Today's competitive cost and flexibility requirements are driving organizations in the private and public sectors to increased use of part-time and temporary employees. The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the most experienced federal agencies at doing business this way. Like the other four armed services, the Coast Guard has been faced with flat or declining budgets throughout the 1990s, and recent recruiting and retention numbers are down to critical levels. The Coast Guard's active-duty force is at its smallest since 1966, and during the same 30year period the Coast Guard Reserve has been reduced from more than 18,000 to fewer than 8,000 members. The reserve has taken a number of remarkable steps to reduce operating overhead, make internal processes more efficient, and do even more with fewer resources.
In 1995, the service implemented the "Team Coast Guard" concept, integrating reservists into the active-duty personnel administrative organization, and began making wider use of the volunteer support from the 35,000 civilian members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. To reduce reserve overhead, nearly all Selected Reserve (SelRes) units were eliminated, and active-duty Reserve Program Administration (RPA) staffs at the District and Headquarters levels were reduced substantially and reorganized. The only remaining units in the Coast Guard Reserve are the six port security units (PSUs) and eight harbor defense command units commissioned to provide deployable naval coastal warfare forces to respond to contingencies worldwide. Integrating the active-duty and reserve components of Team Coast Guard has been a success story, greatly increasing SelRes augmentation of active-duty units while allowing the reserve program to operate on nearly a flat annual budget throughout the decade. The Navy, Marine Corps, and other Department of Defense services contemplating similar changes to integrate and make better use of their reservists should take note and learn from the Coast Guard's experiences in piloting this type of program.
In 1972, the Coast Guard Reserve began augmenting the active service for contributory support and quick responses to a variety of man-made and natural disasters, in addition to training for defense operations. Demands for rescuing distressed mariners, combating major oil spills, interdicting smugglers, and conducting port security operations have been steadily increasing over the past three decades. The Coast Guard's ability to perform many more missions with a shrinking force is in part because of the large role reservists have played in augmenting daily operations. Every weekend, reserve members maintain their response skills by assuming the watch at 50-75% of the nation's Coast Guard stations, simultaneously relieving active-duty members from extraordinarily long work hours while receiving highly cost-effective on-the-job training. From 1972 through 1999, the steadily increasing augmentation work of the reserve has been an extremely important factor in allowing the Coast Guard to expand its four core missions of marine safety, maritime law enforcement, marine environmental protection, and national defense without increasing the size of the active-duty force.
After four years, a consensus opinion has developed quietly in the Coast Guard Reserve. The elimination of reserve units and the integration of RPAs into force optimization and training staffs have created a large leadership vacuum in the reserve program. By eliminating Coast Guard Reserve units during the headlong rush to streamline in 1995, reserve officers and senior enlisted were cast adrift. A servicewide reserve structure no longer exists for SelRes leadership to communicate with and provide supervision, mentoring, career guidance, and organizational practices to junior reserve members.
As individual mobilization augmentees assigned to active commands, reservists agree they are much better used across the full spectrum of missions. They also agree, however, that most active-duty Coast Guard units, extremely overtasked themselves, are not able to properly attend to all the needs of their part-time teammates. While junior enlisted reservists may occasionally feel overlooked, mid-to-senior officers and enlisted are underused as leaders, have few if any executive management opportunities, and are in search of a definitive leadership role in Team Coast Guard. Although culture exalts the positions of commanding officer and command enlisted advisor (CEA), the Coast Guard nearly has eliminated those leadership opportunities for reservists. The simple mid-course correction needed to fill the leadership vacuum is to restore an improved version of the basic force element of military leadership to the program by restoring the best features of the old reserve system-not independent reserve units, but reserve detachments (ResDets) tied directly to their gaining commands.
Team Coast Guard integration has been a mixed blessing for reservists. Gone are the large amounts of reserve administrative paperwork that occupied much of the weekend drill time of most Selected Reserve officers and senior enlisted and hindered efficient augmentation of active units. Ask any experienced reservists how they like the implementation of Team Coast Guard, and they will tell you they are thrilled to now be spending most of their time doing real Coast Guard work. But they do miss the "old reserve." Despite active-duty efforts at reserve team building, most reservists have become simply a sort of temporary agency staff: small groups of workers who fill active unit shortfalls, and do it extremely well. These groups of workers are exactly what good augmentation should be. But as one senior chief petty officer comments, "I like standing Group Operations Duty (for search and rescue, law enforcement) watches on weekends at my active command, but I ought to be a reserve command enlisted advisor. So instead, now I'm basically an E-8 worker bee. I'm paid better than an E-4, but still just a worker bee." A young female lieutenant (junior grade) with no experience in the pre-1995 reserve program said, "I augment the Atlantic Area fisheries law enforcement staff, and I really enjoy the projects they give me. But when I come in to work on weekends, there are no active-duty staff members here. I'm stuck in an empty building all by myself, and I hate it! As soon as I get a civilian job where I don't need the reserve paycheck anymore, I'll quit the reserve."
The downside of Coast Guard Reserve units was that commanding officers worked for the District reserve program rather than their local active command, and often were unresponsive to the active command's augmentation needs. But by eliminating the pre-1995 Reserve Group Commander organization, the Coast Guard removed the senior Selected Reserve officers who maintained the District-level reserve personnel big picture and served as the advocate and the single point of contact for reserve issues to the gaining commands in the field. Unlike the Navy, which maintains battle staff units drilling at local reserve centers, there are no Coast Guard readiness commands or reserve centers in local communities. All reservists now must travel to an active command for drills, and a large number of former drilling locations throughout the "River Coast Guard" in the central and Midwestern states have been forced to close. Reserve opportunities at active units have been reduced to the point that it has become almost a requirement, rather than an option, for many reservists (and nearly all senior reserve officers) to drive hundreds or even fly thousands of miles from home to get to any pay billet, let alone to an especially desirable job.
With individual reservists completely under the control of active-duty units and senior reserve advocates who are disconnected from junior members, at some commands where active personnel are stretched thin there is more than subtle pressure to drill on weekdays rather than weekends, despite the civilian job obligations of reserve members. With a reserve force that is already heavily skewed toward civilian occupations in government contracting and the public sector, this trend does not bode well for future workforce diversity, recruiting, retention, and family needs or community orientation of members. If the nation desires its military services to represent a true cross-section of U.S. society, it cannot permit the Coast Guard or any military reserve component to become the near exclusive purview of semiretired civil servants, divorced/single mid-life career changers, and the independently wealthy.
In the civilian world, training company executives and temp-agency brokers are the single points of contact who provide trained personnel to organizations who need just-in-time workers. During the 1990s, the Coast Guard has been unable and unwilling to provide the kinds of long-range strategic investments in reserve force planning, training, leadership, and structure that are needed to ensure that the all-volunteer military's just-in-time workers will be ready to go when mobilized for the next contingency. The last vestiges of the reserve component Is structure for World War III mobilization have withered away, and a new, contingency-based augmentation organization has yet to be defined to take its place.
Team Coast Guard is a giant step toward the new post-Cold War structure, and a definite productivity improvement over the old reserve system. Truly effective reserve augmentation has probably increased from approximately 20-30% to 50-60% of field units. In addition to more reserve personnel, however, structural adjustments in what is left of the reserve organization are sorely needed to get this number above 80%. A long-overdue independent study recently has validated a need for a Coast Guard reserve force of more than 12,200 members. Currently at 7,700, the reserve is striving mightily to recruit and retain enough members to get up to the authorized strength of 8,000 in order to be in a position to request congressional funding for the additional 4,000 members needed.
Ominous trends indicate that the Coast Guard Reserve is eating its seed corn needed for the years ahead because of neglected. The lack of reserve esprit de corps silently is sapping morale and will degrade future force growth, recruiting, and retention. The outcome of treating reservists as strictly a temporary workforce, with little attention, management, or career development from active reserve leadership, will result in an inadequate base of properly skilled personnel in the future. You can recruit reservists initially with paychecks, but you have to give them attractive career patterns, some fun, and team camaraderie to retain them and keep them coming back every month on weekends. Each component of Team Coast Guard must be structured and empowered to provide its own leadership and the means to take care of its members. Reservists should lead reservists, auxiliarists should lead auxiliarists, and the active-duty component should lead the total force.
Selected Reserve officers and senior enlisted must be re-empowered to lead the Coast Guard Reserve force. The Reserve Personnel Allowance List should be reconstituted into standard servicewide organizational elements that build on the best and eliminate the worst of the old Coast Guard Reserve unit system. Reserve detachments should be implemented, tied directly to the gaining units they augment, and function as subordinate tenant commands in the same facilities. These detachments should have nearly the same rank/billet structure as the active command, with a reserve commanding officer and command enlisted advisor, but a streamlined command cadre. All Selected Reserve officers and enlisted should be responsible to the gaining command for augmentation of active units, with the Reserve Detachment command cadre serving as reserve leadership, advocacy, and single point of contact. Reserve detachments should function in much the same way as Coast Guard stations and patrol boats serving a group commander.
Reserve detachments should be organized into reserve groups commanded by Selected Reserve captains, whose detachments support afloat/ashore units in a state or region within a District. Reserve groups should provide program vision, liaison, and direction to the field under the guidance of the director of reserve and training and the two reserve flag officers. With this simple mid-course correction, Team Coast Guard will enhance its part-time work force flexibility and avoid dangerous shoals as the service sails into the new millennium.
Commander Leonard is a Coast Guard Academy graduate with eight years on active duty and more than 12 in the reserve. He holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography and currently serves as Reserve Section Chief, U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Major Cutter Forces, Portsmouth, Virginia.