Reservists could find themselves leading active-duty missions under the new opportunities and career paths the Air Force is opening for the reserve components. The Air Force is opening up new possibilities and new career paths for the reserve components, which could include time leading active-duty missions.
Dubbed the “Total Force Continuum,” the Air Force is working to make it easier for the service’s three military parts — the active component, the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve — to work together on missions.
That’s because missions will remain the same across all the components, with the Guard and Reserve becoming increasingly involved in operations like cyber or intelligence.
“I think it’s fair to say, in general terms, the Guard and Reserve components are going to stay busy,” said Brig. Gen. Craig La Fave, the Air Force Reserve representative on the Total Force Continuum leadership staff.
“What we are trying to do is add capacity in the right mixes at the right value,” the general said. “Each mission area is slightly different. If you pick a mission area like cyber, which is 24/7, 365, there is really no end to that mission. That is different than an agile combat support mission.”
Air Force brass is currently evaluating what the right mixture of talents and personnel from across the three components is for each mission area, and more missions could shift to Guard- and Reserve-led.
“They’re going to be relied on in each of the different mission areas to add the appropriate level of mission capacity,” La Fave said. “It’s applying the military judgment of those three components to each force mix option.”
Part of that includes an easier transition between the components, service leaders say. Single? Sign up for active duty. Starting a family? Go part-time in the Guard or Reserves. The Air Force is looking to unify the three components so that when airmen switch between them, it’s really only their pay scale that’s affected.
But the Total Force leadership says they don’t foresee drastic changes to the way training is conducted.
“The Air Force, the three components, they’re ready to go within 72 hours,” La Fave said. “There’s not a month, two-month, three-month spin-up time for the Guard and reservists. They are full-up, fully ready, and that’s unlike some of our sister services.”
Training needs to be flexible, the general said, and should match what missions the reservists are training for.
“I think to say we can go back to the one weekend a month, two weeks during the summer, that is pre-Desert Storm thinking, La Fave said. “The Air Force is 25 years downstream on that road. There are some specialties that can train at that level and be available and useful. But predominately in the Air Force reserve components, every airmen does more than that every year.”
But the reserves will remain part-time, and the Air Force will remain faithful to that commitment, La Fave said.
“75 percent of the reserve component is part time. They are citizen airmen,” he said. “They are out there in the communities, they are running businesses they are raising families. They’re everything from security guards to airline pilots to engineers to scientists. So we are going to preserve that 75 percent part-time.”
