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By Captain Harlan B. Miller, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
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Well, for one thing, the Naval Reserve personnel pyramid is upside down, with too much rank at the top. This “grade creep,” like other problems, is an exaggerated reflection of difficulties in the active-duty Navy. *erhaps it’s time to turn “Reserve” into a status, instead of an organization.
Today’s Naval Reserve has much reason to be proud. Certainly, the Naval Reserve from which I retired in 1986 was far more effective, efficient, and rationally organized than the Reserve I joined in 1962, when I left the regular Navy. But a number of serious problems impair the Reserve’s effectiveness, depress reservists’ morale, and dramatically limit the Reserve’s value as a resource for the active-duty Navy.
Some of the Reserve’s problems are exaggerated forms of similar problems in the active-duty Navy. High rates of personnel turnover ensure that one is always behind in training. The need to play catch-up in training also contributes to a paperwork blizzard. The administrative over-
head of a typical Reserve unit is immense. A year’s worth of fitness reports, evaluations, inspections, medical examinations, advancement examinations, general military training, physical fitness testing, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports, and so on, must be compressed into 24 working days. Unsurprisingly, reservists have to do a lot of the work at home, and “gundecking” is not unheard of. To parody an old Reserve recruiting slogan (“What was good in the Navy is great in the Naval Reserve”), one might say that what’s bad in the Navy is worse in the Naval Reserve.
One of the causes of personnel turnover is excessive seniority. This is also a problem in the active-duty Navy, especially among the officers, where it is politely called grade creep. 1 was once a member of a large Reserve unit with 25 officer billets. All were filled. There were 3 commanders, including the commanding and executive officers, 2 lieutenants, 1 lieutenant (junior grade), and 20 lieutenant commanders.
It is interesting to compare the administrative solutions to the Reserve problem of excessive seniority and the less serious active-duty problem of grade creep. There always seems to be room, perhaps with some gnashing of teeth, in Washington or someplace else ashore for another commander or captain. But in the Reserve the solution is much simpler. One who is promoted in the Naval Reserve, often to lieutenant commander, and almost always to commander or captain, is effectively told, “Congratulations, you’re fired.” Perversely, it is better to be passed over the first time up for promotion. One failure of selection generally does not endanger an officer’s pay billet.
Members of other Reserve components often express astonishment when they encounter the Naval Reserve’s nonpay drillers and nonpay units. The threat of nonpay hangs over every officer of the rank of lieutenant or above, depressing morale and sometimes encouraging inappropriate maneuvers to ingratiate oneself with the billet-assigning powers that be. Many, perhaps the most rational, just quit. Others hang on for years in nonpay.
Reserve Centers typically have at least one Volunteer Training Unit (VTU) to which are assigned reservists for whom no pay billet can be found. At large drilling sites, such as the Naval Air Reserve commands at air stations, the VTUs are often “elephant graveyards” where sizable herds of the many-striped wait out their days, some of them with hope of a future pay billet. VTUs often provide important services to pay units, but they are inherently dreary and depressing organizations lacking any real missions. A long-term Naval Reserve officer can avoid serving in nonpay only by miraculous luck or astounding connections. (I spent something more than seven years in nonpay drill status, once for a three-year stretch, and I was more fortunate than many others.)
As the survivors become more and more senior, their value to the active-duty forces decreases. Eventually one is senior to most ship commanding officers and cannot reasonably go to sea except on a large staff. But most staffs and ships and shore commands do not really need more captains and commanders. They could use a good lieutenant or two. Senior reservists are generally treated
politely and assigned some type of study that will keep them from getting underfoot.
The statute that ties together regular Navy and Naval Reserve promotion zones by means of the running-mate system also makes the boundary between the active and reserve forces a semipermeable membrane for individual officers. For example:
Two officers, A and B, are commissioned on the same date, and promoted together to lieutenant (junior grade). Two years later, A decides to leave active duty. He resigns from the regular Navy, is commissioned in the Naval Reserve with the same date of rank, is released, and affiliates with the Ready Reserves. He continues to drill and perform annual active duty for training (AT) as he progresses in, let us suppose, the world of banking. But six years later, even though he has become a junior vice president, A concludes that nothing else is as satisfying as naval operations. A, now a lieutenant commander, would like to get back in the regular Navy. But, for all practical purposes, he cannot. Officially, A and B are still peers, perhaps even legal running mates. But for six years B has been in the fleet, or on joint assignments, or whatever, and A has been on active duty a total of no more than 84 days, with another 144 days spent in a Reserve Center. A is now only slightly more competitive with B in the fleet than B would be with A at the bank. You can go out, but you can’t come back.
This is not just a problem for A and hundreds like him. It marks substantial institutional inflexibility. The Navy cannot transfer personnel resources from one category to another and back again as needed. It is just not possible to move significant capabilities to a lower level of readiness and have complete confidence in their availability later. The hardware may keep, but the people will not. The Navy’s budget will be cut in the next few years. Strengths that cannot somehow be retained in the Reserve must either be bought at full price or lost completely.
We cannot retain strengths in the Reserve unless we get the right people into the right billets. This is never an easy job, and the unit/Reserve Center system makes it nearly impossible. Individual reservists with active-duty experience are scattered across the country by considerations of family, job, education, and so on—which the Navy cannot control, or even influence. Reserve units are assigned to centers in particular locations in accordance with the (estimated) number of potential drilling reservists. But no center could possibly have units with billets for every rank and rate being released from active duty. Further, many sizable towns do not have Naval Reserve Centers.
Therefore, many newly released service members never affiliate with the Reserve in a drilling status. Many that do find that there are no billets in their specialties at any reasonably accessible Reserve Center. At present men and women with skills badly needed in units in Omaha mark time in Atlanta drinking coffee, watching films, and finally leaving in disgust. Others travel great distances for assignments. Some of these travelers, in the Naval Air Reserve and associated programs, are provided with government transportation, which is notoriously unreliable. Others travel at their own expense, sometimes great dis-
tonces. I drove a bit more than 600 miles round-trip every ^onth for three years to drill in nonpay. That is not a record either for distance or for duration of travel for a nonpay driller. Still, it is too much to ask.
Even when a Naval Reserve unit is fully manned with competent personnel of the appropriate grades, each assigned a significant mobilization billet at the gaining command, the present system imposes great costs. The effort °f maintaining the organizational structure of the unit and lhe higher echelons of command absorb substantial quantities of time and attention.
It is time to ask a deeper question. We are probably administering Naval Reserve units about as efficiently as Possible given the current organizational framework. Should we be doing it at all?
Toward Solutions
Why is officer promotion in the Naval Reserve so unlike officer promotion in, say, the Army Reserve? The answer is quite simple. By law Naval Reserve officers are assigned regular Navy running mates and become eligible tor promotion at the same time as these running mates.
I have never understood the rationale for this arrangement. For some of the affected reservists it produces the pleasures and (limited) perquisites of high rank. When retirement pay finally begins at age 60 it will be at a high pay grade. The up-or-out system forces others out when they twice fail selection. Both those promoted and those not promoted must leave the jobs they have mastered and may well have enjoyed.
But it is not clear that even the “winners” in the present system are as well off financially and psychologically as those who play the different game in the other services. Recently, I renewed the acquaintance of a high school classmate. He joined the National Guard while in college. When we met again I had just retired from the Ready Reserve rather than serve in a make-work nonpay billet with little prospect of future assignment. He, in contrast, was serving in a pay billet as he had been for more than 30 years. Further, he had every prospect of continuing in such a billet until retirement at age 60. He had not the slightest doubt that he knew his job as well as any active- duty officer in the same specialty. His pay grade is W-4, mine the more exalted 0-6. But his total remuneration and monthly retirement pay will be higher than mine. Quite likely, the difference is entirely proper—over the years, he has probably contributed more to the nation’s military readiness.
Let us set aside the question of pay. (We should be able to do this if we can assume, as does the Navy’s policy concerning paying reservists, that it is not deeply insulting to be expected to work for nothing.) There are certainly rewards for those of us who “succeeded” under the present system. We have caps with braid on the brim, better parking spaces at the exchange, sometimes better rooms in the bachelor officers’ quarters, and impressive abbreviations under our signatures. But it is not at all obvious that these goodies compare to the deep satisfaction of knowing one’s job and knowing that one knows it.
The present promotion system for Naval Reserve officers impedes readiness, shortchanges individuals, and helps no one but the insignia manufacturers. We must change it, but just how we should change it is not clear. Perhaps promotions should be limited to the numbers actually needed to fill billets. Or perhaps some formula could be used to convert Reserve time to equivalent active-duty time. Suppose that for each year in the Naval Reserve one’s equivalent time in grade were extended by six months. Selecting the right method will require careful study of the alternatives and of their effects on individuals and on the relation of active and Reserve components.
One of the relevant factors is the need to make the semipermeable membrane between the Naval Reserve and the regular Navy fully permeable. We need a system in which individuals can move more freely from active to Reserve status and back again. Slowing and readjusting the Naval Reserve promotion escalator will achieve part of this goal. In addition, individual reservists must be able to learn, practice, and maintain the skills they need in active-duty billets. They must not be occupied by the maintenance of unnecessary organizational structures.
Further, we need to repeal the legal requirement that one serve the last eight years in the Naval Reserve in order to be eligible for Reserve retirement. In fact, it would make better sense to adopt a version of the present Reserve
The Selected Reserve: The Peace Dividend
The Navy of the 1990s cannot operate on a business as usual philosophy. To meet national and budget requirements, it must reduce overhead expenses and increase productivity. With fewer bodies, the Navy will need the Selected Reserve (SELRES) to support normal as well as crisis situations. The watchwords for SELRES in the 1990s and beyond must include routine augmentation of active forces as well as mobilization readiness.
To answer the call, the Reserve must focus its personnel on peacetime as well as wartime active-duty functions. I propose the following changes.
Organization
Integrated Command: Get rid of the separate-but-equal unit structure. Under the one-Navy concept, units are part of the gaining command. Make them a detachment or department and let the gaining commands provide required administrative support. This action reduces SELRES command structure overhead and allows units to focus
By Robert D. Helsel
on operations and production.
Officers-in-Charge (OIC) in Place of Commanding Officers (COs): Make current unit COs OlCs of detachments or department heads and have them report directly to the gaining command CO. This action reduces the size and hence the cost of Reserve management staffs required by Commander, Naval Reserve Surface Forces and Commander, Naval Reserve Air Forces and their respective regional and area commanders.
Budget: Give the gaining commands budget responsibility and authority for their SELRES instead of Chief, Naval Reserve Force. This action would reduce Reserve overhead for budget preparation by the Director, Naval Reserve.
Stay in Place: Keep officer and enlisted SELRES personnel with one unit for at least six years (and preferably ten years) before rotation. The longer they stay, the more they know. The more they know, the more they can teach to both new reservists and the more frequently rotating active-duty personnel. Corporate memory has value, and fewer rotations equal less paperwork. Personnel
The SELRES officer corps has the experts who can train and manage others in specific operational and technical functions, whether it be flying an aircraft, programming a computer, or staffing a Joint Chiefs of Staff paper. If the SELRES program is to maximize its current contribution, then it should consider restructuring its officer corps to be more like the active-duty limited duty officer program: leaders and doers. This limited-duty or single-function approach would provide the Navy with a cadre of operational and technical experts at both officer and enlisted levels, who have value at mobilization and just as much value now for routine augmentation.
For this approach to be effective, the Navy must allow its SELRES officers to use their talents and grade them accordingly. For example, if a SELRES officer is a professional commercial pilot, do not make him take a desk job just because
retirement formula for everyone. A system based on days of active duty plus the various points collected while in a Reserve status would both reduce overall cost to the government and increase the rewards of those who served long periods of active duty.
Let service members, active or Reserve, become eligible for retirement pay when they have collected time on active duty plus Reserve points equivalent to 20 years active duty, or reach age 60, whichever comes first. The costs in higher retirement stipends for some would easily be covered by the savings in training resulting from lower turnover.
Both a cause and an effect of decreasing the training load and the promotion-driven turnover would be keeping reservists in billets long enough for them to learn their jobs.
Accompanying these changes in personnel policies should be a series of organizational changes, which would sharply reduce the time, money, and structure dedicated to the Naval Reserve as an organization.
First, we should abolish all Reserve units that do not mobilize as commands. We should avoid as much as possible the costs in money, time, and attention of administering organizations that would form no part of our order of battle. For example, we should retain the construction battalions, patrol squadrons, small boat units, and mobile mine assembly groups, which would mobilize and serve as units. But we should abolish augmentation units and assign individuals directly to the gaining command. We should scrap units that neither augment nor mobilize, unless some special case can be made for them. The Readiness unit program has provided some valuable steps in this direction; it has sharply decreased the numbers of reservists who must dedicate large parts of their time to unit
he needs his “ticket punched” for promotion; let him fly and hain others to do so. Education, training, and continuity are keys to personnel readiness. A leaner Naval Reserve must capitalize on the leadership and management skills gained by its people outside the military:
If this modification goes into effect, the Navy could take several actions to improve the effectiveness and cost efficiency of SELRES personnel.
Reduce the Number of SELRES Senior Officer Billets (05106): Drop the running mate concept for SELRES officer promotion. There is nothing wrong with ten-year lieutenants and ten-year lieutenant commanders; after all, ten years of 48 drills per year is only a little more than one full-time man-year.
How many lieutenants are ready for promotion after only one year? In the event partial, full, or total mobilization should oecur use lineal numbers to match SELRES officers to their active-duty counterpart’s grade. Use the savings to keep additional junior officer billets.
Evaluate on Performance: Let the gaining command CO evaluate his SELRES department head/OIC and his officers based on the department/detachment’s mobilization readiness and its direct contribution to the command’s operational mission. This action places the emphasis on operational performance and underscores the functional skills of the SELRES officers.
Rotate Officer Positions Within the Unit: Scrap the idea that frequent change broadens the SELRES officer. Unit change can enhance management knowledge but it also can dilute technical skilis. Let the senior unit officers exchange duty assignments over the course of their tour. This action provides leadership responsibility and still keeps each officer technically proficient.
Reward SELRES Enlisted Performance (E4-E6): It is just as hard to train and retain qualified technicians and technical supervisors in the SELRES as it is on active duty. Use part of the pay savings from the reduction in senior officer billets to provide cash awards for outstanding performance.
Application_______
Emphasize Performance: Proposed organizational and personnel changes will reduce SELRES administrative time. Use the additional drill time to master the technical functions and perform the operational mission. Units that drill in their gaining command spaces will be able to perform meaningful tasks more easily than units that drill at other locations. But off-site units are and should be tasked to accomplish meaningful tasks for the gaining command. No more “Victory at Sea” movies.
Mobilization Billets for Active-Duty Personnel: Assign active-duty personnel in shore staff positions mobilization billets with the fleet and use the SELRES to relieve them in crisis situations. When the Navy needs crisis manning, it needs it at sea. The active-duty officer or enlisted who recently left a ship or squadron for his shore tour is more attuned and probably better prepared to re-man than most SELRES. Remember, they also serve who only push paper.
Relieve Active-Duty Personnel Regularly: Schedule and use regular active training periods to learn and perform. Let the active-duty personnel take leave, attend school, or go on an operation. Special augmentation is successful only if routinely practiced.
Mr. Helsel is a commander in the Selected Reserve.
administration. But we can and should go much further.
If we assign individual reservists directly to commands they need not drill at all. Such reservists would be authorized to perform at least four weeks of AT per year at the command to which they are attached or at appropriate schools. A carrier simply would be assigned a number ol personnel who are in Reserve status. For such reservists the Naval Reserve would not be an organization intervening between them and their ship—but rather a supporting organization providing ombudsman services when needed and perhaps backup “ticket-punching” services at Reserve Centers for such matters as physical examinations and general military training when they had missed them on active duty. After years of resistance the Naval Reserve is finally making limited use of the category of Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), which assigns individuals directly to gaining commands. IRR status should be much more common, with both funding and requirements for increased but flexible AT.
We should be able to reduce the number of drilling units and the number of Reserve Centers. In fact, we might not need any drilling Reserve units at all. For the model 1 am proposing the difference between an active ship or squadron and a Reserve ship or squadron is that the active command has a large number of active-duty personnel and relatively few Reserve personnel and the Reserve command has the reverse. If we abandon drills and operate our Reserve commands with a mixture of assigned active-duty personnel and those on active duty for training they would be distinguished from other commands only by a lower level and a more uneven tempo of operations. A ship in Reserve status might be assigned 20% of its complement in active-duty personnel and 160% to 320% (or more) in Reserve personnel. In the event of general mobilization, personnel beyond requirements would be assigned to newly built, acquired, or reactivated ships. In normal times coordinated periods of AT would provide adequate manning for substantial scheduled operations.
With this arrangement one need not choose between two extreme states of readiness, one very high and expensive, the other much lower. The Navy could maintain ships or squadrons at intermediate levels with varying mixes of active/Reserve manning. This kind of flexibility could provide attractive alternatives to decreasing real operating budgets.
If we assign individuals directly to gaining commands, without being tied to a Reserve unit and a Reserve Center, we can make the assignments on the basis of skills and needs, not the accidents of geography. This move alone would enormously increase the Naval Reserve’s contribution to readiness, as well as ameliorating misassignment and travel problems. Traveling to AT twice a year (and getting paid for it) is much less onerous than traveling to drills every month (and not getting paid for it).
I have compared the Naval Reserve unfavorably to other Reserve components of the armed forces. Navies are unlike armies and air forces in that their primary hardware does not lend itself to distribution about the country. We can have infantry battalions in Kansas and fighter squadrons in Ohio, but destroyer divisions and amphibious groups cannot be homeported in Colorado or West Virginia. But we can profitably learn from the experience of the National Guard and the other Reserves. We are different, and we can be better.
The NRF Has More to Offer
Squadrons are made up of both active-duty and Naval Reserve Force (NRF) ships. This causes an inordinate strain on all concerned; as the NRF expands and missions are more clearly defined, a dedicated squadron advocate will become a necessity. Even as things stand today, many of the specialized problems could be handled by an echelon-four staff manned with training and administration of the Naval Reserve (TAR) personnel.
A simple example can be found in the scheduling of NRF ships. With a unified squadron scheduler, drill weekends could be turned into multiship two-day exercises, interacting with Naval Reserve helicopters, P-3s, and submarine/surface targets of opportunity. Although this occurs to a certain extent now (driven in the Northeast by Surface Group Four, for instance), the NRF ship schedules are not written toward this goal, nor is there any systematic use of available weekend assets. A reserve ship squadron participating in quarterly scheduling conferences on an equal footing with its active- duty counterpart could plan for area selected reserve (SelRes) training, rather than fitting the reservists into existing ship schedules.
A unified response to several of the NRF’s problems could be coordinated at the echelon-four level and, in some cases, solved. Specifically:
- Personnel Assignment Coordination: A single advocate with a multi-ship perspective could offer assistance. Without the distractions of active-duty deployment cycles, a squadron could close the communication gap for several ships at once. The drawdown cycle is a new challenge for each ship that must face it without prior experience; this is compounded by a lack of real assistance from the regular Navy squadron.
- Officer!Enlisted TAR Training: Some sort of course with minimum competency requirements (Commander Naval Education and Training standards) should be developed to make the TAR community a more consistently knowledgeable specialty. This is in progress at the Naval Reserve Readiness Command/Reserve Center level with the Training Evaluation Board, but it is not extended to shipboard TARs. Echelon-four evaluation and analysis of minimum requirements to effectively administer the SelRes program on NRF ships could develop into a minimum requirement to become a TAR and/or to advance within the designator. This would greatly enhance the active- reserve relationship.
► SelRes Logistics!Administrative Support: The resolution of difficulties inherent in tracking, training, and paying someone who is on liberty 28 days per month falls directly on the NRF and, in the case of tracking and paying, flows rapidly downhill to the personnelman first class and yeoman first class, who have active-duty sailors and executive officers clamoring for attention during those 28 days. Different solutions have been tried at the Readiness Commands that own Reserve Centers providing SelRes to NRF ships, but none would approach the effectiveness of a dedicated NRF squadron. Someone has to be accountable for a SelRes at all times (just like active duty), and ships, especially those in the NRF, tend to get under way on short notice or have to respond to events beyond their control (such as a surprise operational propulsion plant examination). When this occurs, both the Reserve Center and the Naval Reserve Readiness Command are frequently too far removed to provide any meaningful assis-
Why is the organizational paradigm lor our Reserve components centered around the drill? My half-informed speculation is that the drill was imprinted on the Reserves at birth, like Mother on a just-hatched gosling. The local militia drilled, and it is from the militia that our present Reserve organizations were born. But the local militia was local both in composition and in responsibilities, mobilized as a unit, and served significant social and political Purposes as well as military ones. The Naval Reserve s Purposes do not at all correspond to those of the old county militia.
Perhaps the weekend militia drill is still a good model for the National Guard, which has some significant similarities to the old militia. But it is not, and probably nevei has been, the proper model for the Naval Reserve.
It is time to dump the drill. In (act, it is time to dump the Naval Reserve. We should do away with “the Reserve” and make “Reserve” a status, not an organization. We can be one Navy, a better, stronger, happier, yet smaller and cheaper Navy.
Captain Miller currently teaches philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He was commissioned through the NROTC program at the University of Virginia. Alter three years in the Pacific Fleet amphibious force he left active duty and earned AM and PhD degrees. He served 12 tours of varying length in nine different Reserve units and commanded Fleet Intelligence Training Center Atlantic Unit 0107 and Defense Intelligence Headquarters Unit 0307.
. By Lieutenant Commander William D. Schubert, Jr., U.S. Naval Reserve
tance, and the SelRes falls in the gap. An NRF squadron Would be in a perfect position to Predict, insofar as possible, perturbations in an individual ship’s schedule. Such a squadron could smooth the transition to an alternate plan.
The most difficult problem is operations control. Whose orders do I execute? From whom do I take direction? To whom do I report? This is the core of military life: a clear, disciplined organization that prepares for the chaos of battle or violence of the elements. Neither the ship, dictated to by both Navy and Naval Reserve Force upper echelons, nor the SelRes, whose travel and pay arrangements come from the reserve side and from the ship commanding officer, is clear just who ultimately controls their careers. This is as political a hot potato as there has ever been. Someone at the very top has to decide what the potential is for the NRF. Which is the best organization to accomplish the mission? Stretching the reservist and the ship between two camps is unfair and an extraordinary waste of assets in these times when newspaper headlines scream cutbacks.
Few realize the untapped potential of NRF ships. 1 was assigned to a ship toward the end of her first year of conversion to NRF status, when the personnel crunch was just being felt. There was a good deal of animosity toward the weekend warriors; this continued for the first eight or nine months of my tour.
Then something changed. The ship seemed to adjust to the new reality. The crew hadn’t really turned over, but SelRes/active- duty interactions seemed to be more productive. 1 was walking along the pier looking at the ship one Saturday afternoon on a drill weekend when 1 saw five boatswain’s mates working on the dipped anchor. They were in appropriate safety gear, correctly painting haze gray on the properly prepared anchor. They were obviously enjoying the work and doing it well. Not one was active duty. A second-class SelRes was supervising and doing it well. It occurred to me that the ship had made a successful progression that day—it was the first time an unsupervised SelRes team was given a major project. The active-duty deck force, having just returned from a long exercise with many tiring underway replenishments and a lot of long watches, was being relieved of an odious, oft- repeated task.
Naval Reserve personnel should be supported with clear, concise directions and goals, with training and administrative assistance, with upper-level communication and policies. We should unite—SelRes and active duty—to become a central part of the next century’s Navy.
Lieutenant Commander Schubert is director of administration at Naval Reserve Readiness Command Eight.