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New skills, manpower requirements and force restructuring old roles and priorities.
A rapidly evolving operational environment and new mission priorities are blurring the distinction between the U.S. National Guard, Reserve and active duty forces. As these units continue to operate together, efforts by the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Defense Department will further integrate the different branches of the military through a common payroll system and an occupational skills database.
The ongoing war on global terrorism has stretched the U.S. military across the globe, and it is the Reserve and National Guard that provide the majority of the support and logistics capabilities. But increased manpower needs and restructuring within the services are moving reservists into a more active and central role in combat and civil operations. Instead of being viewed as support or supplementary forces, Reserve units are now a vital part of combatant commanders' combat power.
During the last three decades of the 20th century, the National Guard and the Reserve were structured as a strategic force to support active duty units in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. Reservists traditionally drilled one weekend a month and had 14 days of annual training that would be supplemented with additional training during a war or general mobilization. But the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks changed this equation by increasing the operational tempo for instruction and deployment, says Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, Washington D.C.
Hall describes the past four years as a transitional period in which the U.S. military has evolved to meet the threats posed by international terrorist organizations. The change also exposed some inadequacies in the structure of the National Guard and the Reserve's traditional missions. The demand for skilled personnel for military police, civil affairs units, truck drivers and medical staff suddenly surged, but there were not enough qualified people to fill these billets.
"We don't know whether we're out of people, but we're out of balance," Hall explains. The imbalance is attributed to the vestiges of the Cold War force structure and its missions. For example, the U.S. Army Reserve is heavy with artillery units. "We were going to use the artillery to fight in the central plains of Europe. Well,...