Only the active P-3 forces flew in support of combat operations in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq because the reserve component was neither equipped nor trained for such operations.
The disparity between active and reserve maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft (MPRA) capabilities is an outgrowth of the fiscal limitations inherent in the introduction of the P-3 Aircraft Improvement Program (AIP). The active P-3 fleet took the steps necessary to implement the AIP upgrade as best it could. The reserves, instead of biting the bullet and sharing active assets, maintained a policy of operating their own equipment. This decision reflected the reserve's oft-stated intention of maintaining a "distinct identity." The new Fleet Response Plan's requirements, however, demand that MPRA force have one active-reserve identity.
During the Cold War when the Navy's objective was sea control through the application of antisubmarine warfare (ASW), the reserve patrol (VP) force served well. In the last 11 years, however, the active VP force has evolved, integrating the new AIP sensors and weapons into normal squadron operations and employing this state-of-the-art sensor suite in antisurface warfare and ASW. With these new sensors the active force expanded the scope of its traditional overwater surveillance missions into the overland environments of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq in response to holes discovered in the fabric of the joint force's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance blanket. These sojourns outside of traditional VP warfare areas have confused many of the discussions surrounding the future of the MPRA community and obscure the current difficulties between the active and reserve forces.
Budgetary restrictions inherent in the fiscal climate of the 1990s, a reserve force aircraft inventory that was too small to support the AIP transition schedule, and the reserve force's consistent commitment to training only with its own equipment resulted in the active force procuring only enough AIP kits to upgrade less than half of its fleet, and the reserves purchasing only two kits. Ultimately, this lack of investment in the leading edge of technological development for the MPRA community has resulted in the active force being unable to call upon its reserves to support the missions assigned to the MPRA community by the theater combatant commanders. The close relationship that characterized the active and reserve MPRA forces throughout the Cold War has disintegrated.
Creative Manning
A telling indicator of a growing chasm between MPRA active and reserve infrastructures centers on the reserves' manning of key crew components. Active squadrons work hard to fill certain crew positions; flight engineers, inflight technicians, and radar operators are the most difficult to fill because of the long periods of training and extensive qualifications required for these crew positions.
Throughout the post-Cold War downsizing the reserve forces contended that the only way to sell reserve MPRA reductions to Congress was to simultaneously cut the active force. This approach was short sighted. This "equal pain" plan has had two effects. One, it forced all modernization dollars into the active component to offset force structure reductions and ensure a valid warfighting return on the dollar. Two, it reduced the reserves' main source for recruitment, the active component. When the active force drew down from 24 to 12 squadrons and the reserves came from 12 to 7, active force managers, using the historical data, informed the reserve community that it would be unable to continue to fill its crew rosters from the active force attritions. There would just not be enough people leaving active duty to meet the long-term needs of seven reserve squadrons. Still, the reserves pushed forward. To overcome this problem the reserves had to rely on some rather senior operators, misuse of the full-time support (FTS) community (formerly know as TARs), and operate with a lot of vacant billets.
An examination of current rosters in the reserve squadrons reveals one word repeated over and over: "commander." The 12 active P-3 squadrons and the 2 special projects patrol squadrons have 28 commanders assigned. The seven reserve squadrons have more than 150 commanders (and about a half dozen captains). Many of these reserve officers were affected by the 50% draw down of active-duty squadrons a decade ago. These officers are to be commended because when the active force told them it did not have room for them, they continued to serve in the reserves. As the decade passed, they were promoted, achieving their present ranks, but leaving the reserve MPA force with commanders flying in lieutenant and lieutenant commander billets. While this has not been an issue because you must use what you have, what do you do when you no longer have these officers? In five years, most of these officers will have retired, and the demographic models predict that there will not be enough direct accessions from the active force to meet the manning requirements.
The reserves have begun addressing this shortfall from a very troubling source: FTS personnel. FTSs, full-time duty reserve personnel assigned to the reserve force to provide a training cadre and administrative core, were intended to comprise 15-20% of the reserve force. There is something wrong with a manning model that must take large numbers of active-duty personnel to man reserve commands. Yet, if you look at rosters in VP reserve squadrons, you will find that in the previously mentioned key crew billets, FTS sailors are increasingly filling these positions. These flight engineers, in-flight technicians, and radar operators have left the active force to fly largely in the continental United States in reserve aircrews. In recent years, the numbers of FTS officers, maintainers, and enlisted aircrew assigned to reserve VP squadrons have grown significantly. Not only is this a misuse of FTS personnel, but it is a causal factor for the difficulty the active force is having in retaining sailors in these critical billets. Still, despite the high numbers of commanders and the inappropriate use of FTSs, the reserves are only able to fill out about two-thirds of the 77 crews their squadrons are supposed to provide. The result is a hollow force without a mission.
Current reserve manning shows, for example, the basic allowance for Selected Reserve (SelRes) flight engineers is 56; the basic allowance for FTS flight engineers is 98. The same disparity can be seen in in-flight technicians and electronic warfare operators. This situation begs the question that if FTS personnel are supposed to provide the training and administration of Selected Reserves, how does one justify dedicating such a large percentage of the FTSs to the SelRes? In reality, it represents a pragmatic attempt at survival-recruiting critical enlisted aircrew out of the active component into the reserve component as FTS personnel. Who can blame the skilled enlisted aircrewman who is offered the opportunity to continue his or her naval career, including the retention of all the benefits, without having to deploy?
Questionable Business Practices
The effort the individual reserve commands expend logistically to fill out their crew rosters deserves review. For example, an advertisement appearing on the VPNavy Website stated: "We [Naval Air Reserve] airlift (pick-up) two times a month to Detroit, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Greenville, Dayton and drill in NAS Willow Grove, Pennsylvania."
It is understood that reservists are often spread out across a region or even the nation. This fact, combined with the reserve P-3 force's understandable popularity with airline pilots, has led to lots of cross-country reserve P-3 flights to the various and sundry places. The Navy does not send frigates and destroyers up the Mississippi to pick up "prairie sailors," so why are we sending P-3s all over the country? Further, just how much of this flight time is actually spent training? These "free" rides to work obscure real costs in the flying-hour program and should be factored into any force business-cost comparison.
The reserve community has made a "business model" argument in the past that it is less expensive to operate than the active force. In a simplistic ledger sheet direct, squadron-to-squadron comparison, this is true. The active force does have a larger operational budget; it also is used every day. If you look beyond surface comparisons, however, you find that in terms of man-days and deployed expenses, the reserves range from 1.5 to 4.0 times the cost of the active force the moment you use them. An excellent example of the increased cost can be seen when you consider how much it costs to employ a commander per day versus a lieutenant. When you combine this information with the current number of commanders in the reserves, the costs of the reserves escalate rapidly.
In exchange for this added expense, theater commanders receive a force that is based around P-3 Update II and II.5 configurations with operational experience flying predominately counter-drug missions? The reserve P-3 force simply is not relevant in today's MPRA warfighting environment or cost efficient in today's cost-wise readiness business models. ''
Readiness Gap
Perhaps nowhere is the separation between the active and reserve forces more apparent and more telling in its implications than in the discussions of reserve readiness. The reserves have long trumpeted their experience in ASW and their high levels of combat readiness. Such claims, central as they are to reserve component's justification of its continued existence in its present form, bear close scrutiny.
Reserve officers have claimed to be more experienced in the ASW mission than their active counterparts, stipulating that, in terms of raw hours of "on-top" tracking time of foreign combatants, they have greater numbers. Reserve officers often claim 200-300 hours of such experience to their active-duty counterparts' 100. For the most part, reserve officers gained their experience a decade ago in the closing days of the Cold War, and have not added appreciably to their "on-top" tracking hours in the intervening years. In addition, much of this "on-top" time was against older Soviet nuclear plants, which had significantly longer detection ranges than modern nuclear and diesel propulsion systems. Perhaps more troubling is the nearly complete lack of reserve real-world experience against the emergent diesel submarine threat in the littorals that now characterizes most war-gaming scenarios. The reserves presently know how to fight the Cold War, but in mission areas defined by the AlP suite that bound current and future conflicts, they are unprepared.
A surface examination of reserve MPA readiness, when compared to readiness levels of the active MPRA force, suggests that the reserves are equal to any task assigned. A closer examination, however, demonstrates that such comparisons illuminate more dissimilarity than expected. Active crews, to achieve maximum combat readiness, must track live targets in the open-ocean environment at least once per quarter. Such opportunities are rare, and scheduling crew qualifications is the constant bane of active wing and squadron training staffs. Yet the reserve force seems to be able to match their active counterparts stride for stride. How? For years, recognizing the time constraints of the reservist's weekend service, qualifications have been granted for tracking submarines in the controlled environment of the simulator. While the active force does use simulators for a discreet number of qualifications, the reserves' nearly total reliance on simulators is telling. In addition, the reserve qualification matrix requires requalification only once per 18 months to maintain combat readiness levels; active force counterparts must revisit most qualifications on a quarterly basis. The reserve MPRA community is the only community in the Navy these authors can identify that works under a completely separate training and readiness matrix than its active force counterpart.
The Future of MPRA
The active MPRA community has decided upon the configuration of the follow-on aircraft to the P-3. The reserve MPRA community did not participate in the decision and shows every indication that it intends to continue flying the P-3 for the foreseeable future. Where will the reserves get crews for their older P-3s when the active force moves on to a newer aircraft? Taken together with the reserve force's decision to not seriously pursue qualification and proficiency in the AIP P-3s, it seems clear the active and reserve force are growing farther and farther apart.
While the active force looks to the future, the reserve force has seemed intent on fighting a defensive battle to maintain its infrastructure at the expense of its relevancy and potential mobilized capability. The reserve force has suggested reducing active-duty squadrons to maintain even more reserve forces. Attempting to preempt integration arguments, reserve personnel during drill weekends have been presented with form letters addressed to congressional leaders requesting congressional intercession to save local jobs around reserve bases by preserving the P-3 reserve force in its present form. This type of petty, manipulative rear-guard action must stop, and active and reserve forces must work together to create an integrated path to the future.
Steps Forward . . . to a Future Together
Chief of Naval Operations Vern Clark has made the requirement to "swiftly defeat" the enemy explicit and bold within "Sea Power 21," and this may well be the most problematic point for the MPA reserves. In addition to not being trained in any of the current equipment required to support the operational plan, the MPA reserves lack the capability to mobilize in time to execute the operational plan.
Over the past 14 years while the MPRA active force has been cut in half, its operational requirements remain largely unchanged in terms of the numbers of aircraft required forward in the opening days of major combat operations. The requirement to swiftly defeat the enemy has compelled the entire active force to maintain higher readiness levels throughout every phase of the homecycle in order to "surge" forward. The MPA reserve force does not maintain parallel "surge" capabilities and requirements. The fact is our reserve force cannot mobilize in time to join in the MPRA flow of forces.
Nearly a decade of combat operations has had a significant impact on the active VP forces and accelerated the demise of our aircraft ahead of schedule. In actuality, the VP leadership eagerly desires and needs a viable reserve component to relieve over-used active forces and the individual burdens of temporary assigned duty to warfighting staffs, among other tasks. We are in need of properly aligned, trained, and integrated reserve force as we go to Fleet Response Plan and apply talent to the sea shield missions assigned in the "Sea Power 21" construct introduced by the CNO in these pages.
There are five initial steps necessary to integrate the MPRA active and reserve forces:
* Adopt fatigue life expended initiatives in reserve squadrons to restrict flight hours consistent with the active force to preserve and extend the life of the P-3 fleet as long as possible.
* Consolidate active and reserve training and readiness matrices, and truly define what it takes to mobilize the reserve component consistent with MPRA operational plan timelines.
* Create transparency between active and reserve equipment so the integrated force can modernize and sustain the right aircraft, which will also give the reserves access to AIP.
* Implement a total force integration plan that puts aircrew and maintainers in the active squadrons with small full-time support administrative staffs. (Collocation no longer can substitute for true integration. The active force leadership owes the reserves a clear definition of the reserves' role, and the reserves owe the active force an honest response.)
* Demonstrate an ability to mobilize reserve combatready aircrews consistent with operational plan timelines for P-3s.
Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Admiral William (Fox) Fallon clearly laid down the requirement to fully integrate the reserve forces with the active forces in the 27 February 2004 Rhumblines.
Our goal is to let the Navy's war fighting requirements drive the size and shape of the Reserve component. My desire is to create [a] requirements-based Reserve force sized and shaped to the needs of the joint war fighter. Clearly, the Reserve force will grow in some areas and shrink in others with the end result being a more operationally-responsive and mission-oriented Reserve force fully integrated with the active component.
With this charge the only solution for VP reserve forces is to integrate completely with the active force. Let's make it happen-together.
Admiral Samuel Gravely is one my personal heroes. I will never forget his coming to the Walbrook Maritime Academy in the inner city of Baltimore. He drove there from his home in Haymarket, Virginia (no short distance), wore his uniform at my request, and spent the entire day with the cadets, promising them that if they would stay in school he would come to their graduation.
I also remember crossing the Atlantic with him as the admiral in charge. We were a mixed fleet of destroyers, cruisers, and lumbering amphibs. He decided to break the monotony of the crossing by holding a tactical maneuvering exercise in the middle of the Atlantic (something the amphibs were not used to doing). After one particular evolution in which an LST made several rather amazing maneuvers (all of them incorrect), he sent a flashing-light message to the errant ship containing a single word: "Good." He then followed with another message: "Reference my last message: 'GOD!'" His sense of humor was but one of many qualities that made this man memorable. He will be missed. Admiral Gravely passed away on 22 October 2004.
-Tom Cutler, author, Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy
Commander Hendrix is an Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, as well as a graduate student at King's College, London. He has screened for aviation miscellaneous command. In addition to his professional duties he serves as a member of the Naval Institute Board of Directors and Editorial Board. Commander Centanni is a naval flight officer who has broad experience in nearly every aspect of P-3 operations. Currently assigned to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Commander Centanni is a student and Halsey Scholar doing research focused on future technological trends in antisubmarine warfare.