Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, Chief of the Army Reserve, told Stripes that he foresees mobilizing reservists once every five years even after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a recruiting tool. (Lisa Burgess / S&S)
ARLINGTON, Va. — Once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, plans to keep reservists mobilized once every five years.
“I think that would be a great recruiting tool,” Stultz told Stars and Stripes in an Aug. 3 interview in his Pentagon office.
“What if I could tell you, as you’re coming out of high school, ‘Join the Army Reserve, and about every five years I’m going to send you somewhere in the world for a wonderful experience?’”
However, Stultz added, “Here’s where I’ll caveat that a little bit.”
Instead of having a “wonderful experience” in a combat zone such as Iraq for 12 months, he said, “it might be to Hungary. It might be to Korea. This is a security cooperation-type exercise,” not a war.
“Hopefully, it won’t be for 12 months,” Stultz said. “Maybe you’re going to be over there for six months, and then come back.”
The five-year rotation cycle is part of the Army’s so-called “force generation model.” That is the plan Army leaders came up with to fit their vision of an Army that is moving back to the United States from Europe and South Korea and focusing on an “expeditionary” approach, with units more or less constantly deployed and exercising with allies around the globe.
To keep the Army Reserve ready and relevant, it’s important for the component’s soldiers to play a role in those exercises, Stultz said.
“Those soldiers … want to feel like they are utilizing those talents they’ve been trained for,” Stultz said. “I see great value in that.”
The rotation model also helps ensure that the Army spreads its resources more evenly and fairly than in the past, Stultz said.
He cited one of his mentors, Army Gen. David McKiernan, who was the 3rd U.S. Army/Combined Forces Land Component Commander in Iraq while Stultz was serving in Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom for 22 months between 2002 and 2004.
McKiernan, who is now commander of U.S. Army Europe, “uses the analogy of ducks and eagles,” Stultz said.
In the Army’s old concept of tiered readiness, Stultz said, “If you were the DRB (division ready brigade) for the 82nd [Airborne Division], you were an eagle. You got everything you needed.
“But there were a lot of ducks down here that were very low-resourced, low-priority units. And there were a lot of those units in the Army Reserve.”
In the Army’s force generation model, “everybody gets to be a duck, and everybody gets to be an eagle,” Stultz said.
“You start out as a duck, and you grow up to be an eagle.”
