COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

...As well he should.

The chief of the Army Reserve warned today that at the current pace of operations in the war against terrorism, the Army faced a serious risk of running out of crucial specialists in the reserves who can be involuntarily called up for active duty.

[paragraph omitted]


As military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq continue with no end in sight, General Helmly said he was increasingly concerned that a growing number of Army Reserve soldiers in critical specialties that are contained mainly in the reservist ranks, like civil affairs and truck drivers, would exhaust their two-year stints and make it increasingly difficult to fill the yearlong tours of duty that have become standard.

I cannot overstate the importance of this. Military police, transportation, water purification, and civil affairs units are especially swamped now. Many soldiers out of the 94th Military Police company, out of Massachussetts and New Hampshire, for example, were already on their second post September 11th deployment when I first met them at Al Asad, Iraq, in the spring of 2003. Ok, fine. They were due to rotate home in November of 2003. But then they got extended for another five months or so on top of that.

There are lots of units who are similarly stressed already.

So it's good to see the Chief of Reserve Forces pounding the table--and going to the press, if he has to--to get some attention focused on the acute manpower problems the reserve components are facing. (He's been pounding that particular piece of furniture for some time, already, as it turns out.)

Meanwhile, the cracks are starting to show in the retention surveys, according to the newest Defense Department Reserve Components Survey:

Compared with a similar survey in May 2003, reservists say their “intentions to stay in the military have … significantly declined,” a reflection of “the impact of military operations on reservists and their families,” according to the survey summary.

Figures worse for Iraq vets

The overall percentage of reservists who say they intend to stay in the military has dropped from 73 percent to 66 percent over the past year. Figures are even worse for those who have served in Iraq, where fewer than half of Army and Marine Corps reserve component members say they are “likely” or “very likely” to stay in uniform.

Even nondeployed units show fewer people interested in staying in. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve show the biggest drops, but all services show eroding morale compared to a year ago. In nearly all areas, this May’s responses were also lower than a benchmark study in 2000, just before President Bush took office but during a time when the then-candidate described the military as “overdeployed and underpaid.”

Also, compared to a year ago, significantly fewer Guard and reserve troops say their spouses and other family members have favorable opinions toward military service.

Link.

Speaking just for myself, I cannot sustain a lifestyle in which I can expect to be mobilized every four or five years. Not in my present line of work, nor in any line of work I expect to be in.

It's not that I don't enjoy it, and it's not that I'm not proud to serve, and it's not that I don't want to stay in. It's just that I'm keenly aware that the Army is NOT going to be financing my retirement. I can do my 20 years, but then I'll have to wait and ADDITIONAL 18 years to get any retirement benefits, since us reserve component soldiers have to wait until we're 60 years old to collect them.

Which means, in financial terms, the discounted present value of military retirement benefits is substantially lower for Reservists and guardsmen, even after you prorate for days actually spent on duty.

I am very concerned that with a regular 4 or 5 year mobilization cycle as part of a routine, that soldiers with professional careers and businesses will be pushed out of the service, and the only ones left will be college students E-1 to E-5 and career government employees. Because it's only the government employees who have any real job security coming back from a mobilization.

Now, the Army medical corps understands this, and Doctors have successfully lobbied to limit their deployments to 90 days in theater. Any longer than that and their private practices at home go to crap.

Now, the rest of my soldiers who are in successful and challenging civilian careers--precisely the kind of bright people the reserves and Guard should want to retain--are going to be in the same boat. Except they won't have a powerful AMA lobby to help them out. They'll just have to get out.

The personnel crunch is going to be immense, and the institutions will lose some excellent leaders as a result.

Do we need another 40,000 active duty troops to take the pressure off the guard and reserve? If we expect to be able to draw down sharply after the elections in Iraq in January, then maybe not. But that scenario is looking increasingly unlikely to me.

If we stay in Iraq in strength, or our strategic planners want to maintain a strong forward presence in Iraq, then I think we definitely do.

Splash, out

Jason