Contemporary military operations and the character of the emerging security environment have shown that full-scale mobilisation for the defence of the nation is much less likely in the early 21st century than it was in the 20th century. Indeed, the trend away from state-on-state, large-scale conflict began in the last century. From the time of the Korean War of 1950–53 through the Vietnam conflict of the 1960s and early 1970s to the current plethora of small-scale conflicts experienced at the beginning of the new millennium, there has been a diminishing requirement for the mobilisation of mass armies.
In each of the conflicts in which Australia has been involved since the mid-20th century, the Army Reserve has played a vital role. The Army Reserve’s contribution has primarily been in the form of small units or through individuals rather than through formed bodies of sub-units, units or formations. Between 1999 and 2003, a period of high operational tempo, Army Reserve personnel have responded magnificently, often volunteering for operational service and performing critical full-time roles within Australia. These Reserve contributions have helped the Army to meet its obligations to the nation during dynamic and uncertain times.
In the future, challenges to national security are likely to arise in an increasingly complex political and operational environment. The Army is responding to these challenges through the Hardening and Networking the Army program. This initiative will substantially improve the land force’s firepower, mobility, protection and communications, and is envisaged as a decade-long program that will restructure and re-equip the Army for operations in the 21st-century battlespace. In the future, Army formations and units will be more difficult to hit, yet they themselves will be able to strike an enemy harder, move more quickly, and be better protected and networked within a fluid battlespace.
The Hardening and Networking the Army initiative cannot achieve its full potential in transforming the Australian Army’s combat capability without the significant involvement of the Reserve. The hardening and networking process will require the Reserve to be able to perform a broader range of new roles and tasks that are relevant to a changing security environment. Change also requires that the Army Reserve be available at much shorter readiness notice. In essence, the Army Reserve must adapt to our changing security environment by becoming more relevant to the land force’s operational requirements and more ready to deploy on operations.
New Opportunities for the Army Reserve
During 2001, significant legislative amendments were enacted in Australia that changed the nature of Reserve service within the Australian Defence Force. Reserves can now be called out, either in part or in whole, for a wide range of operations, including combat, defence emergency, peace enforcement, peacekeeping, civil and humanitarian aid, and disaster relief. These opportunities for greater employment of Reservists have been matched by a variety of measures to protect the jobs of members of the Reserve and to support their families and employers.
The package of legislative amendments to Reserve service in Australia contains some of the most historic and significant changes to the Defence Act since it was enacted at the beginning of the 20th century. The Army has not yet properly grasped the extent of the new opportunities presented by such legislative changes, nor has it fully comprehended the role that the Army Reserve can now play in providing forces for contemporary and future security challenges. Given the rigorous challenges that the new Hardened and Networked Army initiative poses, it is time that the land force carefully considers these opportunities, and makes adjustments to the roles and tasks that members of the Army Reserve may undertake.
The Vital Role of the Army Reserve
The Australian Army is responsible for providing professional, well-trained and well-equipped land forces that must be available for operations at short notice. The Army is required to sustain a brigade on operations for extended periods and, at the same time, to maintain at least a battalion group for additional deployment. The possibility of operational deployments alongside a substantial period of recuperation before redeployment means that the land force cannot achieve such a requirement without a significant contribution from the Army Reserve.
Army Reserve forces that are relevant to specific operational needs and that are ready to deploy have assumed major importance in our planning to provide land force options to the Government. Because most security contingencies arise at very short notice, planning dictates that the first brigade deployment will consist of soldiers that are predominantly from the full-time force, with specialist individual and small units being allocated from the Army Reserve. Subsequent brigade rotations will, however, require progressively larger contributions from the Army Reserve, both in absolute numbers as well as in the size and structure of the forces needed. For example, a third rotation in force elements will almost certainly depend on a substantial contribution from Army Reserve elements.
Consequently, the Army Reserve must be capable of providing three levels of support to the land force. First, individuals and small units must contribute to a first deployment, or become components in any land force contribution to meet a security challenge, at relatively short notice. Second, the land force must employ individuals and larger units from the Reserve in order to enable second and subsequent deployments. Third, the Reserve must be capable of supplying sufficient expansion forces to meet any major security crisis.
The Issue of Relevance
There are two reasons for reconsidering whether the current roles and tasks allocated to the Army Reserve are relevant to the land force’s likely military requirements. The first reason is the reality of a decreased emphasis on large-scale mobilisation for advanced professional armies. The second reason concerns the changing character of armed conflict facing the world’s land forces.
A Decreased Emphasis on Mobilisation
Changed political and security circumstances have meant that it is no longer a priority to maintain military forces in order to provide the basis for a rapid expansion of the Australian Army to a size required for major continental-style operations. As a result, the Hardened and Networked Army of the future will be structured to reflect this new reality. At a strategic level, there is an opportunity to adjust the Army Reserve’s roles and tasks in order to meet the clear priority to supply trained personnel, small units and sub-units as part of front-line land forces deployed on operations. Army Reserve forces can now be concentrated on providing full capability as part of operational forces, and supplying the subsequent reinforcement and rotation of deployed forces. Expansion and mobilisation will remain an Army task, but the priority in the future will clearly be on meeting more immediate military needs.
The Changing Character of Armed Conflict
The second reason for reconsidering the relevance of the Army Reserve’s current roles and tasks concerns the changing character of armed conflict. Professional warfighting skills remain the essential basis for all military operations, and such skills are best acquired and executed by military forces trained to conduct close combat in combined arms teams. Moreover, in addition to these essential warfighting skills, land forces require new forms of expertise in order to allow them to provide effective support in missions involving humanitarian, peacekeeping and nationbuilding efforts.
Today, more than ever before, military forces are likely to have to sustain and protect populations and assist in the re-creation or repair of national infrastructure. The Australian Army is likely to conduct military operations in concert with a myriad of allies and government and non-government institutions as partners in the field.
Not all of the skills required for such multidimensional missions are likely to be maintained by type or scale in the Regular Army. Much of the required expertise may involve civil skills or specialist knowledge that is held by members of the Army Reserve. This reality means that the Australian Army needs to make better use of the intellectual capital of its Reservists.
The Issue of Readiness
The Australian Army is expected to conduct concurrent operations, moving rapidly from one operation to another while also accommodating changes brought about by the war on terror and other emergent threats. The tempo of recent operations has resulted in limited time for individual rest and recuperation or for unit reconstitution. Although the Army is coping well with operational pressures, there is a need to consider a range of supporting strategies that may improve land force readiness. Increased Army Reserve readiness is an efficient way of sharing the burden imposed by operational tempo on all soldiers and of providing sustainment, support and surge capacities for the land force as a whole.
Readiness is a function of job competency and availability, and applies in two domains: the individual and the collective. As the general trend is towards decreased warning time for operations, requirements in both domains have tightened and may continue to tighten. As individuals, all members of the Army Reserve have an obligation to be ready to deploy on operations at twenty-eight days’ notice. Collective readiness, on the other hand, can vary from hours for critical tasks to several months for less critical responsibilities. Individuals are also required to conform to the collective readiness state of their units or sub-units.
Currently the majority of Army Reserve units either have no readiness notice or are allocated a collective readiness notice beyond one year. Many Reservists have made themselves available for operational deployments well within these collective notice requirements. In some instances, such as in the deployments to East Timor, sub-units have been prepared to move at less than their nominated notice and have moved rapidly onto an operational footing.
In recent military operations, the ability of members of the Army Reserve to make themselves available for service, together with various critical job skills, have been major factors in the success of our missions. Examples of deployment success include personnel from the military trades as well as specialists in such areas as medicine, law, finance and engineering.
The Issue of Job Competency
Before operational deployment, all soldiers must be fully qualified according to their rank and specialisation; they must also be properly trained and prepared for the task at hand. It has become clear to the Army’s leadership that the vast majority of Reserve soldiers, through no fault of their own, cannot accumulate the growing number of competencies possessed by Regular Army personnel. This disparity in competencies will, in future, be partly addressed by the development of the Active Reserve Training Model, to be finalised this year.
The new training model will provide mechanisms for members of the Army Reserve to obtain specified competencies for rank and skill. Training will focus on developing competencies in relatively narrow but deep skill sets, in order to ensure that all Reserve members can be deployed for specific tasks as, and when, required. Should members of the Army Reserve be able to devote additional time to training, they will have the opportunity to acquire further competencies for rank and skill. These areas of competency will be pitched at the same levels as those demanded of the Regular Army. Acquiring such expertise will require periods of Reserve service in a collective training environment in order to cement individual skills, gain collective competencies and progress upwards through rank.
The nature of Army Reserve service means that some aspects of collective training can be best achieved in regional units that are focused on providing subunit capability. Although unit structures and establishments may have to change in order to reflect a ‘raise, train and sustain’ role accurately, it is logical that dedicated sub-units should closely mirror equivalents in the Hardened and Networked Army along with appropriate allocations of equipment, training and full-time staff. By these means, individuals and small groups can be force-allocated to operational units with high levels of confidence. The above system also offers the potential to develop relevant and ready collective reinforcements, and to prepare rotation forces for deployment.
The Issue of Availabiltiy
Many members of the Army Reserve have demonstrated high levels of individual availability through their willing response to recent security contingencies. In some cases, the level of response has exceeded operational needs, and the Army has not always been well positioned to capitalise fully on Reserve commitment. The establishment of the High-Readiness Reserves (HRR) category has now formalised this high level of latent availability by Reserve personnel.
A formal commitment to high readiness by a member of the Reserve allows the Army to form high-readiness units such as the Ready Response Forces with increased confidence. Such voluntary and formal expressions of availability, alongside the ability of the Government to utilise its call-out powers under the Defence Act, have substantially changed the potential availability of all Army Reserve personnel to serve when needed. While all members of the Army Reserve can be subject to call-out, the formalisation of availability through the HRR category of service adds a degree of predicability to contingency planning. In the future, the HRR category of service will underpin higher-readiness units, although Reservists will also be able to move between the Active and Standby Reserves.
Army Reservists also need to be available to meet individual and collective training requirements. This particular aspect of availability requires both high levels of personal commitment and a degree of sacrifice by Reservists, who are often forced to organise their lives around the Army’s needs. As the training requirements for Army Reserves increase, the issue of availability will become pivotal in developing military capability. Whenever the Army requires its personnel to acquire new skills, it must provide flexible training opportunities and deliver a timely training regime. Training opportunities within the land force require further improvement. The various incentives available for the Army to encourage Reservists to gain competencies and the organisational capacity of the Army to deliver tailored training require further study.
Providing Support Mechanisms: Force Allocation, Reinforcement and Rotation
There are three main ways in which the Army Reserve can provide capability to the land force: by force allocation, by reinforcement and by rotation. Force allocation occurs when nominated and prepared individuals, small units and sub-units are allocated as part of high-readiness formations or as units in peacetime for operational deployments where acceptable risk can be carried. Force-allocated Army Reserves will develop a habitual relationship with the formation or unit to be reinforced. This relationship is likely to be founded on the ability of Reservists and the reinforced unit to prepare, train and exercise together. Force allocation will be used primarily for the first force deployment.
Reinforcement occurs when the Army allocates small units, sub-units, individuals and equipment to strengthen and support deployed forces. Reinforcement may be either planned or unplanned and it generally occurs after the force deployment has commenced—often as the result of losses or unexpected developments, such as changes in task, the intensity of combat or in the scale of operations. Rotation occurs when units, sub-units and individuals are used in follow-on deployments in order to replace personnel and equipment. Rotation will generally occur in the second and third deployments, and rotation tasks will be nominated in advance in order to ensure adequate preparation. Mobilisation and expansion functions are examples of rotation in action.
Preliminary work for force allocation as part of the Hardened and Networked Army shows a clear potential for individual Army Reservists and units to provide additional assets. These assets include squadron, battery and company groups tailored to suit a specific mission, and force protection companies for brigade groups; motorised lift sub-units; and combat support and combat service support (CSS) sub-units. They also embrace Ready Response Forces; Civil–Military Cooperation (CIMIC) units; specialist teams, such as joint offensive support teams; communications capabilities to support networking; and specialist individuals across a wide range of competencies. Such assets provide broad options for reinforcement and a focus for the development of rotation forces as part of second or third deployments.
Regional Distribution and the Structure of the Army Reserve
One of the great strengths of the Army Reserve is its ability to represent the land force and to engage with the broader Australian community through the many military depots that are located throughout the country. It is the Army’s intention that the regional distribution of the Reserve be maintained. Additionally, the divisional and brigade structure of the Reserve and its geographical distribution will also be retained since it provides the best means to carry out the military functions of raising, training and sustaining military forces.
The majority of the Army Reserve effort will be assigned to the provision of force-allocated units and individuals and to the reinforcement of deployed forces. The focus of the Reserve command structure will need to shift accordingly, in order to raise, train and sustain functions. Reserve command structures will be required to take on increased responsibilities for moving units and individuals from lower to higher readiness.
The Issues of Recruitment and Retention
Army Reserve recruitment is another important military function. Experience suggests that such recruitment is best carried out by Reserve units in local areas. Reserve command structures are, therefore, to assume increased responsibilities for recruiting personnel in the future. Recently there has been a substantial movement of members of the Army Reserve into the Regular Army. The latter is a welcome trend, although it is a trend that does have disadvantages, particularly for those Reserve units that lose well-trained and motivated individuals. Reserve units also play an indirect role in the Army recruitment process through their support of cadet units. Many cadets become recruits in either the Regular or Reserve force and are influenced by what they see of the land force through their Army Reserve sponsor unit. Reserve units will continue to sponsor cadet units.
Retention of trained personnel remains a major impediment to the development of the Army Reserve. The general increase in training required by a more complex warfighting environment, and the need to ensure that Reserve soldiers possess competencies for rank and specialisation before deployment pose major challenges for the land force. The Army cannot expend scarce resources on soldiers who do not stay in the land force long enough to offer meaningful service. The development of clear, relevant and challenging roles and tasks for the Army Reserve will have a positive impact on the process of retaining personnel. The highly successful contributions that the Army Reserve has made in the recent past have proven the value of a positive retention policy. Even so, the Army will need to address the ongoing issue of retention of trained Army Reserves if our personnel are to be capable of meeting future realities.
The Issue of Resources
Since resource allocation depends on nominated task and readiness notice, all Army units are to be allocated such notices. In the future the Army will allocate priority for resources according to readiness and nominated task. With likely changes to Army Reserve readiness, roles and tasks, a series of adjustments to current resource allocations can be expected. Such adjustments should not be interpreted as meaning substantial additional allocations. Rather, adjustments should be viewed as indicating the beginning of a carefully managed rebalancing of resources towards force allocation and reinforcement tasks.
Conclusion
The Army Reserve is a vital component of overall land force capability. The roles and tasks and the readiness requirements of Army Reserve units have changed significantly in recent years, and are likely to continue to change in the future. As a result, it is now appropriate to reconsider the relevance and readiness of the Army Reserve to ensure that it continues to make a major contribution to our national defence. While the Army has already completed a considerable amount of analysis on Reserve roles, more work will be required in the future as we strive to produce a land force that is suited to the new and complex demands of 21st-century combat.
