Deployment Process Improvement by Peacetime Functional Command and Control of Army Reserve Transportation Units

摘要

The deployment timelines proposed by the new Army vision require economies to be realized from improvement of the deployment process. To optimize the process, deployment planners must reduce slack time. This is especially true for those early parts of the process heavily dependent upon the Army Reserve. One substantial contributor to slack time has been the reliance on postmobilization training for Army Reserve units. While there may be training time available to those units required later in the warflight, that is not true for those units directly responsible for the deployment process. Many of those units are Army Reserve transportation units operating both from the customer unit origin and at the joint force commander's required destination. The Army Reserve, for the most part, has been tied to geographically determined command and control relationships rather than the functional alignment that most active component units use. Functional command and control for transportation units would allow more intelligent management, result in better operational training, and provide the technical competence necessary for USAR transportation units to meet mission requirements and reduce the need for postmobilization training.