Rethinking the Total Force

Allied Approaches to Reserve Restructure

The post-Cold War period has been marked by major military reductions and reorganizations throughout the Western, and particularly the NATO, world. The enormous cost of maintaining high-readiness, full-time armies backed (in most cases) by an even larger force of reserves cannot be justified in the face of the diminished security threat. For almost a decade, all of Canada's allies have sought cost savings and efficiencies through down-sizing their armed forces and seeking alternative solutions to defence problems. Canada's own experience in force reductions and resource constraints has been shared, albeit to different degrees, by all of our defence partners.

The experiences of those partners in coping with new roles for reserve forces are illuminating. In many cases, Canada has led the way in redefining the raison d'ętre of reserve forces. It would be arrogant, however, to assume that we have all the answers and that none of our allies have undergone experiences worth studying. As one example, the French armed forces are

…undergoing a significant force level reduction, [in which] reserve brigades and regiments are being disbanded, and reservists are being trained to augment regular force units as individuals, rather than units.

In doing so, the French armed forces are responding to many of the same fiduciary pressures as is Canada's Defence Establishment, in only a slightly different fashion. They, and we, are not alone. In the context of this paper, therefore, it is important that we 'benchmark' Canada's experience in aligning the Reserve component with comparable efforts by allied nations. This section, therefore, examines the experiences of the armed forces of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia in coping with the thorny problem of reserve restructure.

The United Kingdom

The new Territorial Army will be:

• More readily integrated with the operational structures of the Regular force;
• More ready and usable to meet changed operational demands;
• More demanding of, but also more rewarding to, those who volunteer;
• Trained to operate modern battle-winning equipments; and
• An important link to communities.

On 8 July 1998, the Blair government released a Strategic Defence Review White Paper (SDR) entitled Modern forces for a Modern World. Like the 1994 Defence White Paper, the SDR formed the basis in policy for a reserve restructure process unprecedented in recent British history. Based on the strategic assessment that two trends - a decline in the threat of hostilities on British soil, and an increase in the requirement to commit troops to international peace support operations - the SDR mandated both a small increase in the regular strength of the British Army, and a significant reduction, on the order of 30%, in the size of the Territorial Army.

The SDR was based upon a number of supporting essays. The sixth such essay, entitled "Future Military Capabilities", concluded that the changing nature of international conflict meant that there was no longer a requirement to maintain large numbers of reserve personnel for the defence of the British homeland. At the same time, however, the nature of international peacekeeping operations demonstrated that the reserves could make a valuable contribution to Britain's efforts in this area, and that the Territorial Army in particular could play a major role in doing so. But the essay also recognized that "to play that part effectively, they must change. If they do not, the Reserves face marginalisation and decline."

Heavy cuts to the strength of the Territorial Army are to be offset by increasing readiness levels, recruiting and manning standards, training and equipment in order to enable TA units to be capable of being quickly incorporated into Regular force organizations. The ultimate goal of the restructure process is to "modernize and enhance the TA to make it more readily deployable and usable" in the context of current operations.

In addition to posturing the Territorial Army to augment and sustain the Regular force in current operations abroad, the SDR noted that recent experience in mounting large operations (from the Persian Gulf war to the Implementation and Stabilization forces in Bosnia) has demonstrated unequivocally that there are numerous deficiencies in the British Army's logistic support structure. In addition to creating more robust logistic command and control structures and enhancing the remote-operations ability of the Royal Air force, the SDR mandated organising logistic support forces so that early-entry capabilities are provided by Regular personnel, with greater use of Reserve and contractor personnel for follow-on support once the operation has been established.

The end result of this restructure will see a significant increase in "the involvement of the [Territorial Army]…in supporting rather than combat roles, with regulars and territorials acting as a wholly integrated force".

Overall, the SDR aims to rejuvenate the Reserves, and particularly the Territorial Army, by

• Giving them new roles and integrating them more closely with the Regular Army, with primary emphasis on key support and medical tasks;
• Reducing the size of the Territorial Army by 30% to reflect the decreasing need for Home defence forces; and
• Making greater use of the Territorial Army across the spectrum of operations.

Through these changes, the UK Ministry of defence hopes to design a Territorial Army that is capable of making a greater contribution to current operations through bettering recruiting, manning and training principles, higher readiness, provision of key equipments and reorientation towards roles that are more in demand. In this, both their goals and their methodology exactly parallel Canada's experience in realigning the Reserves - which is hardly surprising, given that the United Kingdom made a detailed study of Canada's own Reserve restructure experiences prior to publication of the SDR.

The United States

The American experience with Reserve restructure is far older than Canada's, and is complicated by the fact that the US armed forces have seven separate reserve branches. This complexity notwithstanding, the Reserves have always formed an indispensable part of the US total defence capability, as articulated by Secretary of defence William Cohen:

We could not maintain our military without the Guard and the Reserve. It would be cut in half. We couldn't do the job in Bosnia, we couldn't do it in the Gulf, we couldn't do it anywhere.

The employment of Reserves by the US armed forces on operations has been staggering in its proportions. Alan Ryan, in his examination of the US reserve restructure process, notes that President Bush activated a quarter of a million reservists for Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm and that President Clinton has made a regular practice of of calling up the Reserve for operations in Haiti (where 2300 reservists served), Bosnia (where 18,000 have served to date), and Kosovo (where 33,102 have been authorized). Ryan notes that while this has not been a popular move by the President, the realities of shrinking budgets and force reductions have left the world's only remaining superpower with few other options

President Clinton has faced widespread criticism for employing the military for a far wider variety of tasks than their core warfighting function. Regardless of this criticism, the current tendency to use the military for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, while simultaneously reducing the size of the Regular component, necessitates the use of reserves.

In one sense, the US reserve forces are already well on the way to adopting the kind of force structure that Canada envisions for its own reserve forces. Ryan notes that

As a result of the Clinton administration's 1993 'Bottom-Up Review', the Army Reserve has an almost exclusive combat support and combat service support function. The Army Reserve now offsets shortfalls in these skills in the regular force and frees up regular force manpower for rapid-deployment combat roles. Thus, while the Army Reserve represents only 4 percent of the total army combat structure, it represents 36 percent of its combat support and combat service support structure.

This strongly resembles the approach suggested by the Mobilization Planning Framework and the MOS Review in responding to current operational realities and pressures. As demonstrated in the Persian Gulf in the autumn of 1990, early-entry forces require high readiness levels and limited integral logistic support, but if they are to remain in-theatre for extended durations, they require enhanced logistic support, which is often beyond the ability of the Regular establishment to provide. Such shortfalls are easily made up by activating Reserve units which, although they are held at lower readiness levels, can easily be called up to provide the necessary capabilities on a longer timeline. It is significant that this approach, which has worked extremely well not only in large-scale modern warfare but also in both high- and low-threat peacekeeping operations, so closely parallels our own.

Australia

The Australian armed forces are, at best, at approximately the same stage as Canada in implementing reserve restructure: objectives have been identified and goals have been set, but the necessary action has not yet been taken. The approach proposed by the Australian defence forces (ADF) is similar to Canada's own, in that they foresee "using part-time and full-time personnel in fully integrated task forces [as] a central part of [their] plan to restructure the Army". This principle may be observed in action in East Timor, where Australia's 5400-person contribution to the INTERFET includes more than 600 Reservists on full-time service.

In addition to integrating the Reserves more fully into the Regular planning and force structures, the ADF has adopted a concise and useful mission-motto for the Reserves: "Sustaining today - mobilising tomorrow". In ADF planning, this has meant giving the reserves roles designed to enable them to contribute both complementary and supplementary skill sets to the total operational capability, using them for "nation building to serve the community", and - while noting explicitly that historical lineage should not dictate roles and tasks - making effective use of the traditions of Reserve units to serve as a link between the armed forces and the nation. The ultimate goal, as expressed in an Army Reserve headquarters position paper, is to redistribute resources away from "future potential" in order to maximize current return. The ADF Reserve mission-motto, and this goal, offer clear and concise statements of what the Canadian defence establishment is attempting to achieve.