(1) The ability to augment significantly on short notice the Active Forces when required. This element should be relatively small but should be maintained at a very high state of readiness.

(2) The ability to provide a base for large-scale mobilization. This element of the Reserve Force need not be maintained at a very high state of readiness and need be only large enough to fill the gap between the beginning of mobilization and the date when new units can be trained and readied for combat.

(3) The ability to provide the initial loss replacements required by the Active Forces which will bear the brunt of the first attack.

The Reserve components then must be capable of providing the military forces necessary to plug the gap between the capabilities of the Active Force and the date when the general mobilization of the population will begin to be felt if that becomes necessary.

In effect, I am saying that the requirement for Reserve component units exists today and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.

The subcommittee particularly wishes to call attention to the first requirement outlined by the Secretary which emphasizes the critical importance of maintaining a Reserve Force "at a very high state of readiness." The subcommittee does not believe that this requirement has been or is now being met by our Reserve components, nor does it believe that action has been initiated within the Department of Defense to satisfy this requirement. The basis for this conviction will be developed in the balance of this report.

STRENGTH OF THE RESERVE COMPONENTS

Total Reserve strength

The Congress has established the maximum number of individuals that can be kept in a Ready Reserve status at 2,900,000. The Secretary of Defense has determined that this figure should be reduced to 2,500,000 to permit the retention of a maximum of 400,000 Ready Reserve personnel on active duty (during peacetime) at any one time. As a consequence, the practical ceiling for the Ready Reserve (not on active duty) is 2,500,000.

This figure has been further broken down by the Secretary of Defense to provide a ceiling of ready reservists to each service as follows for fiscal year 1962:

In addition to these ready reservists who are subject to immediate recall to active duty upon declaration of a national emergency proclaimed by the President (1 million can be recalled during an emergency proclaimed by the President), there is the Standby Reserve.

The Standby Reserve is made up of individuals who have completed their Ready Reserve obligation (statutory requirement to participate in Reserve training), but who have a statutory obligation to remain in the Reserve to satisfy their total Reserve obligation. Generally speaking, since the total Reserve obligation is 6 years and the maximum Ready Reserve obligation is 5 years, the period spent involuntarily in a standby status is 1 year. In addition, there are other individuals who voluntarily choose to remain affiliated with the Reserve program without significant participation and, therefore, are also included in the Standby Reserve.

Standby reservists cannot be involuntarily recalled to active duty except upon a declaration of war or national emergency by Congress. Thus, in summary, standby reservists are simply less vulnerable to recall to active duty than members of the Ready Reserve.

The final category of reservists is the Retired Reserve. This is composed of members not receiving retired pay, others who are receiving retired pay, and still others who will be entitled to retired pay upon reaching age 60. The liability of these individuals for recall to active duty is approximately that of a standby reservist.

TABLE OF RESERVE STRENGTH

This shows the Armed Forces Reserve strength not on active duty, by component and by Reserve status, as of the end of fiscal year 1961:

Only ready reservists receive pay for training performed. Less than half of the Ready Reserve receive training for which they are paid. There are ready and standby reservists who perform some form of training for which they receive no pay. Had it not been for the Reserve callup in connection with the Berlin crisis, the military services would have been authorized to end fiscal year 1962 strength in paid status as follows:

The Department of the Army's approved force structure is based upon a Ready Reserve strength of 1,448,000. Of this number, 700,000 (400,000 Army National Guard and 300,000 Army Reserve) are authorized in a paid drill training status in organized units of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, and 48,000 are trained individual

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reinforcements. The Reserve components in terms of major selected

units are as follows:

Army National Guard

21 infantry divisions

6 armored divisions

7 armored cavalry regiments

11 separate infantry battle groups

Army Reserve

10 infantry divisions
13 training divisions

2 maneuver area commands
2 engineer amphibious support
commands

The foregoing units supplemented by the required combat and support units and detachments total 4,367 and 4,310 company-size units and detachments in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, respectively, plus 748,000 trained individual reinforcements.

Department of the Army witnesses who appeared before the subcommittee emphasized that the existing Army Reserve structure did not provide their Reserve components with the high degree of readiness required by Army mobilization requirements. These deficiencies involved both personnel and equipment. Accordingly, the Army had developed plan to overcome these deficiencies and satisfy its increased mobilization requirements. Coincidentally, the Army found that it could accomplish these objectives and remain within the same level of expenditures authorized in prior fiscal years.

Briefly stated, the Army plan contemplated a reduction of the training time necessary to bring a unit to a state of acceptable "operational readiness" to a period of 8 weeks after recall to active duty. According to Army planners, this objective could be reached by the simple expedient of selecting certain units as "high priority" unitsincreasing their personnel manning levels, adding technical personnel and providing them with additional equipment.

Army witnesses acknowledged that this increased readiness for specific units would be achieved at the expense of so-called "low priority" units who would be eliminated or assigned reduced manning levels, with a net reduction in unit strength from 700,000 to 642,000 personnel.

The subcommittee was not persuaded by this rationale for reasons which will be developed more fully later in this report. However, it should be noted at this point that this Army concept failed to give any genuine consideration to its serious inability to provide Army drilling units with "hard skill" personnel. It was also most difficult for the subcommittee to comprehend how a reduction of 58,000 men in Reserve drilling units would result in an increased mobilization capability.

Other than the problem of personnel manning, the most acute deficiency in the Army Reserve components is the lack of modern equipment. The fact that this would be a problem during the callup of Reserve component units came as no surprise to the Army or to this committee. Army leaders have for several years pointed out that no appreciable progress was being made toward elimination of the equipment deficit or full modernization of equipment of the Active Army, let alone the Reserve component units.

The total equipment deficit of the Army was not limited to a shortage in the Reserve components, but also sharply affected the Active Army equipment situation.

The distribution of available equipment within the Army must be based upon priorities dictated by many different factors, including the

mission of the particular unit. Certain Reserve component units held higher priority tasks than certain Active Army units. Those units have a correspondingly higher priority.

However, in the face of an overall shortage of equipment, many units among both the Reserve components and the Active Army were not fully equipped regardless of their being in a high position upon the priority list.

The Army had for many years been seeking additional funds for modernization of their inventory. Many years of austere funding made it impossible for the Army to achieve any measurable degree of such modernization. The result was that there existed not only a quantitative but also a qualitative shortage in equipment.

This inability to modernize was of particular importance to the Reserve components since their lower priority units were largely dependent upon the "fallout" of serviceable equipment from higher priority units.

In obtaining equipment, other than new items being introduced into the inventory for the first time, the Reserve component units are authorized a certain level based upon their priority. If they are short of their authorized levels, they can requisition and if the equipment is available, within priority, it is issued to the unit.

When a new modernization item of equipment becomes available from procurement, distribution is made in the order of supply priorities, with combat forces and schools receiving the first substantial production. Usable, serviceable equipment being replaced by new equipment is then made available to the Reserve components and other users in accordance with established priorities. Here again it is this "fallout" of used equipment that provides a source of supply for the majority of Reserve component needs.

From the foregoing, it can be concluded that the status of equipment in the hands of Reserve components will generally depend upon not only the overall equipment availability, but also on the status of modernized equipment in the hands of the Active Army forces. Thus, the rate of modernization of Active Army inventory will influence the degree to which the Reserve components will be equipped. For example, the new M-113 armored personnel carriers are currently being phased into the Army inventory. Although the equipping of Active Army Forces is taking place, it will be an extended period of time before a measurable degree of fallout of the old model armored personnel carriers to the Reserve components will take place and an even greater time lag before the new models will be available from production for the Reserve components. This situation exists with many other new items including the new self-propelled artillery pieces.

This brings us to the question of the status of equipment for the Active Army Forces.

Essentially, the DOD guidance authorizes the Army to compute requirements for the needs of a 22-division force. The present applicable inventory is short of this requirement in many critical items. In fact, to make reasonable progress toward meeting this requirement by phased incremental inventory gains over a 5-year period, the Army should be provided approximately $3.5 billion annually in its procurement budget. Only in such a context of both time and funds could it be hoped to achieve a materiel input of fairly modern equipment to the Reserve components.

The long-existing equipment shortage situation came to a head during the Berlin contingency which required the callup of Reserve and National Guard Forces coincidental with the increased stockage in oversea theaters and the accelerated furnishing of supplies to MAP countries.

Army witnesses advised that at the outset of this critical period, the Army as a matter of policy moved to

(a) Seek additional funds for equipment.

(b) Accelerate the rebuild program for restoring required equipment that was unserviceable but economically repairable. (c) Withdraw and distribute equipment from other lower priority Reserve and Active Army units, to the newly mobilized units.

(d) Accelerate production and procurement of required items to the maximum extent practicable.

Despite these emergency steps, shortages were evident. Without question, these equipment shortages had an adverse impact upon training. Training readiness dates for some units had to be extended and completion of unit training was delayed. However, certain training objectives were met. This was possible largely because of the phased nature of training cycles and the pooling of equipment; neither of these latter two conditions should be considered a precedent for establishing a criteria for readiness.

Two important facts bear out that such steps as phased training and pooled equipment are no substitute for true materiel readiness.

First, it is noteworthy that many of the Reserve units being returned to their home stations have not yet been able to reach their total equipment authorizations despite their time on active duty.

Secondly, Reserve units returning to their home stations will not retain all their present equipment and will, in many instances, retain even less of certain critical items than they had on hand at the time of callup.

These activities clearly indicate that the worldwide shortage of equipment is far from solved, although Army budgets in the past 2 years have been sharply increased over those of prior years.

In summary, it can be said that the equipment shortage in the Reserve components merely reflected an equipment shortage general to the Army. This Army-wide shortage was the result of years of austere Army funding. Although the Army is receiving a larger amount of funds for the procurement of major items of equipment, critical shortages still exist in both Active Army units and Reserve components.

To overcome this shortage in the next 5 years, it is imperative that the Army have an annual PEMA budget of $3.5 billion rather than the present budget figure of $2.7 billion. If it is desired to improve this critical situation in less than 5 years, a correspondingly larger annual PEMA budget will be required.

Naval Reserve

The Ready Reserve force of the Navy on October 1, 1961, consisted of 540,000 individuals. A total of 73,000 reservists were in an active duty status leaving a balance of 467,000 on inactive duty. The Navy advises that its mobilization plans contemplate a requirement for practically all of its Ready Reserve personnel.