Pentagon must improve long-term reserve planning, report says

The Defense Department has been making its recent personnel decisions and reservist mobilizations with a short-term focus that could compromise the nation's long-term military goals, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released this week.

"Faced with some critical shortages, [Defense] changed a number of its personnel policies to increase force availability," according to the report (GAO-04-1031). "These changes addressed immediate needs and did not take place within a strategic framework that linked human capital goals with [Defense's] organizational goals to fight the global war on terrorism."

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Air Force mobilized the largest number of reservists, according to the GAO. By the end of 2002, however, the Army had more reservists than all the other services combined. As the war in Iraq continues, Army reservists still are being used heavily, with 131,000 on active duty at the end of June. The Air Force was the next highest, with 12,000 mobilized reservists this summer. About 155,000 reservists are mobilized in total.

The Army has been criticized for mobilizing large numbers of Reserve and National Guard members but funneling them into an inadequate pay system. The existing reserve pay system has cracked under the pressure of the large-scale deployments, with personnel receiving late payments, overpayments, or being charged with erroneous debts. Critics have said the extended deployments and the faulty pay system could diminish the number of reserve personnel who are retained in the Army. Wednesday's GAO report added to these concerns, criticizing the Army's health-care management of its activated reservists and its visibility of those forces.

The GAO also criticized the Pentagon's planning and preparations for reserve mobilization. The Army "was not able to efficiently execute its mobilization" because of "outdated assumptions." Specifically, military planners had assumed that active-duty forces would be deployed first, leaving bases empty for reserve forces to mobilize. Because many reserve units were deployed before active-duty forces, the necessary facilities were still in use, according to the GAO. The report said that new construction is also beginning without any new long-term planning, which could create further problems down the road.

The report called on the Pentagon to update its mobilization guidance and to improve its long-term planning for reserve forces. Defense officials generally agreed with the GAO recommendations. The report, however, said that no solution is in sight for a Defense Department that is leaning more and more heavily on its reservists.

"There are already indications that some portions of the force are being stressed," the report said. "It is unclear how [Defense] plans to address its longer term personnel requirements for the global war on terrorism."