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Long since sailors became known as "Tars"— for the waterproof tar they applied to rigging and clothes—today’s Naval Reserve TARs face a stickier situation. The regular Navy threatens to take over these trainers and administrators of the reserve—today’s TARs.
By Rear Admiral F. Neale Smith, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
As the Navy undergoes the painful process of force reduction, approximately 2,100 training and administration of reserve (TAR) officers that serve the 125,000 drilling reservists (called Selected Reservists or SelRes) will likely come under close scrutiny. The inevitable question is, “Why not have regular Navy personnel manage the Naval Reserve, do away with the TAR officer program, and shift those reserve billets to the regular Navy?” This is a bad idea, but it will not be the first time it has come to light.
The TAR program was established in the early 1950s as a community of career active-duty reservists, officer and enlisted, with a training and administrative mission. The other services also use active-duty reservists—called active guard and reserve (AGR)—to support their reserve programs. The funding and end-strength authorization for TARs comes from the same account used for inactive duty drilling reservists, Reserve Personnel Navy (RPN). This is separate from the regular Navy active-duty account, Military Personnel Navy (MPN).
In the 1970s, the Navy attempted to eliminate the TAR program. The plan acknowledged the need for a few hundred reserve management billets to be filled by voluntarily recalled drilling reservists. But the thousands of other RPN billets filled by officer and enlisted TARs were to go to the regular Navy. The plan also provided for assimilation of most TARs into the regular Navy, but career potential for those individuals was questionable.
The Navy’s effort to do away with the TAR program generated strong congressional reaction, particularly from the House Appropriations Committee, and the plan was scrapped.
The drilling reserve community lent considerable support for the Navy’s plan. Many selected reservists were dissatisfied with the way the Naval Reserve was being run and held the TARs responsible. Others saw the TARs as insulating them from the regular Navy and the fleet >n which they had served. Both observations had merit.
Leadership and management of the post-Korean War Naval Reserve had been in the hands of the regular Navy and TARs. For years, the Naval Reserve was nothing more than a manpower pool, and even by the mid- 1970s the Navy had not established valid reserve mobilization requirements. Sponsors in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations had no sense of ownership l°r the reserve programs they funded. Individual reservists had no identity or association with the active- duty Navy. Drilling reservists could no longer command Naval Reserve ships; many had performed well when mobilized in the 1950s and 1960s. The Naval Air Reserve was flying obsolete aircraft that could not be supported by carriers.
Most reservists drilled one night a week at local Naval Reserve Training Centers where no training actually took Place, just unstructured lectures and old World War II films. For officers, those drills were paperwork exercises;
for enlisted, they were tedious and boring. Readiness was not in the Naval Reserve lexicon.
Naval Reserve leadership seemed concerned with only one thing: maintain end strength to justify funding levels. Reservists who had failed to meet minimum drill attendance requirements and should have been dropped from the rolls were still retained in drilling status and referred to as “ghosts.” Readiness training was just as much of a “ghost.” It was not a priority issue for resource sponsors or reserve leadership. The reserve was an ignored, underused asset of thousands of fleet-experienced veterans.
Yes, some efforts on the part of some officers, senior petty officers, TARs, and drilling reservists to provide meaningful training were valiant, but futile. Their success was limited, because neither leadership interest nor infrastructure support were there to maintain their efforts.
Even after promulgation of the Department of Defense Total Force Policy in 1973—and as late as 1979—the Naval Reserve was so poorly defined and unorganized, that DoD called for the reduction of the Naval Reserve from what had been 129,000 to 48,000, and eventually 25,000. The Navy had still not identified valid mobilization requirements.
It is understandable, then, that the drilling reservists were disillusioned, and the apparent cause was the failure of the TARs to perform their mission: to train and administer the reserve.
But the failure to structure, equip, train, fund, and maintain a capable and ready Naval Reserve was a failure of Navy leadership, not of the TARs.
The Naval Air Reserve had obsolete equipment, because the Navy had not provided fleet-compatible aircraft. Most of the Naval Reserve was nonaviation and the responsibility of the Naval District Commandants. The TARs worked for the Commandants and were not without fault. But they were the instruments of the failure rather than the cause.
That was the situation well into the 1970s, when the unsuccessful effort to do away with the TARs added to the turmoil in the Naval Reserve and aggravated the existing friction between drilling reservists, TARs, and the regular Navy.
Having survived disestablishment, many TARs developed a community siege mentality and became an informal “TAR Protective Association.” Some tried to paint themselves as regular Navy, refused to wear the Armed Forces Reserve ribbon, and adopted the motto, “being a TAR would be OK if you didn’t have to deal with those drilling reservists.” Some, distorting their role, acted as if the Naval Reserve belonged to the TARs and became a barrier between the drilling reservists and the regular Navy. TARs excluded drilling reservists from management positions in the Naval Reserve and gave them no voice in how the Naval Reserve should function.
Leadership in the TAR community had forgotten its
function, which was apparent to the drilling reservists. The TARs had alienated their constituency. Anti-TAR attitudes were prevalent among SelRes officers, particularly the SelRes flag officers who had served for years as drilling reservists in this environment.
Those who saw the TARs as the bad guys, saw the solution as a Naval Reserve managed by the regular Navy. But the regular Navy had been running the Naval Reserve all the time. For 30 years, the Commanders Naval Reserve Training, Commanders Air Reserve Training, and District Commandants had all been regular officers. And many of the officers on their staffs had been regular officers.
Was the TAR program the real problem? Was it the whole problem?
For most of those years the Navy had shouldered severe funding shortfalls. New ship construction was virtually nonexistent. Experienced personnel were leaving active duty. Added to those circumstances, a Naval Reserve that was not mobilized when needed during Vietnam was not a high priority to the regular Navy. Right or wrong, the Navy appeared willing to stand by and let DoD do away with the Naval Reserve.
But that is history. Today, we have a different, strong, ready, and accessible Naval Reserve. Today, we have a different and better TAR program.
Today’s TAR leadership understands its role and is directing its community to perform its primary mission, to train and administer the Naval Reserve. TAR officer accessions are top quality. Only promotionally competitive officers are accepted into the TAR program. Unrestricted line TARs must be warfare-qualified. They hone those warfare skills in the reserve squadrons, on board reserve ships, and in fleet assignments. They are professional naval officers.
As an example, surface warfare TAR officers (designator 1117) screen for and attend Department Head School. They compete with their Navy counterparts for afloat executive officer, commanding officer, and major command assignments. They serve in all capacities on both Naval Reserve Force and fleet ships. The success rates for TAR officers in this intense career progression is equal to that of their 1110 Navy counterparts. At any one time, half of the Navy’s surface warfare TAR officers are serving at sea and rotating ashore to billets in the reserve program. The day of the “dry” or shore-duty TAR officer is past.
When rotated ashore, their duty assignments involve managing the different and complex reserve programs. They understand the drilling reservists, and they are the only full-time reserve advocates in the Pentagon, the Annex, and on major staffs throughout the Navy. They are the people who come forward in sometimes unfriendly environments and ask the question: “How about the Reserve?” That is their job, and if they are not there, no one else will ask that question, and the Naval Reserve will suffer.
Regular officers could not carry out that advocacy role. Even in a reserve billet, their ultimate allegiance is to their regular Navy warfare community sponsor. Their next assignments and their careers depend on that allegiance. Only TARs have allegiance to the reserve within those warfare communities.
Eight years ago, when the Navy was under congressional heat for failure to make proper use of its reserve, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations directed that officers be assigned to all major staffs in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations as reserve cognizant officers.
Nearly all of those assigned were TARs and reported directly to the appropriate deputy or director, as a reserve adviser. They are tough billets, but those TARs have been very effective players in getting reserve programs approved and maintained. Without their strong reserve advocacy, many of those programs would not be funded. Now, in these days of cutbacks and reduced budgets, those TAR cognizant officers are needed to help retain valid reserve programs.
Nearly all of the military personnel on the staff of the Director of the Naval Reserve (OP-095) are TARs. Properly led and supported, they have been first-team quality and as professionally effective as any military staff personnel in the Pentagon. Naval Reserve program growth and funding support proves their performance.
Most drilling reservists do not see the TARs performing these jobs. They naively think that the regular Navy loves its reserve and takes care of it. They fail to understand that the Naval Reserve, like all other programs, warfare communities, and systems, must have knowledgeable, tough, dedicated advocates to make their case, get funding, and produce results. The Naval Reserve, and ultimately the Navy, are the beneficiaries of their efforts.
SelRes serving with TARs form an integral part of Naval Reserve leadership and management. Some volunteer for active-duty reserve billets for two to four years. Most of those billets are on the Washington and New Orleans staffs, but voluntarily recalled SelRes have also been Readiness Commander and Reserve Center commanding officers. Other SelRes in a drilling status serve as readiness commanders, group commanders, squadron commanders, and on various staffs. The SelRes and TAR career reserve professionals add a constituent ingredient for a strong team.
The present system of using TARs is also efficient. The selected reserve grew by nearly 50% over the last decade, yet there was virtually no real increase in management and administrative billets to support that growth. Nearly all TAR growth came in operational billets in reserve squadrons and ships.
During that same time, the mode of SelRes training, particularly in the surface reserve, changed completely- No longer was it “all hands on the drill deck four times a day.” The focus of reserve training shifted from the local Reserve Center to the active-duty gaining command. Reservists were training where they would mobilize or in comparable situations in the fleet. Coordination and support for thousands of reservists traveling to and training at active-duty sites every weekend throughout the year was enormous but generally taken for granted.
It was impossible for the active-duty gaining commands to provide that coordination and support. The Naval Re' serve—primarily TARs but with some SelRes help—did it. They handled the management and administration load involved in both the force growth and the change-in-training mode with no additional people.
Changes in TAR community management in recent years have made it more effective, and it continues to improve. TARs have started to share reserve management with the SelRes. TAR leadership is seeing to it that the entire TAR community understands the reason for its existence, performs its mission to train and administer the reserve, carries out its role as full-time advocate for the Naval Reserve, and knows that the best barometer of its performance—which goes back to the sponsors who provide the funding—is SelRes readiness. No longer are echelon IV Readiness Commands geographical retirement positions for senior TAR captains. No longer are inexperienced, first-tour TAR junior officers routinely given command of Naval Reserve Centers. No longer does TAR leadership abdicate TAR community personnel management to an 0-6 detailer.
But even with these improvements, some things still have to be done. The Commander Naval Reserve Force staff in New Orleans must focus on service to the type commanders (i.e., Naval Air Reserve Force and Naval Surface Reserve Force). All TAR officers and enlisted personnel must constantly remind themselves that the drilling reservists are their constituents, and that they are the reason for a TAR program. TARs must persevere as facilitators—not insulators—between drilling reservists and their active-duty gaining commands. TAR leadership must maintain the initiative to share more reserve management with the SelRes.
With TARs and SelRes in leadership positions, the Naval Reserve has developed into a combat-capable force. Readiness is the name of the game, and that readiness has been validated. The inaccessible reserve forces of Vietnam evolved into the accessible reserve forces of Operation Desert Storm, when 20,000 Naval Reservists mobilized, with only six no-shows. They were ready and they did their job.
The Naval Reserve offers the Navy an opportunity to retain areas of force structure that it might otherwise lose in active-duty force reductions. For the Naval Reserve to continue as a viable part of the Navy’s total force, it must successfully compete for resources within the Navy. It ntust have a strong advocacy in an institutional regular Navy environment that too often sees the Naval Reserve as a threat to active-duty force structure and dollars spent °n the reserve as money taken from the fleet. TARs must carry out that advocacy role.
Some have suggested that the TAR program could be eliminated and a “reserve subspecialty” could be established for regular officers. But who is kidding whom? In no way would that be considered professionally mainstream, and in no way could a second and third reserve tour enhance an officer’s career.
The Navy needs career personnel dedicated to reserve Management. The Naval Reserve is different. It has its Mvn personnel, operations, and maintenance funding lines. The Director of Naval Reserve (OP-095) is neither a pro-
gram nor resource sponsor. Rather, the director depends on them for funding while serving as an assessment sponsor for reserve programs. Reservists are in a different pay system, have different training needs, and require a de- mographically different support system. As part-time sailors, they must be dovetailed into the fleet and active-duty commands without being full-time participants.
Managing such a program requires people who know how the reserve works and who dedicate their professional careers to making it work. Spell those people T-A-R.
Rear Admiral Smith is the only reservist and only surface warfare officer to have commanded the Naval Reserve. Following his initial active-duty tour as chief engineer of the USS Gherardi (DMS-30). he served 27 years as a drilling reservist. In 1984 he was voluntarily recalled to active duty as Deputy Director of the Naval Reserve, and in 1987 was named Chief of the Naval Reserve. He retired in 1989.