Army Retraining

Since the day the Cold War ended, the Army's allocation of resources between its internal branches has been outdated. Now, the Army Reserves are getting a massive re-training and re-organization:

Strapped to fill critical jobs in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army is retraining thousands of tank operators, artillerymen and others who were essential in the cold war to take jobs in long-term stability operations: military police officers, civil affairs experts and intelligence analysts.

The aim is to redesign the Army to be faster to the fight, to relieve the stress on a relatively small number of U.S. Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers who have been called up repeatedly in recent years, and to tap 500,000 reservists who have not been activated at all in the past decade. Since 1990, according to the Defense Department, only 7 percent of the 876,000 reserves assigned to specific units have been involuntarily mobilized more than once.

And despite recent news suggesting that Air Force retention was going well, the Army appears to be having more difficulty:

We have too few guard and reserve forces with certain skill sets that are in high demand and too many guard and reserve with skills that are in little or no demand, Rumsfeld told Congress in late February.

Getting this balance right is critical for the Army's war- fighting abilities and the long-term health of its recruiting and retention efforts. Army officials said this week that retention rates for active-duty and reserve soldiers were lagging despite re- enlistment bonuses of at least $5,000.

If we continue to stress these very high-use units, we risk losing them, said Thomas Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs.

I am not qualified to pass judgment on whether this is the best re-organization strategy, but it has been clear for some time that change was much needed to meet the challenges of our current international situation, and it is a relief to see the Army making large-scale efforts in that direction.