“Any view that the Naval Reserve will be useful only on and after M-Day is archaic. Our ready Reserve represents not only Fleet-trained manpower, but a wealth of diverse expertise which cannot be purchased. Those resources must be productively used, not only for contingencies, but as an integral part of the total force, now.”
Admiral E. R. Zumwalt, Jr.
Chief of Naval Operations
The Navy is saying that the Naval Reserve ought to constitute something more than an indefinitely suspended manpower reservoir; that, during periods of inactive duty, reservists should not simply remain in eternal training for some future emergency.
The reasons impelling this new look at the role and potential of the Naval Reserve are economic in the first instance. The Navy finds itself increasingly called upon to meet wider and wider responsibilities with fewer and fewer resources. The large sums of money required to solve pressing national social problems are likely to restrain the overall military budget from substantial increase for several years to come. At the same time, the necessity to maintain adequate military manpower after the elimination of the draft will require that a significantly larger slice of the military budget be directed to personnel compensation and away from other military needs. If the Navy is to meet the continuing challenge to do more with less, it is imperative that all of its resources—including the Naval Reserve—be used in the most effective way possible.
As long as we have any military establishment at all we shall have a reserve force of some sort. If it can be integrated with the Regular Navy in an effective, working partnership in peacetime as well as in war, there is an obvious economy. In the coming decade, the Navy may no longer be able to afford the luxury of maintaining two separate forces that stand essentially apart and join together only on mobilization.
The second reason for the new look relates to the potential effectiveness of the reserves. There is reason to believe that the ultimate purpose of the Naval Reserve—instant readiness for mobilization and augmentation of the Regular Navy in time of national emergency—is best achieved when the reserves participate as closely as possible in the on-going work of the Regular Navy. If the reservist is always “held in reserve”—forever training and never doing—a sense of isolation develops which makes it difficult for him to merge easily and confidently with the Regular Navy when “M-Day” finally arrives.
Lastly, there is in the concept of closer Regular/Reserve cooperation a potential for renewal of our presently faltering national confidence. No nation unwilling to commit its strongest and most able people to its military service has ever long survived. It is evident that the United States today faces a commitment crisis. Its resolution is being tested in the midst of disengagement from a painfully drawn-out and unpopular war. But the debate goes well beyond the merits of that conflict to involve even more fundamental national purposes and priorities. The very need for a defense establishment and the value of military forces to this country have been questioned by some segments of the citizenry, and a pervasive distrust of the military and its activities is surfacing even among the more responsible elements of society.
In this unfortunate situation, the infusion into our communities of dedicated naval reservists, actively engaged in direct and productive support of the Regular Navy mission, can contribute to a widened understanding and sense of commitment among all citizens to the purposes and importance of national military readiness. “Participatory Democracy” is a phrase much used to convey the notion of a grass roots, citizen involvement in the political process that can revitalize people’s belief in free, representative government. In the same sense, citizen participation in the work-a-day world of the standing Army, Navy, and Air Force can inject a new vitality in the Reserve force, and at the same time impart a deeper sense of confidence among the general public in the military and its mission.
The Navy has been looking at this idea for some time, and has increasingly been experimenting with it in the last decade. Now, in Hawaii, it is receiving a full-scale trial. Within the next few months every naval reservist in the Fourteenth Naval District will be attached to a Reserve ship, unit, or division which, in turn, will be assigned both before and after mobilization to an element of the Pacific Fleet: a flotilla, division, force or other command which will be known as the “gaining command.” Each Reserve unit will devote most of its drill periods and active duty availability to active engagement in the work of its gaining command.
The term “gaining command” originated in the Naval Reserve Force Study of 1969, but the concept was rooted in earlier experience that showed that significant benefits accrue both to Reserves and Regulars where the Reserve unit relationship to an element of the regular force is established before mobilization and where they truly work together. The Seabees have been organized in this way ever since World War II, and the consequence has been high morale in the Reserve component, and mutual respect and communication between Regular and Reserve forces. Reserve Air Squadrons—the “Weekend Warriors”—have also been on the whole more closely involved in the work of their Regular Navy counterparts than have surface and sub surface reserve units. Naval Air Reservists have sometimes flown missions in real ASW operations and other Fleet actions. In the summer of 1971, four Reserve air groups made two-week cruises aboard two CVAs and two CVSs, conducting all types of operations, include some at night. These efforts have never failed to bring home men more “gung ho” than did routine training flights. As another example, since the early 1960s, the ASW Forces of both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets have had Reserve units attached which have worked with the active duty staffs in control of shipping in systems analyses of current operational problems. Similar islands of integrated Regular/Reserve cooperation have grown in other places as well.
The Naval Reserve Force Study contemplated the extension of the gaining command concept to the entire Naval Reserve. There are, however, some very real problems to be overcome before this goal can be completely realized. To cite a few obvious ones: How is a Reserve division in midcontinent to be integrated into the daily work of the Fleet? Can the Navy obtain true emergency responsiveness from Reserve elements where the regular force has been cut back in expectation of having the Reserve take up the slack? Can a Reserve commitment be made so attractive that the Naval Reserve can be maintained and strengthened even without the driving pressure of the draft?
There is evidence that the problems do have solutions, though they are not in every case apparent.
In Hawaii, a microcosm of the entire regular/reserve mix exists in relatively easily manageable proportion and in a situation where geographical problems are minimized. There is a compact reserve community within a similarly compact civilian community largely concentrated on Oahu, where the Pacific Fleet headquarters and the major base complex at Pearl Harbor are located. (But to parallel the midcontinent problem, a significant Naval Reserve community also exists in Hilo on the island of Hawaii nearly two hundred miles away.) Air bases, submarine and surface operating bases, an ammunition depot, a supply center, and a communication station all lie within easy reach to serve or be serviced by Reserve ships, aircraft or other Reserve dements. Nearly all the elements of the Regular Navy into which the Naval Reserve could be integrated lie within a 30-mile radius of Honolulu.
In this setting, the Regular Navy and the Naval Reserve are moving together to implement this challenging new experiment with the gaining command concept. The Pacific Fleet headquarters staff at Pearl Harbor is adding reserve augmenting units. Nearby subordinate Type Commands and the headquarters of the Anti-Submarine Warfare Force, Pacific Fleet are also readying for increased Reserve augmentation. But the important point is that every Reserve unit in the Fourteenth Naval District will soon become a working part of the Regular Navy’s Pacific operating forces.
In a wholly new Reserve program sponsored by the Commander of the Anti-Submarine Warfare Force, Pacific Fleet, reserve divisions at the Ford Island headquarters of ASWFor Pac, and deep in the underground Command center of the Hawaiian Sea Frontier, will provide weekend manning for the operational command and control centers that dispatch and control surface and air units in the cat-and-mouse game of “peacetime” tracking of potential foreign submarine threats.
Outside the quiet, air-conditioned tenseness of the command centers, the sunny offices of the ASWForPac staff headquarters are already filled on weekends with naval reservists who in their civilian capacities work as engineers, scientists, operations researchers, systems analysts, and computer experts. These Reservists assist the active duty staff in many areas, conducting analyses of the latest Fleet exercises, examining the effectiveness of new, experimental ASW tactics being tested out on Reserve flights, or responding to the latest question from the three-star office down the passageway. This ASW ForPac Reserve systems analysis division has been in operation for more than two years, and the results have been so successful that it is now serving as the model for a similar unit in support of yet another gaining command. CinCPacFlt, which, in the new scheme of things, is getting its own Reserve systems analysis division to shore up its overworked regular staff.
The roster of working Reserve units includes two Reserve minesweeper crews being readied to man two Reserve ocean minesweepers planned for assignment to Hawaii to be a functioning part of the Fleet Mine Warfare Force, but specifically assigned as minesweeping protection for the approaches to Pearl and Honolulu Harbors. A Reserve ship activation, maintenance, and repair unit will keep the minesweepers in good material condition and at the same time will aid in the between-yard availability maintenance of the Regular Navy vessels of Destroyer Flotilla Five.
A Reserve intelligence division is also being made a truly integral part of the Fleet Intelligence Center of the Pacific Fleet, and just a few hundred yards away, a Reserve fleet management assistance division working for the Commander Service Force, Pacific Fleet is being staffed with skilled management analysts who will move on Saturdays from their weekday businesses/industries in Honolulu to wrestle with the billion-dollar, far-flung business management problems of the Pacific Fleet.
The Reserve Seabee effort in Hawaii is being upgraded to full battalion level, enabling the Seabees to make an even greater contribution to base repair maintenance and construction in Hawaii. The Reserve Seabee effort, already well known on most of the bases in the state (as well as in Samoa where Seabees have helped the local government in the past), will be a significant element in keeping Hawaii naval bases in good order during the austere funding period that stretches ahead.
The staff offices for Reserve affairs at the Fourteenth Naval District headquarters are taking on the look of a corporate management office as requests for one-time Reserve assistance of all sorts flow in from local commands and transiting vessels. The word is spreading throughout the Pacific Fleet that Hawaii has a Naval Reserve no longer held in reserve, a force of Navy men who are using their Navy-learned and civilian-learned skills to reinforce the Navy in a meaningful way.
There is a sense of belonging, a sense of achievement, an excitement in the Naval Reserve community in Hawaii today which demonstrates that a new sense of commitment to national goals is indeed possible. When there is a clear and present job to be done, debate stops. Perhaps the Naval Reserve experiment now under way in Hawaii can become a model not just for the Navy, but for the nation.
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A graduate of Princeton University with the Class of 1941, Captain Meeker completed graduate work in engineering at Harvard after four years of active service with the Navy during World War II, largely in explosive ordnance disposal. Returned from the engineering faculty of Pennsylvania State University to active duty with the Bureau of Ordnance for two years during the Korean War. he afterward went to Hawaii as civilian Technical Director at the Navy’s Quality Evaluation and Engineering Laboratory there. He has recently commanded the Reserve Systems Analysis Division at ASWForPac and is now Group Commander for the Naval Reserve in the Fourteenth Naval District.