Reserve Forces

To reduce costs and maintain as small an active peacetime force as possible, the Defense Department (DOD) is relying heavily upon reserve forces to augment active forces in wartime and peacetime operations and during national emergencies. With more than 1.5 million members and a fiscal year 1996 budget of $20 billion, the reserve forces are an essential part of the national defense strategy. Because of concern over the accessibility and responsiveness of reserve forces, Congress required DOD to prepare a report with recommendations for improving the timeliness, adequacy, and effectiveness of reserve responses to domestic emergencies and national contingency operations. This report assesses the DOD report and recommends additional limitations on DOD's proposals for expanded call-up authorities.

GAO noted that: (1) the DOD report on reserve component responsiveness appears to be a complete and appropriate response to the matters identified in the legislated requirement for the report; (2) the report was the result of a collaborative effort among the key DOD organizations involved with reserve matters and generally represented a consensus view based upon military judgment and experience; (3) as required, the Reserve Forces Policy Board fully participated in the development of DOD's report; (4) DOD concluded that it would be useful to expand the statutory authority for involuntarily accessing reserve component capabilities; (5) specifically, DOD proposed that the service secretaries' authority to call reservists involuntarily to active duty should be expanded from 15 to 30 days each year and presented two reasons for proposing such a change; (6) first, the expanded authority would provide DOD access to reserves for a longer period, which could be helpful in responding to domestic emergencies and disasters; (7) second, expanding the call-up authority would allow DOD to activate reservists for up to 30 days to perform critical tasks in preparation for an expected Presidential Selected Reserve Call-Up (PSRC); (8) referring to this as the "prime-the-pump" requirement, DOD stated that, in preparing its report, it had revalidated the need to activate 25,000 reservists for this purpose; (9) representatives from the Reserve Forces Policy Board and the seven reserve components generally supported the DOD conclusion that expanded call-up authorities were needed; (10) however, concerns were expressed that expanded authority could result in more frequent, longer, and in some cases unnecessary activations, which could have adverse impacts on reservists, their families, and employers and ultimately affect reserve component recruitment, retention, and readiness; (11) to help mitigate potential adverse impacts, GAO believes the proposal for expanded call-up authority should include limits on the maximum number of reservists that could be activated in response to a domestic emergency or in anticipation of a PSRC; (12) these limits should be in addition to a time period limitation as suggested by DOD; (13) although DOD stated it requires 25,000 reservists for activities prior to a PSRC, it has not determined the appropriate maximum number of reservists needed to respond to a domestic emergency or disaster; and (14) in addition, DOD has not validated that its proposed 30-day time period is the appropriate time period needed to effectively respond to domestic emergencies and perform the "prime-the-pump" requirement.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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