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Focus: Balancing AC/RC force structure impacts 100K positions

Army News Service

Release Date: 2/17/2004

By Joe Burlas

Editor's note: This is the sixth in a series of articles on the Army's 17 immediate focus areas. WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 17, 2004) -- The changes planned under Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker's Active-Component/Reserve-Component Balance focus area will mean more civil affairs, military police, transportation and port operations Soldiers in the Army, and fewer artillerymen, air defense troops and Ordnance Soldiers.

Schoomaker told members of Congress at the end of January that the active Army will temporarily grow by about 30,000 Soldiers over the next few years to ensure the Army meets its worldwide commitments in the war on terrorism while resetting and rebalancing to be more ready and relevant.

AC/RC Balance is about restructuring capabilities across the force, not changing the end strengths of the active, Reserve and National Guard components of the Army, said Col. Paul Hilton, chief of Programs, G3, whose branch conducted analysis in support of the focus area.

The current authorized strengths are 482,400 for the active Army; 205,000 for the Army Reserve; and 350,000 for the Army National Guard.

The Guard and Reserve have been integrally involved with the redesign planning and decision-making process from its inception, a senior Army official said. He added that the force balancing is designed to increase readiness, relevance, predictability, sustainability, survivability, and deployability to enhance the warfighter.

"This effort reflects the times we live in and the threats the nation faces in the contemporary operating environment," Hilton said. "It is about us being more ready and relevant to do the things we have to do against those who would do us harm today, and not the structure we built to face massive Soviet armored formations across the Fulda Gap during the Cold War."

The rebalance of forces supports the chief's "Modularity" concept which will move the Army to a brigade-based design, Hilton said.

Changing the Army structure is not new; it is something the Army analyzes annually as it looks toward future needs and prepares its budget for Congress to approve, Hilton said. In fact about a third of the 100,000 spaces the restructure calls for were identified and planned for prior to Schoomaker coming out of retirement to take the reins of Army leadership as chief of staff last summer, he said.

Specifically, routine Army analyis demonstrated the need to increase its numbers of special forces, military police and civil affairs capabilities within the active force shortly following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Additionally, a DoD memorandum issued in July called for the Army to be able to field a rapid response force capable of responding to any low- to midlevel intensity crisis in the world with minimum need to reach into the reserve-component to meet deployment manning requirements in the first 15 days of the operation.

Schoomaker exapanded that to include the first 30 days of a deployment and further directed the revision of some policies and unit designs to increase readiness in the force.

First he directed that all Army early-deploying units be authorized 100 percent of the soldiers required in the unit design. Currently some AC units are authorized fewer people than they require to perform their wartime mission and must be augmented before deployment. These units will be brought to 100 percent authorizations, or in some cases where they are not warfighting units, converted to garrison-type unit designs more appropriate to their mission.

Next he asked the task force to look at what was causing high rates of non-deployable soldiers in units and he set a goal of 100-percent deployable Soldiers in units. Members of the task force from G-1 determined that the major contributor to non-deployables are policies, especially those related to individual replacements and permanent change-of-station moves. Many of these policies will be irrelevant as the Army moves to implement Force Stabilization, Hilton said.

Schoomaker directed the G-1 to make some other policy revisions and determine how they in combination with Force Stabilization impact the problem before making any further force structure changes.

Schoomaker also directed the Army National Guard and Army Reserve to establish personnel accounts for their soldiers who are non-deployable due to attendance at training or schools. Today in the AC there are 482,400 soldiers authorized, but the Army only has enough units to use 419,000of them, Hilton said. That way the Army can account for soldiers who are in initial-entry training or between units.

Both the Guard and Reserve now have more unit spaces than they have authorizations for, Hilton said. He explained this has meant that units can never be fully manned. This method made sense during the Cold War when the potential need to rapidly expand the force was more important than readiness in reserve units, Hilton said, but does not meet the Army's need today.

The Army National Guard will reduce unit structure from 388,000 to around 342,000 spaces while maintaining all of the 350,000 people they are authorized today. Likewise the Army Reserve will only have about 185,000 spaces for the 205,000 authorizations they are allowed, Hilton said. He said the same number of people spread across fewer units will improve manning and personnel readiness.

One of the significant problems Forces Command has faced in ongoing operations, Hilton said, is the need to reach into two or three units for Soldiers in order to get one unit deployed. On paper, Hilton said, the Army has enough units to source requirements, but the reality on the ground is that not all of those units are really available.

There are bill payers for both the stand up of new force structure units and for 100-percent manning with 100-percent deployable Soldiers. Eliminating less-used and undermanned force structure will allow the Army to resource units that are in high demand, officials said.

Hardest hit will be the Army's field artillery community, which recently lost a brigade's worth of National Guard artillerymen who are currently being trained to serve as military police officers. The Army plans to disband a significant number of artillery battalions in the active force and the National Guard, Hilton said.

The Army's short-range air defense artillery is another bill payer at the division and below level. "We are still going to keep some SHORAD capability at the corps level in the AC and actually fill previous shortfalls at echelons above division in the National Guard," Hilton said.

About 4,000 manning slots will come from the recently eliminated 71L, clerk-typist, military occupational specialty.

"Many Reserve and National Guard Soldiers have an affinity for the units they are in or the particular jobs they are doing," Hilton said. "In some cases those Soldiers are in units where their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers have served."

Both the Guard and Reserve are taking this into account as they work the details of what kind and where structure will be reduced, Hilton said. In fact, he said the USAR and ARNG are working cooperatively to mitigate inactivations of the same types of units in the same geographic area.

While some have already started, most of the rebalance efforts will occur between 2005 and 2007.

"AC/RC Balance is about building a campaign-quality Army capable of rapidly responding to combatant commander requirements while maintaining the depth necessary to defend the homeland while performing an array of stability and support operations," Hilton said.

(Editor's note: The Army's 17 immediate areas of focus include: The Soldier; The Bench; Combat Training Centers/Battle Command Training Program; Leader Development and Education; Army Aviation; Current to Future Force; The Network; Modularity; Active Component/Reserve Component Balance; Force Stabilization; Actionable Intelligence; Installations as Flagships; Authorities, Responsibilities, and Accountability; Resource Processes; Strategic Communications; and Logistics. To view a brief synopsis of each area, visit The Way Ahead.)