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January 12, 2007

Small Change, Big Consequences

The Pentagon is changing the rules for reservists. Up until now, a reserve component soldier (this includes National Guard and Reserves) at least knew that after he or she served two years on active duty, their time was up. Now, any RC soldier can be called up to serve a two-year tour, demobilize, then repeat.

The Pentagon is claiming they hope to keep tours to 12 months, but that's not really possible without significant changes to how we operate. Right now, a unit mobilizes, moves to a mobilization station for training that usually lasts two or three months, then deploys to theater for twelve months. Tack on a month to bring them home and demobilize them and you're talking 15-18 month tours as a more likely number, assuming they don't allow RC units to serve shorter tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't know what this will do to retention in the reserve component, but I believe it's realistic to expect it to hurt it. It's not unreasonable to expect the reserve component to have to serve a single two-year tour on active duty while the nation is at war. Expecting them to do so repeatedly is likely sufficient to have reservists asking why they shouldn't either go full time or get out, since they're going to spend such a great deal of time mobilized in any case. This may actually provide some small assistance to the active force, as many reservists decide, as I did, that they want to return to the active force. But I'm concerned about how this may undermine the reserve component as it currently exists.