Moving Out

The Army Reserve is reorganizing into units that can be more rapidly mobilized. At the same time, it is reducing the length of reservists' tours of duty. Under the new plan, tours likely will last no longer than 12 months every five years.

Army Reserve Deputy Commander Maj. Gen. Charles Wilson says each new Army Reserve Expeditionary Force unit will contain as many as 16,000 soldiers. Every year, two of the 10 new units will be on call for active-duty mobilization, which could mean up to nine months on foreign soil. The remainder of the tour would be spent getting ready for and demobilizing from active duty.

The first expeditionary units will be in place by October 2005. Eventually, they will include 176,000 of the Reserve's 205,000 soldiers. The remaining Reserve slots will be set aside for those in specialized training, working at schools or hospitals, or moving between jobs.

Wilson says the new rotational schedule will provide more predictability for reservists, whose combat support skills are in increasing demand in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, about 57,000 Army reservists are serving on active duty for up to two years.

The Army Reserve has struggled to mobilize tens of thousands of soldiers under a Cold War system that gave some as long as 300 days to report and train for active duty. The expeditionary units will be ready to deploy within as little as 120 hours anywhere in the world.

The reorganization will eliminate the Reserve's common practice of pulling soldiers from multiple units into a single unit for deployment. The practice, known as "cross-leveling," has left units that are not deployed short of personnel for training.

Wilson cautions that reservists still could face a deployment more than once every five years. "The enemy and current operations still have a vote," he says.