COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The normally well-balanced Phil Carter has taken yet another opportunity to slime reservists, this time in his article on Slate.

The professional active-duty force of today still represents the best argument for why we do not want to resume the draft:A conscript-based force simply can't achieve the skill, unit cohesion, or professionalism of today's active military.

But America's weekend warriors are a different story.

The reservists closely resemble the draftees of days gone by.

Well, our draftees have historically served this nation very well, Phil, so thanks for the complement.

Reservists train for one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer

:

Must be nice. I've got 12 years in, though, and I've never been in a unit like that.

Thirty-nine days a year is hardly enough to build true tactical competence on the complex tasks of warfighting.

That's a matter of how you use your time. You can't build proficiency in battalion level operations in the reserve components. So smart units don't even try. With good training management, though, you can build excellent units from the crew and squad level up to platoon level. Reserve component units get a leg up, actually, because their crews are together for so long. And in some MOSs, our reservists have even more experience than our active duty soldiers.

Look, a 30 year old reservist who's been driving military trucks for twelve years --and who very likely possesses a CDL as a professional full time driver at home, is simply a better and safer truck driver than a 20 year old active duty soldier who's been driving trucks for 18 months. Particularly when it comes time to haul a trailer.

The same applies to mortar and artillery crews. If I got woken up in the middle of the night by a mortar attack, I used to look at my watch and time how long it was before we launched some counterbattery fire.

The National Guard guys routinely bested the active duty guys. I mean, without fail. It's not entirely an apples to apples comparison, since the Guard guys were mortarmen and the active duty guys were artillery crews, and mortars are usually more responsive than artillery for command and control reasons.

Then again, it was an active duty FDC that launched five 155 rounds into a residential area in Ramadi one night last February because they mixed up a couple of grid coordinates. (Miraculously, no one was killed, and we replaced the homes that were destroyed and livestock lost).

Now, where the National Guard units can't compete is when we get into Brigade level operations and up, simply because there are not enough opportunities to fully train battle staffs.

But a National Guard or Reserve transportation unit, after nearly a year on active duty, is going to be fully capable of putting a platoon on the road. If properly supported.

Soldiers in logistics units like the 343rd learn how to drive their big rigs and maintain them, but they hardly have time to practice convoy defense or route reconnaissance.

Well, this unit has been DOING convoy defense for nine months. Lack of competence is not at issue here, and no one save Carter is alleging it, at least as far as these troops are concerned.

The lack of training time is compounded by other resource problems in the reserves.

Many reserve leaders don't have significant active-duty experience

,

Most of us do. Especially now. But even as an infantry platoon leader in the early 1990s, my platoon sergeant and two of my three squad leaders had CIBs. My first two platoon sergeants were veterans of Viet Nam.

Now, consider the lieutenant level. In a typical Guard unit, most lieutenants will have come from OCS or ROTC, and most were enlisted before. Some extensively. When I deployed to Iraq as a lieutenant, I was 34 years old, and had already had two commands and a JROTC rotation. All of our platoon leaders were in their late 20s or early 30s, and had already made their new lieutenant mistakes.

When you compare us to the more typical 23-24 year old lieutenants on active duty, I would argue that in many cases, the

active duty

leaders don't have significant active duty experience.

they lack the expertise necessary to train their units on these important missions. Reserve equipment—particularly in the National Guard—suffers from decades of neglect.

True. But that has nothing to do with the reservists in question. The resource allocation and procurement decisions are made in Washington. By people on active duty.


Further, this unit has been in Iraq for more than 9 months already. For all intents and purposes, they are quite literally active duty soldiers.

When the Army created its "total force concept"—the mix of active and reserve forces it has today—after the Vietnam War, it allocated combat units mostly to the active force, while support and logistics units were put in the reserves. The Army assumed it didn't need highly trained truck drivers on active duty as badly as it needed infantrymen, tankers, and aviators on active duty.

False. Since about 1967, the combat arms formations have been roughly equally split between the active and reserve components, thanks to the Abrams doctrine with almost all the combat arms units going to the National Guard (with the exception of the 100th/442nd, which is a Reserve unit in Hawaii and Samoa)

Reservists today get mobilized, trained on the most basic tasks of war, and then shipped to Iraq in a matter of weeks.

No, that's not true by a long shot. Reservists don't just materialize out of thin air right before mobilization. It takes some time to ramp fully up to speed, but you aren't starting with basic trainees.

The reservists in Iraq lack the training, equipment, leadership, and resources to do their job.

Hogwash. This platoon has been doing its job for nine months. Our reservists and guardsmen have been doing their JOBS since September 11th! Many in shortage MOSs are on their second tours. A few are on their third, counting homeland defense and safe skies duty.

Most reserve units I had the honor to work with overseas performed terrifically. By August 2003, you couldn't tell them apart. Both forces had become lean, mean, competent, and battle-hardened. The only difference was our troops had only two sets of clothing and the active duty guys had four. Oh, and our guys weren't getting paid.

But that wasn't the reservists' fault, either. The people responsible for paying reservists attached to active duty units were...you guessed it...active duty.

And their morale proves it; surveys conducted under the Army's auspices last year showed a marked difference between the attitudes of active-duty soldiers and Marines, and of reservists like those in the 343rd.

Gee...96% of reserve component soldiers have serious pay problems. And you wonder why they might have morale problems? The pay problems alone would explain the morale differential.

Consequently, reservists today are acting in ways that look startlingly like conscripts of yesterday.

Let's see...Carter looks at the actions of a single platoon -- on which the jury is still out -- and slimes 80,000 troops with it.

I think if Mr. Carter had seen what I've seen, and had actually integrated reserve troops into active formations in Iraq, and seen how they behave in the field, he wouldn't say that.

Splash, out

Jason