New York Times
Eric Schmitt
January 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 - The Army Reserve is unable to meet its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan because of "dysfunctional" personnel policies that senior Army and Pentagon officials have refused to change, its top general has told senior Army leaders.
The officer, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, said in a memorandum that the demands of overseas commitments combined with
restrictive mobilization policies were hampering the Reserve's ability to fill such essential jobs as engineers, truck drivers and civil
affairs specialists.
General Helmly's memorandum to the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, written on Dec. 20 and first reported in The
Baltimore Sun on Wednesday, is unusually blunt and formal in saying that the Reserves are not able to carry out the current mission
under current personnel rules.
"The purpose of this memorandum is to inform you of the Army Reserve's inability - under current policies, procedures, and
practices governing mobilization, training, and reserve component manpower management - to meet mission requirements
associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom and to reset and regenerate its forces for follow-on and future
missions," it said, referring to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While that alone "is of great importance," it added, the Reserves also are "in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational
requirements," including those specified in other emergency plans in the United States and abroad.
The Reserves, General Helmly said, are "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force."
The general is not arguing that he needs more than 200,000 part-time soldiers now in the Reserve. Rather, he said, he needs greater
bureaucratic flexibility to manage and mobilize the force. He complained, for instance, that the Reserve relied too much on soldiers
who volunteered for duty, a practice that leads to calling on the same troops over and over.
General Helmly said he had sought approval to use other tools to recall Reserve soldiers to duty, like tapping soldiers from the
Individual Ready Reserve, an augmentation force, but had been denied permission.
"The Army Reserve is hamstrung in its ability to effectively manage its force," he said.
On Capitol Hill, some senators took issue on Wednesday with General Helmly's stark characterization. "They're not broken, they're
stressed," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
Of the 205,000 members of the Army Reserve, about 42,000 are now mobilized; 22,600 of them are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan
or the Persian Gulf. Another 43,000 or more have been previously mobilized, 17,000 of them for more than 12 months. About 33,000
cannot be deployed because they have not been trained or for other reasons.
The Government Accountability Office, the auditing agency of the Congress, reported in September that the problems General
Helmly has identified have made it possible that the Defense Department will "run out of forces."
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Citation:
Eric Schmitt, "Army Reserve is 'Hamstrung' by Its Policies, General Warns", New York Times, 06 January 2005.
Original URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/politics/06reserve.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=