Technical reservists offer current commercial expertise and knowledge of commercial trends that may be otherwise inaccessible inside the Navy. For example, it is difficult for the Navy to retain active-duty engineering officers with advanced degrees in computer- and communication-related technical areas. These qualifications command substantially higher salaries in the private sector. Many Ph.D.-level computer engineers in Silicon Valley charge more than $300 an hour for consulting. Technical reservists are available at bargain rates relative to the value of their skills.
Military use of electronics once was significant enough that the military could demand components and systems built to its specifications. Today, the military is such a small segment of the commercial electronics industry that military-specifications components have all but disappeared. Military systems must be composed of commercial integrated circuits and subsystems, and they must use commercial operating systems, protocols, and applications. Expertise in design, development, and use of these commercial-off-the-shelf products can be found among the Navy's reservists.
Reservists in Naval Air Systems Command Air Systems Program units in California's Bay Area are an excellent example of available technical expertise that the Navy could exploit. Reservists in these units typically come from the high-tech industry. Many have advanced degrees and significant commercial expertise in computers and communications.
What Technical Reservists Offer
In these days of tight budgets, commanders whose funding lines pay for reservists want their money's worth. The emphasis in the reserve programs is on "contributory support." Typically, reservists spend their annual active-duty tours and drill weekends at their gaining commands attempting to contribute something of value to the operational mission of that command.
Reservists work hard, but there can be problems. There may be a poor match between the skills of the reservist and the needs of the gaining command. It is difficult to join an operational unit for a short time and to contribute more than the overhead caused by disrupting the normal workflow. In addition, help from reserve units tends to be sporadic and might not be a good match to the support needs of the gaining command. Lead times in the Navy's active-duty planning system (60 days or so) make it difficult to respond to near-term needs of the gaining command, and projects that can benefit from a burst of activity one weekend per month are rare.
A reservist with a background in commercial microprocessors and computers might, for example, belong to a unit with mobilization billets in acquisition or in logistics. Lacking current skills in military acquisition or logistics, this reservist might spend active-duty tours organizing correspondence and doing clerical tasks. While these tasks might benefit the gaining command, projects that exploit the reservist's commercial technical expertise would be more challenging and satisfying for the reservist and of greater benefit to the Navy.
Technical reservists offer fresh perspectives on how the Navy might solve difficult technical problems using current commercial products. They may have seen a range of problems and novel solutions among their commercial customers, for example. They also offer insights into the direction that commercial industry is likely to take. Some technical reservists, for example, work for the companies that are driving the commercial transition from analog, circuit-switched, and proprietary networks to digital, packet-switched, and standards-based networks. In addition, technical reservists typically have operational experience with military systems, all of which makes them an objective, cheap, readily available resource.
A unit attached directly to the Chief of Naval Reserve (N095) could be manned by a dozen or so highly skilled computer- and communication-oriented officers with advanced engineering degrees and relevant commercial experience. The charter for this unit might consist of two types of tasks: technical support and annual support.
Providing Technical Support
The most valuable contribution of the technical reservist could be made in aiding senior commanders. Suppose a senior commander needs to decide whether to sign a contract with the provider of computer or communication services. The senior commander might ask for a tutorial on a highly technical, but unfamiliar, topic such as encryption or Internet protocols. This tutorial could help the senior commander become familiar with the terms of the field, the important issues, and current directions in commercial practice.
A senior commander might also use a technical reservist as what the federal courts call a "special master." In technical court cases, the sides use experts to argue opposing points of view. If the judge does not have a background in the area of dispute, the court may elect to hire a special master, someone who is an expert in the technical area of the dispute but is also a neutral party acceptable to both sides. He looks at both sides of the case from a technical perspective and helps the judge to interpret what is technically relevant and important. The special master does not make decisions about law, but aids the judge in the determination of which technical issues are important to the case. Like the special master, the technical reservist might coach the senior commander unfamiliar with a particular area on the most important technical issues related to a pending decision.
A senior commander also might ask a technical reservist to act as a technical assistant on visits to contractors. I have seen this technique applied by Wall Street investors visiting high-tech companies for potential investment. These investors often hire a Ph.D. expert to accompany them on their visits to improve the quality of information obtained.
Ubiquitous access to the web provides an excellent avenue for contributions by technical reservists. For example, one important issue facing the Navy's surface forces is how to get sufficient broadband access to the fleet in the near future. Decisions must be made in near-term budget cycles to ensure adequate access. A technical reservist might provide the senior decision maker with an assessment of the state of commercial and military communications infrastructure and with a forecast for commercial assets. As a part of this project, the reservist might assess the entire state of commercial mobile- and fixed-satellite systems. This might lead to a continuing project for a reserve unit. A unit in California, for example, might support the staff officer for communications in Washington, D.C. (and the Navy in general), with web pages that track and summarize the status and attributes of commercial satellite systems. Technical reservists drilling in California could maintain web-site currency, giving senior commanders in Washington access to the current state of commercial satellite communication.
A good model can be found in the Army Science Board (ASB), one of several federal advisory committees that provide senior military commanders with access to experts who can provide advice in matters of science and technology. The ASB is composed of recognized experts in a range of technical areas who typically work without pay to advise the Army's senior commanders. The ASB does one or two major studies each year and might have some number of smaller studies in progress continuously. Studies fall generally into two categories: top down and bottom up.
Top-down studies are those requested by the Army's senior commanders. These commanders ask the ASB to study problems with a strong technical component. For example, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology asked the ASB to study "Technical and Tactical Opportunities for Revolutionary Advances in Rapidly Deployable Joint Ground Forces in the 2015-2025 Era."
ASB members and lower-level commanders initiate bottom-up studies. These studies tend to have a highly technical focus on a new and rapidly advancing area where there would be a potential for disruptive change in the technical direction the Army is taking.
There is a direct analogy between the ASB and a technical unit reporting to the Chief of Naval Reserve. The unit could operate on a similar model working on top-- down and bottom-up studies. N095 might solicit top-down study proposals from senior commanders and bottom-up study proposals from the unit itself. N095 and the commanding officer of the technical unit could use the study suggestions to plan the unit's activities.
A senior commander also might request a competitive assessment. What, for example, are the Russians or Chinese doing in computers, encryption, or semiconductor manufacturing? Some reservist already might know the answers to these questions. If not, there might be a reservist with a background that would be the natural prerequisite for assessments.
Technical reservists could also help senior commanders in the assessment of technical areas as candidates for research-and-development science and technology funding recommendations. The technical reservist could aid the senior commander in assessing, for example, which technical developments will be likely to be driven by commercial markets and which will require military-unique technical requirements.
Supporting the Operational Navy
Technical reservists can benefit the operational Navy in three ways: strategic support, experiments, and liaison to research organizations.
Reservists do their best to contribute to the mission of their gaining commands, but circumstances reduce the efficiency of the relationship. The gaining command typically is an operational unit focused on tactical and operational goals, and reservists cannot respond well to operational needs. When they usually are available only on weekends and for a short active-duty tour each year, reservists are better suited to strategic rather than operational and tactical goals. Having the reservist focus on strategic tasks might be a good complement to the gaining command's efforts. The gaining command typically will be undermanned and struggling to meet its operational goals; it cannot afford to spend time on strategic tasks.
Technical reservists can aid the operational Navy with planning, execution, and assessment of fleet battle experiments, advanced concept technology demonstrations, advanced technology demonstrations, exercises, and war games. A unit with this mission might belong to the Naval War College. A technical reservist might be a beneficial addition to strategic studies panels, such as, for example, the Manpower Think Tank.
Technical reservists would be ideal as liaisons to research organizations such as the federal labs, the Naval Postgraduate School, universities, the Office of Naval Research, and the Naval Research Labs. The Navy's operators do not have good links to the research community. Similarly, the nation's researchers, both civilian and military, typically lack operational military experience. The two communities speak different languages and operate in different subcultures. The combination of operational experience in the Navy and commercially based expertise in a technical area make the reservist a good bridge between the operators and the researchers.
Contributing to Business Practices
Technical reservists can make contributions in three areas of commercial business practice: trade-press and professional publications, technical conferences, and standards organizations.
Trade-press and professional articles on the Navy's technical problems can raise awareness within and outside the Navy to the issues the Navy faces in meeting its operational needs and could lead to suggestions for commercial solutions. Publishing papers is not typically a tactical or operational goal for an operating unit, but it is a goal for which the technical reservist is well suited.
Reservists also would make excellent representatives for the military at technical conferences. The reservist with depth in an area of commercial technology could assess developments for application to military systems.
The Navy needs strong technical representation on standards committees to ensure that the unique requirements of the military are not overlooked. The military often is at the forefront of standards requirements based on the demands of its harsh operating environment, but it lacks influence partly because it cannot afford to support advocates on all potentially important standards bodies. Technical reservists could fill this gap. A reservist with credibility and strong credentials in a technical area could be a formidable advocate for the military's needs. This use of a technical reservist could complement the reservist's civilian occupation without causing any conflict of interest. The reservist might also help select the relevant standards to track and help assess the direction and potential influence of standards.
A continuing mission for the technical reserve unit would be to conduct the twice-yearly Technology Update that assesses developments in semiconductors, microelectromechanical systems, communications, and computers. It would track market segments in an effort to determine trends and new developments and it would provide projections. This assessment for computers, for example, would cover hardware, software, operating systems, embedded applications (microprocessors), and standards. A survey of relevant startups would be a part of the six-month update. Startups are a leading indicator of industry trends.
Officers for this unit could be drawn from reserve engineering duty officer, aerospace engineering duty officer, and other technical and scientific communities throughout the country. This unit might be run on a model similar to that for the Army Science Board. Navy commanders anywhere in the field could request technical assistance from the commander of this unit (perhaps through N095).
Today's reserve structure does not seem flexible enough to meet these needs. Officers are assigned to billets that may confine their contributions to a specific area. It is difficult, for example, for an officer with technical skills in computer network security to participate in a Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Integrated Idea Team that is trying to resolve Navy-wide intranet security issues. We should have a structure that allows the Navy to take advantage of the reservist's technical skills across the entire organization.
Imagine yourself as a technical reservist. In an ideal active duty assignment, you might report to the technical director for the Navy's command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, and reconnaissance czar. After a short discussion, you discover that the technical director has an infinite queue of interesting and challenging technical problems. You agree to help the technical director answer the question: "Should the Navy buy 25% of the capacity on a to-be-launched commercial satellite constellation to provide broadband data access to the fleet five years hence?" However, while you have a strong technical background, this is not your particular area of expertise. You need two or three weeks to read a couple of background textbooks on broadband satellite networks, you need to learn the Navy's current broadband shipboard access systems and its projected requirements, and you need to collect current information on operational and planned commercial satellite networks. You need a couple of weeks beyond that for assimilation, study, discussion, and assessment. The product of your research will be a short memo (three-page limit), a couple of discussions with the technical director, and a short presentation for the admiral on important issues in broadband satellite constellations. While some projects may be shorter or longer, four to six weeks is best to achieve both depth of understanding and timeliness of the response.
Ideal candidates for the reserve unit would have current commercial (nondefense industry) expertise in semiconductors, computers, or communications. They would have advanced degrees in electrical or computer engineering. In addition, they would hold or be eligible for a top-secret clearances, and would have military experience on active duty in operational units. Their employment must be flexible enough to allow four- to six-week active-duty assignments once or twice a year.
Reservists might retain their current billet assignments and simply apply for inclusion in the N095 assignment pool. Days would be allocated directly from N095 to support the needs of the various studies and projects (in addition to the days a reservist might get with the home unit). A small cadre of permanently assigned members could manage the unit and direct the annual projects.
Captain Tredennick was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, served as a member of the Army Science Board for six years, participating in more than a dozen studies, and has been a founder of several Silicon Valley startups. He was a senior design engineer at Motorola, a research staff member at IBM’s Watson Research Center and chief scientist at Altera. He currently is the editor of Dynamic Silicon.