Dominant Logistics
Redefining the Reserves with Warrant Officers
A growing problem in today's military is the role of reserve forces. While great lip service is paid to the role reserves play in the total force, the reality is that the reserves are at once critical to the operation of the military in general, and yet on the other hand they often serve as little more than dead weight to the active force. More and more of the critical missions of the active force are being transferred into reserve status, like aerial refueling assets, mine sweeping systems, and civil affairs units, while at the same time, these reserve units are receiving fewer opportunities to train in the military arts.
As an example from my own experience, consider the following: in four years of Army Reserve service, I participated in a grand total of one, count it, ONE, real field training exercise. During that particular field training exercise, I caused a storm by constructing a "radical" fighting position for our perimeter defense. This "radical" fighting position had been taught to me six years prior, on active duty, and was verbatim with the specifications outlined in the pertinent field manuals, all of which were in the possession of the unit I was attached to. In a unit of over 100 reserve personnel, not a single unit member knew what "The Army Standard" was for building a fighting position (foxhole), even though this standard had been defined in print for over six years! Is it any wonder why so many active duty officers are leery of relying heavily on reserve units? This gap in training between reserve and active forces cannot be allowed to continue.
Remove the Crutch
As odd as it may seem, I am convinced that one of the primary causes of the failure of reserve units to train adequately is the presence in the Reserves of highly experienced former active duty personnel as regular servicemembers. These personnel seem to serve as a sort of crutch upon which NCOs and Officers can rely upon in lieu of proper leadership and training. Personnel from active units bring with them a vast bank of knowledge and experience that leaders become overly reliant upon instead of seeking out and staying current in their own training and capabilities. These former active personnel, many no higher in rank than E-4, become key members of their reserve units, taking on roles far beyond their training and experience and corrupting the chain of command. Again, using my own example, in my assigned reserve unit, I performed the roles of truck mechanic, supply sergeant, NBC NCO, power generation specialist, and communications specialist while in rank being nothing more than an E-4 63B (Light Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic). With no formal training whatsoever, I was managing the unit's property books and maintaining radios and chemical gear.
The problem with this is that while I was able to perform these missions at a competent level due to my active and civilian experiences, no one else in the unit could nor would the senior leaders allow for the training of additional personnel in these tasks. My existence in the unit moved these critical tasks down the priority list. While it is easy to dismiss this as an isolated example, I have witnessed it in other units and have seen that my replacement is experiencing the same problems, in the same unit, under entirely new leadership.
Reserve units must be made to stand on their own. Too many reserve units are forced into spending the overwhelming majority of their time merely on existing and not on the vital training they need to survive in war. By the time all administrative requirements are met by the average reserve unit, there is no time left to train unit personnel even in the most basic of tasks. As an example, on active duty in the Army, Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services are usually given a complete day for proper completion, at the very least a half a day. In the Army Reserves, PMCS requirements are greater than on active duty because the equipment has to be exercised as well due to being stored all month. Merely meeting the standard for Army PMCS requirements can take half of an entire drill weekend. By the time you also complete your payroll, retirement, and other miscellaneous paperwork, most of the drill is long gone. And if it's inventory time of year, forget it, that alone takes an entire drill if not more.
But the flipside of this coin is that the presence of the highly trained former active duty soldiers allows for these units to appear to be good to go. The unit can keep its books straight and the equipment all gets operated properly - its just all done by the same person. All of the reports are getting completed properly and on time, they just all happen to be compiled by the same person. The Army thinks the unit is good to go, while in reality, maybe five to ten percent of the unit's personnel have any current military skills whatsoever. Then the unit gets called up and it is discovered that a handful of E-4s are running the place and we hear once again about how terrible the reserves are.
But yet again, there is another side of this story. It can easily be argued that the only "out-of-the-box" thinking that goes on in the entire DOD comes from the Reserves. Reservists bring experiences from outside the military and combine these with existing military doctrine in new and very useful ways. Reservists tend to focus less on the strigent rules and regulations of the Pentagon and more on effective ways of getting jobs done. A good example of this was a training experience I had in the Reserves that was one of the finest training missions I ever took part in.
One afternoon during annual training, our leaders informed us that we needed to disappear for awhile so myself and some sergeants got together and someone suggested engaging in some mounted land navigation training. We fueled up the trucks, randomly threw together some navigation points, put the NCOs and myself behind the wheels, threw the maps and points to the lower enlisted personnel and spent the afternoon driving. Our troops not only had a lot of fun, but they got excellent training in map reading, terrain association, navigation, and other useful skills. At the end of the course, we even put on a hasty off-road driving course for those members who had never driven off-road before which frighteningly was most of the unit. Unfortunately, putting on this quality training forced us to violate about half of all the regulations in the Army with regards to vehicular training operations. Our licenses weren't legal, our dispatches weren't legal, we had no permission from range control, and I believe about half the vehicles involved were technically deadlined - but by setting the rules aside, we were able to carry out some useful training that otherwise never would've happened.
Building an Active Reserve Cadre
So how do we harness the positives of existing reserves while eliminating the negatives? I believe an effective solution is the formulation of an Active Reserve Cadre. By definition, a cadre is a small group of well trained individuals around which a larger group can be formed and trained. In effect, this is what is actually occuring in many reserve units with regards to relying upon the experience of those coming from active duty. To counter the negative effects of having these personnel present, and to deal with the excessive administration of reserve units, I propose returning the Warrant Officer Corps to its original roots and transitioning the Corps to form a Reserve Cadre.
Active personnel wishing to transition to the reserves could become Warrant Officers if they meet one of the following scenarios:
Obviously, one may need to go into the Reserves and establish a civilian career to qualify under option #2 but what we're doing here is combining those personnel with strong active duty backgrounds with those that have the military background but also the civilian side as well. These personnel would then have to complete Warrant Officer schooling at which point they would become Warrant Officers.
The Reserve Cadre would be expected to devote three days per month and two weeks per year to the Reserves. Given that the existing WO pay for a drill weekend is a little over $400, the pay rate for the WO will remain the same but the WO will retain the proposed benefits package for active duty personnel of a separation plan as well as an MSA medical plan.
Being experts in their respective fields, the WOs can spend their "third" drill day handling the vast majority of the adminstrative necessities for the reserve unit. These are the personnel in the units that are doing the work anyways, so instead of wasting half a drill or more on admin functions these are performed outside of drill and the unit will end up with an entire day of drill open for quality training. Moreover, every reserve unit will have their own highly qualified cadre to prepare and carry out this training.
An Assymetric Personnel Pool
What this also accomplishes is developing a group of personnel with exceptional skills that can be rapidly called up for specialty missions that are needed for defense. Maybe its training the forces of another nation or even forming special purpose teams for WMD or cyberwarfare work. Or it may even be a matter of having these personnel available as stores of institutional knowledge, where they may be called up decades later to train others in experiences they had while on active duty. With this plan, a tanker or infantryman can serve twelve years on active duty, transition to the Reserves and then hang around almost indefinitely as a trainer - the knowledge and skills don't leave the force, they only relocate.
Cadre Assignments
Every reserve installation should have a minimum of five Warrant Officer Cadre assigned. These would fill the roles of Installation Commander, Logistics Officer, Administrative Officer, Training Officer, and Medical Officer. These personnel would NOT be directly assigned to the reserve units stationed at the installation - these are garrison personnel and their mission is to enable and prepare the reserve units, not to be a part of them. The Installation Commander will be a full time position while the remaining WO slots would all remain part time.