If I could change one thing (IV): I’d allow service members to move back and forth between active duty and the reserves

By Jesse Sloman, Best Defense contest entry

If I could change one thing about the U.S. military personnel system, I would create a pathway for service members to move back and forth between active duty and the reserves throughout their careers. Rather than viewing the active force and the reserves as distinct and separate, the Defense Department (DoD) should adopt a manpower management model described by some leaders as a ‘continuum of service,’ in which personnel would shift between statuses while retaining their competitiveness for promotion and retirement benefits.

A continuum of service system would benefit the armed forces in several ways. Retention would be improved by giving personnel the flexibility to align their military status with other aspects of their lives. For example, service members could transition to the reserves in order to go to graduate school and return to active duty when they are ready to once again take on a full-time commitment. The services have recognized the need to offer personnel greater flexibility during their careers and are piloting programs that allow participants to spend up to three years in the Individual Ready Reserve before returning to the active force full-time. Additionally, the Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Admiral William Moran, recently announced that the Navy is exploring ways to implement a system composed of “off ramps” for service members looking for a break and “on ramps” back onto active duty. The DoD should institutionalize programs like these and expand them in order to ensure that valuable personnel are not pushed out of uniform unnecessarily.

A continuum of service model would also broaden the military’s knowledge base. The armed forces maintain a closed manpower system that does not allow for lateral hiring, making the services more vulnerable than most organizations to the pitfalls of group think. Aside from a few rare fellowships, most of which last one or two years, military leaders spend their entire careers in uniform. There is an obvious, and understandable, reason for this: many military skills are unique and cannot be acquired in a civilian job. However, the current system prevents personnel from gaining professional experience in the private sector, in other parts of government, or in academia. A pathway between active duty and the reserves would allow service members to build a high level of military expertise while also offering them the opportunity to expand their skills outside of the DoD, ultimately enhancing their overall performance and providing the services with more well-rounded leaders.

Finally, a continuum of service program would provide the Pentagon with much greater leeway to correct for manpower management problems. The military’s inability to do lateral hiring means that errors in recruitment or retention policies linger for decades. If the DoD misjudges its future manpower requirements, and either recruits too few or sheds too many personnel, the Pentagon  will be faced with a shortfall for that year’s cohort of service members which will persist throughout their careers. As Bernard Rostker showed in a 2013 Center for New American Security (CNAS) working paper, the Air Force has been facing this exact problem since the 1990s. By curtailing the recruitment of new personnel in order to retain more mid-level airmen, the Air Force found that it had “created a ‘trough’ that moved forward during the decade,” resulting in a “force profile that grew increasingly unbalanced over time.” Easing the barriers between shifts in status will allow the military to quickly transfer experienced personnel from the reserves to the active duty force, allowing leaders to correct for manpower shortages and building more room for error into a critically important component of military readiness.

To be sure, there are significant administrative and cultural obstacles that will need to be overcome to implement a continuum of service program. First, the retirement system will have to be standardized between the active duty and reserve components in order to ensure that reserve service remains an attractive option. Patrick Mackin, writing for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has proposed the creation of a “unified retirement system” that would allow reservists with significant active time to “to reach or approach an annuity comparable to that received by a member who served exclusively on active duty.”

Second, promotion criteria will need to be rewritten to ensure service members are not penalized for spending time in the reserves. The DoD has already pledged to ensure that personnel who participate in its experimental sabbatical programs remain professionally competitive, but the actual repercussions are still unknown. If individuals who opt for some reserve service are excluded from choice assignments or discriminated against by promotion boards, ambitious young leaders will be discouraged from making use of a continuum of service system and the program will be a failure. 

Third, the DoD must embrace a shift in culture to move from an institution that views a military career as a linear path through the ranks to one that sees it as a mix of experiences and statuses. This trajectory is becoming increasingly common in civilian society, where individuals now plan to hold many different jobs throughout their working lives. A continuum of service program would allow the military to grant its personnel a much greater degree of professional flexibility than they currently enjoy, bringing the services more in line with the rest of society.

Eliminating the barriers to moving between active duty and reserves will require enormous bureaucratic stamina and the slaughtering of more than a few sacred cows, but the rewards will be well worth the effort. Not only will the services be better positioned to retain their best and brightest members, the DoD will benefit from the sustainment and development of tactically and operationally proficient leaders who also possess a broad array of experiences. These men and women will be able to draw upon their varied backgrounds, both in and out of uniform, to develop innovative solutions to the complex security challenges they will undoubtedly be faced with. 

Jesse Sloman is an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and a member of the Truman National Security Project’s Defense Council. The views expressed here are his own.

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