Reservist Selection for tours (Needs changing?)

[Jarnhamar]

There's been a few threads about up comming tours in Afghanistan and some make a lot of mention of reservists deploying on them. I was going to tack this onto one of those threads but just decided to make a new one about it.

Regarding the selection

I think it needs to be changed.
The selection for TF 03-06 seems a little different from the previous ones.
Apparently the previous tours had the opportunity to take a whole bunch and select who they wanted.

Thats obviously a great thing to do because it weeds out the guys who shouldn't be there (for the most part)
TF 0306 didn't really have a selection process per say.  It seems to me like there were man power shortages.  We didn't really have enough people to pick and choose from.  maybe we did but they only choose a certain few, I'm not sure exactly how it worked this time. There doesn't seem to be a big 'weeding out' process.

Here's the beef I have with that selection stuff when it comes to reserves.

It's hard for a lot of reserves to take the time off work and school on short notice.  I know many units started calling people on Friday of the first "selection week-end" and told people "Hey, brigade wants 10 more people from each regiment, if you want to go to Afghanistan you have an hour to pack and be at the armories".
Mix that with having to take days off on little notice.
Come into work Tuesday at 8am, we have a DAG.
Come in wendsday, we have a dental.
Come in Friday etc...
I know one guy from my regiment who seems like he's border line loosing his job because of that and a soldier in my section is having problems with his school and attendance. I need to call his guidance councilor and make her understand how the whole thing works.

In many cases all this stuff goes on and the soldier doesn't even know if they are going or not.  They could be an alternate, they could be a spare. They could be told they are going, then their not going, then their going again three times in a row- which is what happened to a friend of mine.
Thats asking a considerable amount of sacrifice of someone who doesn't even have a guaranteed position. Now I don't mean a guaranteed position overseas, I'm talking about just on work up training.

There's a lot of talk about the reservist selection process.
The advantages of a selection process among the reserves going overseas is obviously an important thing. Lets face it, there's some sup-par soldiers who sign up for these things. As someone wisely put in a PM to me, many times the reservists who sign up for these tours are the guys without good jobs, not in school and basically just wait for a class B job to float their way. Some of them are great guys but sometimes your not getting the best the reserves have to offer.  One of the leading reasons like I mentioned is their job or school. They can;t get time off.
So selection is important, you want to pick the best of the best.

I also think it's important to figure out a way to make positions concrete from the start for the reserves.

No more guessing games or playing around with who wants to show up this week-end.
If you have 300 positions then don't dink around with pre-pre work up training or iffy selection stuff.  You might be going, you might not. Take time off work or school anyways.  Thats not fair.
Take and pay 350 guys.  Tell them on such and such a date their contract starts.  The trick is, DO the selection at the unit level!  No more sending people just because they stick up their hand.  If private brown got kicked off last tour's work up training, been charged with AWOL twice and has an attitude problem, shit can his nomination at the company level.
Have the unit send the best.
Once all 350 are on the ground put them in their specific positions.  100 augmenting rifle companies. 100 doing gate security, 100 in other positions (just for example)  Have the 50 extra guys who were the weakest during work up training (shuffled back and forth DURING the work up training) stay on as a rear party. If they want to cut their contract or they just don't have what it takes, then cut them.  Important thing is for the reserves signing on to this give them a deffinate answer.  Not you WILL be going over seas but you WILL have X months of employment starting whenever.
This way reserves can sit down with their bosses and guidance councilors and tell them whats going on.  No more guessing games. No more last minute 'you have an hour to pack' calls.

You do this and I guarantee many more of the 'higher end' reservists will sign up for tours.

Any opinions?

 

[Hmm donuts!]

Their definitly has to be a better process, but if the BG or TF can fore see numbers (for reserves) being a problem then thats where they have to start the corrections (I'm not going to answer that part). Yes there are sub-standard reservists and there good soldiers who want to come out, we just got find them!

 

[a_himself]

well I think a lot of this is just because they need more people than are volunteering.  I think they're being a bit over amibitious with the number of reservists they expect to volunteer to deploy.  In an ideal world they'd be able to pick only the most elite but if they want lots of reservists on tour they're going to have to pick pretty much whoever volunteers.  I would think though that probably a majority of the guys volunteering for such a committment would most likely be at least somewhat switched on.  I really don't know I could be wrong, has there been a problem with reservists getting overseas and then they are found to be idiots and pretty useless?

The thing that I think there should be is some degree of certainty.  I'm going to university right now and I'm thinking about putting in my name for the next task force.  But it seems to uncertain like the guys I know who have gone over you don't seem to find out anything really until the very last minute.  And for a lot of guys like me, committing to go overseas would require me to take a year off from schooling, and the thing that scares the hell out of me is that I'm going to apply, everything seems to be suggesting that I'm going to be going over and I'm doing the training and all and then suddenly I find out that I'm not getting sent over or something and then I'm screwed sitting on my ass for an entire year.  I'd like to see some kind of element of certainty thrown into the whole process.  All the guys I've talked to who have been overseas before seem to agree that you never really have any idea what is coming next, and sure thats part of the army but for people with other careers and schooling and whatnot, if they are committed enough to take a complete leave of absence from their whole civilian life basically for a year, they should at least be entitled to a speedy selection process.  If they want to weed people out then maybe they should kick things off with a 1 week deal designed to do so.  Leaving people completely in the dark seems really unfair. I agree with you totally, the process really needs reforming if they want to keep using large numbers of reservists for overseas deployment.