With so many wars and so little time, it's been hard for me to follow any very closely, but I have continued to pay attention to the situation in Ukraine, even before MH17 was shot down, because I remain curious to see how much the Russian military has improved itself since 2008, which was the subject of a major recurring research project that I worked on at NDU. Now that the Russians are possibly preparing for a ground incursion into Ukraine (admittedly, they didn't go in when they had the chance back in April), it's time to start thinking about all of the ways that it could go wrong, or right. The answer to that question depends upon how far along "New Look" has come, so now is the time to test the thesis of Bettina Renz' recent IISS report, which is that "Russia is much closer to having the military it needs than has often been suggested." I'll spend some time on that issue this weekend, because I know too much about this topic not to write anything.
I have also continued to think about how the U.S. armed forces can retain the best mix of capabilities and force structure in light of the drawdown and the fact that DoD's current budget plan will exceed Budget Control Act spending caps by $88 billion unless major changes are made. One interesting idea being heard from people like LTG David Barno (ret.): Why not use the Reserves and National Guard to fill capability gaps? In particular, why not divert those officers and NCOs who are facing separation by next year to join reserve components? Don't we want to keep their skill sets and combat experience at a reduced cost, without slashing them from the force completely? My thoughts:
- Reservists are, undeniably, a lot cheaper than active-duty personnel: They cost $125K per capita vs. $385K per capita (respectively) and account for 16% of personnel costs even though they represent 39% of the total force. I think for many people thinking about this issue, that's reason enough: We have to take the force mix that is most affordable, simply because that's the decisive factor right now.
- Readiness is often the first casualty of more reservist-oriented force structure (just ask the Russians), since nobody serving in a reserve capacity can ever be as well-trained and competent at their job as someone in the active-duty force. But considering how expensive active-duty personnel have become in the past decade, and how much less money is available to spend on them, the readiness argument is probably moot: As (now former) Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness Clifford Stanley testified back in 2010, more money spent on "taking care of people" means less money for training and repairing/replacing equipment. (I've written previously about how personnel costs undermine readiness and why the Brigade Combat Team-centric force structure might not make so much sense for a peacetime force).
- Barno's proposal calls for a mixing of active and reserve forces ("blended" units) at the brigade level, even as he acknowledges that it's not obvious that that their capabilities are interchangeable. If that's going to happen, the active and reserve components need to be on better terms with each other than they are now: This means, no more fighting over who gets the Apaches and no more denigrating each other's value to the war efforts. (And the CSA needs to be able to set aside his own biases towards the active force.)
- Overlooked by proponents of the Reserve-based force structure (including the RFPB): Reservists tend to have higher suicide rates than active-duty personnel. PTSD also affects reservists at such a disproportionate rate that RAND did a study on them. This evidence suggests that not being full-time soldiers/airmen/sailors/Marines means that they are less psychologically adapted to handle the pressures of combat deployments.
- During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many veterans found that the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) didn't really help them in the civilian world: Employers have remained hesitant to hire reservists, and high unemployment of reservists (20%) persists, even though the Congressional Budget Office found in 2005 that employers were not substantially affected by reservists' deployments. Creating a larger force of underemployed reservists should not be acceptable in our sequestration-era defense planning, so USERRA will need to be updated (see this proposal, for example).
In the long run, I think the question is not if but when we face facts and start leaning more on the reserve components. But if we are going to improve the standing of reservists in the future force structure, we will first need more (or at least the same number) of reservists. The recently-released report of the National Defense Panel laments that the reserves will fall from 563,000 in 2012 to 500,000 by 2019: "The reduction in the reserve component is especially troubling in light of the increasing role we believe it will assume in future homeland defense and domestic disaster response." Kicking experienced veterans out of the active-duty force and reducing the reserve components simultaneously, intuitively, sounds like a very bad idea. But as illustrated above, keeping/increasing reservists poses challenges of its own, so more reforms will be needed before LTG Barno's idea will become a viable plan for the force.
