More than a decade of wartime funding helped the military’s reserve components expand far beyond their traditional mission of being a rarely used “strategic reserve.”
But with that money fading from the Pentagon’s budget, some reserve components are struggling to maintain their operational edge.
“In the past, readiness beyond that strategic level was purchased with overseas contingency account dollars, but that flexibility, we all know, no longer exists,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Talley, chief of the Army Reserve, told lawmakers Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, the current model of 39 base-funded training days per year produces only a strategic, nonoperational force. It is not sufficient to train, equip and maintain the Army Reserve to meet mission requirements,” Talley said.
“I’m becoming ‘strategic’ as we speak because of funding reductions,” he added.
Talley was among the top reserve component leaders who all sent a similar message to the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee at a hearing Wednesday, their once-a-year appeal before the lawmakers who control the Pentagon’s budget.
The end of major deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan has fueled new questions about the future role of the National Guard and reserves. Military and civilian leaders are debating whether part-time troops will continue to play a central role in global operations and plans or whether they will recede to their Cold War-era status of limited mobilizations and lower readiness.
The White House’s total budget request for the reserve components next year is $46.7 billion, which would be a bump of about $1.7 billion, around 4 percent, from this year.
But despite that uptick in funding, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., said the future readiness of the Guard and reserves “remains in jeopardy.”
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., suggested that robust reserve components are more critical than ever at a time when defense spending is capped under federal law and the active-duty force, especially the Army, is shrinking.
“If you are downsizing the full-time force, it’s even more important to have a substantial reserve and Guard backing up that full-time force,” Blunt said at the hearing.
“As we make those difficult choices … instead of the Guard and reserve taking a proportional share of those [reductions], it would seem to me it would be the time to be building the Guard and reserve so that they are there when we need them,” Blunt said.
Army Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told lawmakers that retaining robust reserve components is a “strategic hedge in a very uncertain world with the fiscal challenges we face.”
For the Army National Guard, the budget request for next year would cut total end strength by 8,200 soldiers to a projected total force of 342,000, said Maj. Gen. Timothy Kadavy, director of the Army National Guard.
Current plans call for dropping the Army’s active-duty end strength to 450,000, down more than 100,000 soldiers from its peak during the Iraq War.
For the Air Force Reserve, next year’s budget request would raise the total force level by 2,100. “This increase is needed to maintain active-duty airmen who have transferred into the Air Force Reserve, also to grow and support the missions of the F-35, KC-46, [intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance] and cyber,” said Lt. Gen. James Jackson, chief of the Air Force Reserve.
The director of the Air National Guard, Lt. Gen. Stanley Clarke III, warned lawmakers that “the airplanes we’re flying now are old. … We need to replace these airplanes at some point.”
Vice Adm. Robin Braun, chief of the Navy Reserve, said her force is 34 percent smaller than in 2000, and years of high operational tempo combined with new budget caps have eroded readiness.
“Aircraft recapitalization is absolutely our top equipment propriety,” Braun said.
Marine Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, commander of Marine Forces Reserve, told lawmakers that protecting money for personnel is critical these days as his component is facing “shortfalls in staff noncommissioned officer and junior commissioned officer leadership.”
Last year, Congress created a National Commission on the Future of the Army to address tension between the Army components over resources, specifically an Army effort to transfer dozens of Apache attack helicopters from the Guard into the active component.
Grass told lawmakers he hoped that commission will offer a long-term assessment of the Army’s mix of full-time and part-time soldiers.
“I think this commission … has to look out 10 to 20 years and look at the Army ground force for the United States of America under sequestration and determine if that is what we need as a nation in an active-Guard-reserve mix,” Grass said.
Specifically regarding troop levels in the two Guard components, Grass said: “I would definitely lock down the end strength of the Army National guard at 350,000. I think … the Air [Guard] is in a good position right now.”
On the aviation issue, Grass said the Army National Guard would continue to turn over the planned 36 Apache helicopters, but he urged lawmakers to wait until the Army commission’s report before deciding what to do with an additional six battalions.
