WASHINGTON - Army officials are seeking a new limited Title 10 authority to mobilize the Guard and Reserve in peacetime for rotations to Europe, Korea and elsewhere.
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Thomas Lamont said the proposal would give the secretary of Defense authority to call up 50,000 reserve-component troops from all services for up to 270 days. He outlined the plan Tuesday during a panel discussion on the reserve component at the AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition.
"We believe a new limited Title 10 authority would provide ... a mechanism for employing the RC to support peacetime force-generation requirements, such as theater-security cooperation missions, rotational forces to Europe or Korea and other force-generation requirements that are longer than 30 days in duration," Lamont said.
He cautioned, however, that such authority would require legislative action and probably could not even be considered by Congress or passed prior to the authorization bill for fiscal year 2013. He predicted that the Army then might begin planning for this increased use of the reserve component for FY 2015.
"I will tell you as the chief force generator for the Army, we cannot meet Army requirements without proportional representation and contribution of the reserve components," said the commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, Gen. James D. Thurman.
Lamont added, "it's important to understand that ARFORGEN simply does not work without the reserve component... how do we support the ARFORGEN model?"
Before answering his own question, Lamont explained further that the Army Reserve and National Guard contributions to the nation's defense efforts have risen to almost five times the level they were before Sept. 11, 2001 and the workload has increased more than seven times.
Today, 74,000 members of the reserve component are on active duty, he said. he Guard and Reserve account for 51 percent of the Army's end strength, which he said adds up to 16 percent of the Army's 2010 base budget.
Thurman added that for the active force to achieve rotational goals of one year deployed to two years reset, the Army must have access to RC medevac, civil affairs, engineer, transportation, and logistical assets, as well as military intelligence and especially RC aviation units.
Also participating on the panel were Army Reserve chief Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, First Army Commander Lt. Gen. Thomas Miller, Acting Director of the National Guard Maj. Gen. Raymond Carpenter and Brig. Gen. Tim Orr, adjutant general for the Iowa National Guard.