United States Army Reserve - Importance To The Active Army

Importance To The Active Army

In the early 1980s Army Reserve soldiers constituted the following numbers in US Army units:

• 100% of training divisions, brigades, and railway units
• 97% of civil affairs units
• 89% of psychological operations units
• 85% of smoke generator companies
• 78% of Petrol/Oil/Lubricant (POL) supply companies
• 62% of Army hospitals
• 61% of terminal companies
• 59% of the supply and service capability of the Army
• 51% of ammunition companies
• 43% of airborne pathfinder units
• 43% of watercraft companies
• 42% of chemical decontamination units
• 38% of combat support aviation companies
• 26% of combat engineer battalions
• 25% of Special Forces Groups
• smaller percentages of other units and formations such as combat brigades and tank battalions

In 1980, the peacetime USAR chain of command was overlaid with a wartime trace. In an expansion of the roundout and affiliation programs begun ten years earlier, CAPSTONE purported to align every Army Reserve unit with the active and reserve component units with which they were anticipated to deploy. Units maintained lines of communication with the units – often hundreds or thousands of miles away in peacetime – who would presumably serve above or below them in the event of mobilization. This communication, in some cases, extended to coordinated annual training opportunities.

Despite the commonly held belief that CAPSTONE traces were set in stone, the process of selecting units to mobilize and deploy in 1990 and 1991 in support of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm largely ignored CAPSTONE.

In the post-Cold War draw-down, all of the Army Reserve's combat units were disbanded, except the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment. This meant the disestablishment of the three remaining Army Reserve fighting brigades: the 157th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) (Separate) of Pennsylvania, the 187th Infantry Brigade (Separate) of Massachusetts, and the 205th Infantry Brigade (Separate) (Light) of Minnesota. Many of the Army Reserve training divisions were realigned as institutional training divisions.

With the Army National Guard providing reserve component combat formations and related combat support units, the Army Reserve is configured to provide combat support, combat service support, peacekeeping, nation-building and civil support capability. With roughly twenty percent of the Army's organized units and 5.3 percent of the Army's budget, the Army Reserve provides about half of the Army's combat support and a quarter of the Army's mobilization base expansion capability.

In 2008, the Army Reserve contains the following percentages of the Army's units of each category:

• 100% of chemical brigades, internment brigades, judge advocate units, medical groups, railway units, training & exercise divisions, and water supply battalions.
• more than 67% of civil affairs units, psychological operations units, transportation groups, motor battalions, chemical battalions, hospitals, medical brigades, and theater signal commands.
• nearly 50% of petroleum battalions, Adjutant General units, petroleum groups, transportation commands, terminal battalions, and public affairs units.

In fiscal years 2007–2009, the Army Reserve was realigned into a functional command structure. The majority of Army Reserve units are now assigned to operational and functional commands. Operational commands are deployable elements which command deployable units of the same or similar capabilities regardless of peacetime geographic location. For instance, the 377th Sustainment Command (Theater) commands all Army Reserve sustainment units, while the 11th Aviation Command commands all Army Reserve aviation assets. Likewise, functional commands are responsible for command of units of the same or similar capabilities regardless of peacetime geographic location, but are not, as a headquarters, deployable.

The training structure has been transformed in order to streamline command and control. Instead of multiple training divisions, each with its own geographic area of responsibility, the new structure features four training commands responsible for specific categories of training throughout the United States. Each command is configured for either initial entry training, advanced individual training schools, leader development or battle command training. These commands train soldiers of the Army Reserve, Army National Guard and the active component, through formal classroom and “hands on” training. Two training support commands under the First United States Army, designated First Army East and First Army West, provide customized, realistic unit-specific and operation-specific training. Training Support Commands (TSC) plan, conduct and evaluate training exercises for Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard units. TSC are organized under the United States First Army into two subordinate units.

As a part of this realignment, most of the regional readiness commands were eliminated, leaving only seven globally. These were redesignated " support commands"; the four in the Continental United States being "regional"; the geography for which each regional support command increased significantly, but all of the support commands were stripped of their former command and control authority over units in their respective territories. Instead, the support commands provide base operations and administrative support to Army Reserve units within their geographic region.