The Individual Ready Reserve: Reforming the Army's Hidden Legions

REDUCTIONS OF THE end strength of Army's active component may or may not be advisable. In wake of latest strategic guidance from Defense Department, Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense (January 2012), looming reductions of American ground forces have been much discussed. Whatever merits of a smaller ground force from a defense or budgetary perspective, a smaller ground force is clearly inevitable, and priority of defense community is to develop plans to execute America's military strategy in light of this new reality. An agile expeditionary capability and ability to increase size of American ground forces in event of a sustained commitment are keys to success with a smaller standing Army and Marine Corps. With Marine Corps and elements of Army focused on first point, it is this second point--ensuring upward scalability of American ground forces--that requires further thought. To begin, we must recognize inevitability of a future conflict requiring a large ground force. Given division of roles and responsibilities between services, this observation primarily applies to Army. The future need for a large land army is a question of when, not a question of if. We can decide as a matter of policy that we do not wish to engage in soldier-intensive counterinsurgency warfare, but this does not mean that we will always have luxury of choosing when to participate in a future war. We may be drawn into a conflict, and successfully resolving that conflict may well require significant ground forces. Despite best efforts of State Department, all agree that future conflict is inevitable, and it will likely not come about at a time of our choosing. In Army we like to speak of our nonnegotiable contract with America to fight and win our nation's wars. We also like to say the enemy has a vote, and this applies to both where and when these wars take place. We can expect enemy to attack us not in areas where we already exercise dominance, but where we are least prepared or willing to wage sustained war: on land. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As retired Major General Robert Scales wrote in 5 January 2012 edition of Washington Post, Here's what lessons of past 70 years really teach us: We cannot pick our enemies; our enemies will pick us. They will, as they always have in past, cede to us dominance in air, on sea, and in space because they do not have ability to fight us there. Our enemies have observed us closely in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have learned lessons taught by Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein: America's greatest vulnerability is dead Americans. So our future enemy will seek to fight us on ground, where we have traditionally been poorly prepared. His objective will be to win by not losing, to kill as an end rather than as a means to an end. (1) None of this is to call into question decision of National Command Authority to reduce active component force structure at this time. Maintaining a large standing army in times of peace may be undesirable for many reasons, notably cost, but need to economize today must not prevent us from beginning to lay a cost-effective foundation for success in a future war. A key to success lies in realization that a reduction in Army active component end-strength translates to an inevitable increase in size of Army's Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). As a general matter, active component reductions lead to a cascade of talent into Ready Reserve. While size of Ready Reserve should balloon in short term to reflect coming draw-down of active component, its size will eventually stabilize as a proportion of total size of active component and Selected Reserve (SELRES). While Ready Reserve does not completely mitigate risks of a smaller active force, if properly managed it can be a crucial force multiplier, giving National Command Authority increased flexibility in responding to an uncertain world. …