The Army Reserve’s Troubling Little Secret: Cheap, Inadequate Training | RealClearDefense

Reserve Component Officer training is substandard across the board in my opinion. The Army must recognize this to at least an extent. All Lieutenants, regardless of component, attend the same Basic Course. However, the Reserve Component Captains Career Course is a fraction of what the Active Component receives. RC MCCC, for example, is a 4 week course instead of a 6 month course. While I understand why this is done (to prevent RC Officers from leaving work for 6 months) it creates a capabilities gap. RC Officers also typically do not get the additional schools that are "required" for their branch, such as the Airborne slots mentioned in the article. Few RC Infantry Officers get a chance to go to Ranger School, despite how critical the Army's own doctrine claims it is. Tank Commander's Course and Cavalry Leader's Course opportunities are also few and far between. I'm sure there are similar opportunities other AOCs are missing out on as well.

The real question is how do we address the issue without having a bunch of unemployed Captains and Majors? At my last Battalion Change of Command we went around the room and introduced ourselves to the incoming commander, to include our profession, family status, etc. Of all the Company Commanders, First Sergeants, and Staff present there were 3 that didn't work either for the government or Army in some capacity. The whole RC certainly can't work for the government.

This particular case is speaking about CA Officers, of which I am. I can say that I agree with many of the points that the author makes, and I agree that there should be more training for Reserve Soldiers.

I have two problems with the article, First, the author does not address the fact that if it were a year plus long training pipeline for Reserve CA Officers then they would have even less then they do now. The Army does not pay a Reserve Soldiers bills, their civilian career does. You tell a reserve Officer that they are going to have to leave their civilian job for a year or more and they will probably not have that job when they get back. Its not right, but its the way it is.

Second, the author only glosses over the point that Reserve CA Officers bring to the table their civilian acquired skills. That's great that active duty CA can jump out of airplanes and wear hockey helmets and have all the cool guys gizmos on their weapons... none of which will help them establish a National Banking System (a CA friend of mine was tasked to do just this in Afghanistan in 2003), he had to leverage his skills and contacts from the civilian sector to accomplish his mission. I would even venture to say that the Reserve should focus more on selecting CA Officers based on their civilian occupation... that is what makes us different from the Active Component Soldiers.

This is not an isolated issue for the Reserves but for the Total Force of the Army. The topic of Training along with all the DA regulations need to be discussed at the GO level with one caveat. The GOs are not allowed to talk. The CSMs of the Army need to regain their spines and tell the GOs that Army Training today is a farce, pure and simple. Observations- just pull any AAR from one of the Combat Training Centers. Or point to the Arkansas NG that had a difficult time moving a convoy from Point A to Point B without adding a CASEVC operation en-route along with destruction of government property. There are 365 days in the calendar and about 220 Training Days. Slap all the mandatory training on the calendar and then all the Corps, Division, Brigade level mandated training and taskings and then look how how much White Space is available ( it will be around 14 days of open time) for a Commander to Train his/her unit, assess them, retrain them, and move on to next task. And that is at the Active Duty level.