- The head of the 205,000-strong US reserve forces said
yesterday the Pentagon will have to be more honest with its part-time volunteers
or risk a mass exodus when their enlistments expire.
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- Lieutenant-General James Helmly said many of the 31,000
"weekend warriors" now on frontline duty in Iraq or Afghanistan
had been fed "a bungled bureaucratic pipe dream" about the length
of their deployment that could trigger a recruitment and retention crisis.
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- A high proportion of those who signed up for a 12-month
tour of duty in Iraq last year were told they would spend only six months
abroad after training. Thousands have now had their deployment extended
to 16 months, causing disruption with their civilian jobs and families.
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- "This is the first extended-duration war our nation
has fought with such a large, all-volunteer reservist element. We must
be sensitive to that and apply preventive measures to ensure we don't suffer
a manpower backlash," General Helmly said.
-
- He and his staff are now engaged in a trying to turn
the national guard ñ itself twice the size of the entire British
Army ñ into a first-rate fighting force tailored to the needs of
both peacekeeping and combating global terrorism.
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- "What we need to do is communicate honestly with
our soldiers. The Iraqi mass mobilisation was so fraught with friction
that it left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths," he added.
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- His new plan is to force through what he describes as
"a major culture change" among the military bureaucrats. Volunteers
enlisting in the reserve will be told at the outset that they will be called
to active duty for between nine and 12 months every four or five years.
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- A total of 64,000 reservists are currently mobilised
for duties either in support of operations abroad or as part of the homeland
defence against terrorism.
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