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Reserve struggles to find right mix of soldiers

The Army Reserve has too many young, new soldiers and not enough sergeants and staff sergeants; too many lieutenants and colonels, but not enough captains and majors. The Reserve is authorized 25 or 30 chaplain assistants, but it has 125.

In all, the Reserve has 207,000 soldiers in its ranks — the most it has had since 2004.

“But it’s not the right 207,000,” said Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve. “It’s not the right rank, it’s not the right [military occupational specialty], it’s not the right geographic location.”

“We’ve got to take that 207,000 and get them in the right place, get them in the right MOS and get them in the right rank,” Stultz said.

Getting the right mix, he said, is expected to take two or three years, and it follows one of the most dramatic and thorough transformations of the Army Reserve.

For the last three to four years, the Reserve has taken down what Stultz calls “legacy structure” and turned it into operational, deployable units. That included taking down some of the Reserve’s regional readiness commands and transforming them into deployable sustainment brigades. It also has created about 16,000 spaces in such high-demand MOSs as transportation, military police, civil affairs and engineers.

The next challenge of reshaping the human side of the Army Reserve will be no easier, Stultz said.

“Unlike the active Army, [which] has the luxury of [moving] people around to rebalance, we have civilian jobs,” he said.

So leaders are focusing their attention on the recruiting effort.

“We’re going to have to be very precise with Recruiting Command and say we’re under-strength in certain MOSs and certain areas, we’re over-strength in certain MOSs and certain areas,” Stultz said.

That could come down to being as specific as telling recruiters in a particular city — Orlando, Fla., for example — to stop recruiting unit supply specialists but bring in more truck drivers.

Some of the MOSs most sought after by Reserve recruiters include construction equipment operator, human intelligence collector, psychological operations specialist, civil affairs specialist, petroleum supply specialist and preventive medicine specialist.

Stultz also wants to target active Army soldiers who are preparing to leave active duty, in an effort to fill his NCO and midlevel officer ranks.

Stultz believes that he has a secret weapon to bring in more former active-duty soldiers — the Employer Partnership Initiative, in which the Reserve partners with civilian employers to recruit people interested in serving in the military and working for a particular company.

More than 800 employers have signed on to the program, Stultz said.

“Now I can talk to a soldier leaving active duty at Fort Hood not just about coming into a Reserve unit but about a civilian job,” he said. “It’s a win-win for me.”

Another area Stultz believes he needs to work on is moving people out of the Reserve.

“We’re going to have to do qualitative and selective retention,” he said. “We’ll take a look at some of these guys and say, ‘Do we want to keep these people in the force?’ or is it time for them to move out, thank them for their service, but we’ve got some younger soldiers that need a place to move up.

“If I’ve got 150 percent at the E-3 and E-4 level, these guys are looking at each other and saying, ‘We’re not getting promoted because there’s nowhere to go.’ ”

The entire process will be deliberate, it could be painful for some and it will take time, Stultz said.

“I’m not trying to run out to a unit and say, ‘OK, you’re at 150 percent strength, you standing over here leave, you over here stay,’ ” he said. “We’ve got to work it deliberately.”