Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Military Readiness: Implications For Our Strategic Posture

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REP. GILLIBRAND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you all for your testimony.

I want to go back to the issue of -- that we began to address -- of the Reserve Components. What recommendations do you have for how we can strengthen them? Particularly, I'm concerned about recruitment and retention because you cited some statistics in your testimony about the reduction in recruitment and retention.

As the -- Mr. Chairman had asked a number of us under the leadership of Congressman Cooper to work on a roles and missions panel, to begin to think about these issues, think outside the box, make some suggested recommendations about areas to review. And one of the areas that we discussed for the Reserve Components was to increase recruitment by offering some flexibility in terms of whether new members would prefer to be stateside mission only or take on foreign missions as a recruitment tool that would be nonbinding. So obviously if we needed them all in theater abroad they could all be sent abroad.

In your opinion would that increase retention and recruitment?

Also, a second suggestion that was discussed was whether or not we could train the Reserve Components to be stabilization forces, because they have some traditional training in terms of rebuilding efforts, they have a skill set unique to the National Guard and Reserve of having -- some being engineers, some being plumbers, some being transportation specialists and having those unique backgrounds of being in the private sector.

Do you think it would be possible to look to the Reserve Components, particularly the Guard, as a stability force, both for national disasters, terrorist attacks here at home, but also for rebuilding forces when we need them abroad, because your initial testimony was about engaging the civil agencies. This might be another place to look to create a stronger force, greater readiness, greater recruitment and retention down the road. And I just want your thoughts if that's something worth discussing or you see some problems in that area.

MS. FLOURNOY: Thank you. Let me start with your last point. I do think we can make better use of our Reservists in terms of looking for critical civilian skills that reside in the Reserves when we are conducting stability operations, counterinsurgency, and so forth.

I'm actually the wife of a Reservist who was mobilized mainly for his civilian skills to be deployed in support of Afghanistan. So I think we could do a better job of that, although I would advise against restricting the mission of the National Guard or any part of the Reserves to only stabilization, because I think they play -- they play important roles across the spectrum. In terms of your idea of recruiting --

REP. GILLIBRAND: But would you expand it -- not necessarily restrict it, but expand it to make sure that they could do all of the various new missions? Because you were talking earlier about how the missions of all our active duty and Reserve Components have been expanded --

MS. FLOURNOY: Yes.

REP. GILLIBRAND: -- under the current operations required for Afghanistan and Iraq. So I'm not really talking about reducing it at all. I would keep them having -- have their military readiness for combat, but adding to that these specialized training to be a real force that can do stability operations and rebuilding if necessary if were to find ourselves in kind of situation again.

MS. FLOURNOY: I think greater attention to preparation and training for the full range of missions including stability operations, sort of irregular warfare part of the spectrum, I think that would be a positive thing.

In terms of recruitment I'll just preface, but I haven't looked it at this closely, but my concern about the idea of recruiting separately for sort of a Guard versus an overseas is that you might undermine -- I mean, you might actually get an overwhelming response for domestic side and actually undercut your ability to effectively recruit for overseas missions, or vice versa.

It also presents some fairly significant force management challenges in terms of managing individuals who have different preferences within the same unit in maintaining unit cohesion. So I'm not sure exactly how that would work. But I think two of the areas that we -- that Congress can take definite action are is bringing the Reserves up to their authorized levels of equipment in terms of fully funding them, and personnel, and also looking at the variety of contracts.

Right now, we've got this sort of weekend warrior model, and the active duty model. And I think there is ample room to create levels of service and commitments in that middle range that would get -- allow us to get more out of our Reserve Component in support of current demands.

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