve, whereby soldiers would train and build readiness for four years, and in the fifth year, be available to mobilize for a contingency or other missions, Stultz said in an interview after the town hall meeting.
Yeah, that didn’t work so well for those Marines who ended up in the battle at the Chosin Reservoir. Funny how reality always intercedes in the best laid plans of men. I don’t know how you “build readiness”, but it sounds interesting. Enjoy your sky-pie.
Category: Military issues
The only benefits that you get after you retire but before you turn 60 are the ones that are useless are not much of a help either.
Use you when we need you. That way we don’t have to pay you a retirement until you are 60.
It is just like any other business. Why should they hire full-time workers and give them costly benefits when they can just hire part-time workers and give them beans.
That’s funny, since the USAR is undergoing a RIF. They’re calling it ‘right sizing’ these days though.
When I left (after 13 years) I had the opportunity presented to me to command a reserve unit. I laughed and laughed. Same crap as active duty and no benefits? I think not.
That’s odd, we heard the exact opposite on the USMC side of things. Also, here’s an article on the transition in Afghan using 9k SF,
http://news.yahoo.com/us-gambles-special-forces-afghanistan-strategy-192947060.html
The Navy Reserve has been operating under these assumptions for a couple of years now. Of course, we drill at “Navy Operational Support Centers,” not reserve centers and we provide “operational support” even though it is still called “Annual Training (AT)” per Title 10 requirements…
So, if the Reserves are taking over the Federal Mission, does that mean the Active Duty types will respond to natural disasters? Or do they mean the actual Reserves and not the Reserve Component (i.e. Reserves and National Guard)?
Any retention problems this sort of thing causes (if it does) will be masked for quite a while by Active folks going Guard and Reserve to keep their hand in the game. That’s where most of our junior NCOs come from in my Guard company.
Honestly, we’ve been carrying big pieces of the load for quite a while, and that’s the norm that the younger generation of soldiers has grown up with. They EXPECT to get called up periodically. I had several kids (OK, some junior soldiers older than me) asking about hopping on someone else’s mobilization; there’s a real concern that we will pull out of everywhere before they have their chance to go.
Time spent called up on T10 and T32 adds substantially to the benefits available, for that matter. I sympathize; it’s been five years since we came back, and it’s gotta suck to be the newbie in a unit that can’t shut up about the good things we did “back when.”
One little difference from the Chosin few, we didn’t have satellite photo capability in 1950. Kinda changes things….
Somewhere between 70k and 100k joes getting the boot from active duty means there will be plenty of replacements or those who leave the reserves.
Nothing new, they were babbling about this very same thing when I was still in the Guard. It didn’t help matters any for our state when we had a former AG who was now overseeing the entire country in Arlington who thought “highly” of his troops back home and thought they should be tasked with constant deployments. When I ETS’ed out, I had a great laugh when I immediately received a letter from the local USAR recruiter wanting me to reenlist on that side of the fence. Like I said then, “good luck, Sarge, you’re gonna need it.”
The fact of the matter is that the entire military is stretched too thin, overworked and under paid. You can thank all the idiots in Washington that never put on a uniform once in their life for thinking years ago that the military needed to go through an RIF. Now we’re paying the price.
I always liked the “5 year model” for deployments. Since I got to do 2 deployments in 4 years. And I have friends in the Guard who’ve are on their 3rd deployment in 8 years. Combine that with all the extra ATs prior to actual mobilization, pre-deployment schools/courses (UMO, SHARP/SARC/whatever the hell it’s called this month)and a 1 year mobilization is closer to 18 months. And then in the Guard you get our version of TRADOC hiders, the AGR types who are “too valuable” to the state to deploy and that’s why soldiers in the Guard do multiple deployments already.
@12, and don’t forget the nOObies that have that new fangled contract that they’re going to college so they’re automatically “non-deployable.” If I had a dime for every time I had one of those come up to me where I wanted to wipe their smug look off their faces…
Isn’t it funny how the top brass come up with this shit? I remember coming back and they were telling everyone that a deployment was now guaranteed to last no more than a year…but like you said, they forgot to add in all that valuable training time twiddling thumbs at the mobe site.
The 5 year model has been around for years already. Add the new crap about more deployments and Jonn is right. Bottom line, CA folks like me are gonna be spending quite a bit of time doing stability Ops is some interesting places, and I fully see myself handing out MRE’s to people in the African Union some time very very soon…
I keep hearing this, but then when I try to volunteer for another yr on orders, I have to get a waiver through SecAF because I’ve been on orders too long. This has been my full time job for the last 4 yrs or so, and I don’t want to go back to the civilian sector right now. I just deal with the waiver process and expect that this year is the year I won’t get waived and I’ll be unemployed.
The most experienced Reserves are going to be untouchable soon because they have too much time on orders. Only in the Gov’t.
I am in the Guard and I don’t know how long they expect to maintain this. We are already being told that money is tight and don’t expect to send Soldiers to DMOSQ schools these upcoming quarters. We are putting more and more upon the Soldiers and no one is going to stick around if they feel like they are pseudo Active Duty all the time. We have to tell people to take care of their own medical problems on their own because the Guard isn’t going to pay for it. People are finding out the hard way that the Guard isn’t welfare and are thinking that maybe this isn’t what they wanted to do.
@16, SIGO…indeed the Guard isn’t welfare, but if anyone signs up thinking that it is or that the AD side is, they’ve got another thing coming. It’s a job, like anything else and not all of it is as glamourous as those recruiters with their shiny medals and freshly pressed dress uniforms would have an unsuspecting high school grad believe. The fact of the matter remains the government has been asking a lot of it’s reserve forces for longer than a decade and yet they act like it’s giving up a kidney to afford those troopers some basic entitlements that might mirror the AD side, and then turn around and have the balls to use their paychecks as bartering fodder for the national budget. They can refashion and reshape their five year plan all they want, you can’t polish a turd. I’m sure there are plenty of those still serving and currently signing up with the Private Benjamin mentality, but there is no excuse for the state of our military is in.
@15 Raven…I saw a lot of that before I got out too. It never failed to amuse me how these State Training NCOs could come up with the funds to keep people on ADSW orders but never could convince the proper channels just to make a temp tech slot or even a permanent one. Right, the tempies didn’t get bennies which made going on orders over 30 days better, if I remember correctly, but there is really no excuse to be keeping a soldier on “temp” orders for over a year.
My nephew, and more than a few of his Ready Reserve buddies and buddetes, said they aren’t going to re-up because they’re tired of getting called up! Six months here, six moths there, that’s not what they signed up for. My older brother is in the AF Reserves, is calling it quits. In the past few years he’s been deployed to Kuwait, Turkey, Italy and Kaliforicate. Really, some AF station/base north of San Francisco. He has way more than enough time to retire but stayed because he enjoyed what he was doing, fire fighter, which is what he does w/Phoenix Fire. If he didn’t work for the city of Phoenix, I’m not sure he’d still be employed. he says he did his ‘real’ time with Fox 2/5 and now wants to spend time with his grandkids. The crap they’re pulling is going to cost them eight, just from that i know of! Multiply that by other reserve units and the Army and Air Guard times 50 states?! How are they going to “build readiness” if there’s nothing to build with?
Being in the Navy Reserve, we’re on a pretty regular deployment cycle. That whole 5 year thing sounds OK to those who haven’t gone through it, the year leading up to the MOB is FULL of crap, only there isn’t the funding for it lots of times. We’re constantly asked to do more with less. God forbid you have a staff job, or are a DET OIC/AOIC whatever. Those guys are spending 2-3 hours a day doing reserve crap on top of their civ jobs. It’s nice to feel like we’re contributing, and we are, but they’ve got to find a better way to depend on the reserves than they currently are. Expanding this isn’t going to keep people. Guys have hard enough times finding gainful employment, but having deployments looming at regular intervals, as well as all the buildup, certainly isn’t going to help.
I know the National Guard (which is part of the Army Reserves for those who didn’t know it) we had 2 days each month to try and do all the training, briefings, stupid ass training, PT test, PMCS, etc that the regular army had all month to do. We were expected to do a lot of study, class prep and stuff on our own time. In some cases, we did just as well as the active duty Army folks we deployed with, in other cases, we were kind of lost.
“I know the National Guard (which is part of the Army Reserves for those who didn’t know it)”
Ummm, no.
The Reserves are directly owned by the Federal Government, The National Guard is owned by the respective States. Yes, in reality the Federal Government has the power to call on the National Guard, but technically the Guard answers to the State first. I’ve served in both and eventually retired from the Guard. Even the oaths are different.
Jacobite, actually, CI is correct. National Guard has a federal and state duty. We answer to the Governor of our state as well as the President of the United States. However, the National Guard is still considered Reserve Components of the Army and Air Force.
I did my entire nine years in the Nation Guard. I did my initial swear-in with a group of twenty from all different branches, and we used the same swear-in. When my initial four year contract was up and I did another, I was sworn in at my unit by my B.C. with the same words. When I signed a try-one after that, I used the same words.
We might not be exactly like the Reserves (from what I’ve seen, National Guard look like SF when compared to the Reserves), but we are still a Reserve Component. My unit, Oregon, was called up by the Pres. to aid Katrina operations. My first “active duty” was a two month stint on the southern Oregon border in fire duty. Reserves don’t have to do that (well, except for Marine Reserves who I served with during the Katrina operation).
If I were to do it all over again, I would have went Active Duty. I tell people that all time. Then if I got tired of Active Duty, then go National Guard/Reserves – not the other way around.
I agree with SIGO
I remember that Gary Hart and other liberals wanted to expand the guard and radically shrink the active duty force. For all the grief GWB got for deploying the guard, under Clinton the NM guard saw a lot of the crapsack parts of Bosnia. Had a college classmate who was deployed so much she had to drop out because she was behind on her studies.
Got the letter from A.F. Reserves after I retired at 20 years AD. They wanted me to join the reserves to add to my AD retirement but my monthly retirement check would have been reduced by the amount of my drill pay. I decided I did not want to work for free. I have now been retired for more than eleven years and although I miss it sometimes, present cicumstances with my wife’s health assure me I made the right decision.
Again, Flagwaver, ummm, no.
The National Guard is a ‘reserve’ component, yes, but CI said “I know the National Guard (which is part of the Army Reserves for those who didn’t know it)” And no, they are not a part of the Army Reserve. Separate funding structure, separate command structure, separate chain of command. While both are ‘defacto’ reserve components of the Army, the Guard is not a part of the Army Reserve.
Additionally, in case you weren’t aware of it, if a State is willing to shoulder the wrath of the Federal machine, the State National Guard can be used in defiance of Federal authority. I was never so proud as when Fife Symington rolled out the Arizona National Guard in an attempt to run the Grand Canyon National Park when the Federal Govt wouldn’t fund it in 1995. It never got as far as State troops actually pulling gate duty, but it was fun watching the Federal Government scramble to defuse the situation when they realized State troops could be used that way.
The National Guard’s ties to the Federal Government are a legal tightrope dance predicated on funding for up to date equipment and training in return for obedience to the Federal overlord, something to never be forgotten. ;^)
Stuff like this make a civilian career tough. They can say they support the military, but really hiring an employee they know they will lose every five years at least? When I went back in the guard it killed my civilian career nothing I could prove to ESGR but enough I knew it was happening.
Flagwaver:
Jacobite is dead on target. The USAR is exclusively a Federal force. The various state NGs are part of the Reserve Components, but are state forces – not Federal – unless and until they are called to Federal duty. When performing State duty, the NG is paid by their state and answers to their state – not the Federal government.
And in certain circumstances, the NG can do things the USAR (or active forces) by law [b]cannot[/b]. The Posse Commitatus Act applies to Federal forces, including the USAR – but not to state militia. During the 1992 LA riots, the CA NG responded first and as state forces could actively assist law enforcement with few restrictions. Once they were Federalized, what they could do to assist local police was severely limited.
Okay, I wasn’t saying that the NG was identical to the Reserves, I was saying that the NG was a Reserve Component like the Reserves. If you go back and read my post, you’ll see that I mention that we have the same oath, but different missions and two commanders-in-chief (Gov and Pres).
It may be me being picky, but you also said “Jacobite, actually, CI is correct”. Which he certainly wasn’t. 🙂
Also, having served in both branches I know for a fact that the USAR does not swear to protect any specific State, nor do they swear to obey the orders of any particular State governor, both of which are included in the National Guard oath.
It may seem as though I’m splitting hairs, but I’m not, at least not without good reason. Even if just for accuracy’s sake, the distinctions are important.
Jacobite:
Yes, those distinctions certainly do matter – as one each Governor George C. Wallace found out in June 1963 after Kennedy Federalized the Alabama National Guard.
Yep, take the emperors coin, do the emperors will.
That’s also an excellent study on why the National Guard does not fullfill the spirit of the 2nd Amendment’s mention of a militia.
Kind of hard for an organisation to be a check or balance against an other organization that can control access to and the deployment of your ‘toys’.
I have a couple of things to add here.
@Flagwaver. Come on man. Every unit is different and to say that the USAR makes the NG look like SF is a little out of step. The ANG has a primarily combat support mission, per the Army’s reorganization, so they have the arty, MP’s, aviation, ect. The Reserves is heavy on support elements, like medical, logistics, quartermasters, act. To compare a medical unit (of which I am a part) to a MP or artillery unit is inequitable. We have different mindsets and mentalities. That said, there are units in every organization that need to tighten up. It’s a challenge; especially in the reserves with already money tight and getting tighter.
@Dirtsquid, Buddy, you ain’t kidding. Being a staff officer for a reserve unit takes a crapton of my ‘personal’ time, and sure as hell isn’t just ‘one weekend a month’ anymore. Most of my medical battalion of 1500 or so people has mobilized/deployed at least once. About half have gone more than twice. I have good people, but they are running two careers, and it’s wearing them down. I keep loosing my best NCO’s because they have to choose between finishing school, or being forced to drop out if they get deployed again, some of em two or three times in their initial enlistment term.
There’s a lot of pressure on both the USAR and the ARNG right now supporting the ongoing ops already, but I have a feeling that it’s about to get a whole lot tighter.
*EDIT* ‘At least twice’. Sorry about that.