In my last Flag*Gram, I focused on a couple of “back-to-basics” issues that require our attention. I will now return to highlights of current developments within our Reserve Law Program.

Our extended effort to restructure our units and billets is nearly complete. To recap for a moment, you may recall that I put together a team to look at the alignment between our active-duty units and tasks and our reserve component structure lines up. CAPTs Twining, Riley, Cantor, Walker, Foley and Talson have worked with me through several very detailed sessions to make sure that we have the right number and rank structure of judge advocates for every part of the mission. We have solicited and taken on board input from the field, both active and reserve, on how this alignment should look. We have invited LNCM Ayoub and his team into the process as “observers” and contributors of perspective – and to prepare them for their own alignment effort once we have our new structure fully in place.

All of this work is part of a two-stage process taking place across over two years. Our first stage, completed last year, was an effort to arrive at a partial implementation on the way to the full plan. We made some quick changes that made sense, including moving billets to set up Region Legal Service Office support units in Hawaii and Japan, among other similar moves, in order to address emergent and obvious needs. We have worked our other changes more slowly, right through the current second stage of this process, to ensure the understanding, comfort and buy-in of our “stakeholders” – active and reserve leadership, and each of you.

Most of you will have seen my presentations at MLTS and at the CO/SJA Symposium regarding our direction with this “billet scrub”. As we prepare to implement the plan, I can tell you that you will not see great differences between our earlier briefings and what I will roll out for you in our discussions at the MLTS’s this year.

We have adjusted where needed to refine the plan based on feedback and further emergent needs, to be sure. Even so, we have remained true to our purpose of creating a better structure for the mission while identifying and taking advantage of assets that the billet scrub frees up for further emergent needs and for areas of support that we have not had the ability to address in the past. There will be no billet reductions as a result of the scrub. Our plan to refine and adjust with the flexibility and lessons learned from the process will keep it alive indefinitely – a new tool available to us to provide the support that we do so well. I look forward to discussing the plan with you once again at MLTS-E, -W and –LN.

A second bit of news I want to focus on for a moment is a new review of how we in the Navy Reserve do business called “Institutionalization of Operational Support of the Navy Reserve”. This is a fast-track process being run by Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk toward a completion date in September. Its aim is to establish the changes – statutory, regulatory, budgetary, and fiscal – needed for the Navy to run and take advantage of the Reserve Component’s operational support mission more efficiently and effectively . The effort recognizes the fact – which we have often talked about in my meetings with you in various settings – that the Navy Reserve lacks the statutory and regulatory underpinnings to perform the operational support mission properly, given that it has always been organized and structured as a training-centric strategic reserve, always in preparation for a major national security need.

Many details are yet to emerge about this new study, which I will have to digest with our leadership teams, active and reserve. In the meantime, I urge each of you to gather what you can find about it in the Navy information that comes to you and from other sources, such as the internet. I plan to give you my best sense of what it all means at the MLTS’s as well. One thing seems clear, though: this is not a Reserve “ZBR II” as some have called it. It is not an extension of that very flawed (for us) process that threatened to cut the heart out of our program four years ago. It is, instead, a process intended to ensure that the Navy involves itself in changes that will help it do the operational support part of its mission better. Rest assured that I will be vigilant for any sign that it strays from this course, and that we will firmly oppose anything that is shortsighted, ill-advised our does not make good sense for our mission and our community.

I will end my discussion here in order to meet my goal of limiting these Flag*Grams to about a page and a half.

Before I close, however, I must take the opportunity to thank in particular our many deployers and long-term servers, whether on mobilization or ADSW, for their service and dedication. It is particularly important for me to do so now because, once again, for both officers and enlisted members, we have had to turn to involuntary mobilizations. We all know that this is a fact of life for us, but it is something that, given our phenomenal rate of volunteering for assignments, we have had to endure rarely. The fact that we must on occasion turn to our random mobilization selection process is a reflection of our optempo. In my view, however, it is not, in any way, a reflection of any decrease in our community-wide dedication to service and support, which remains as strong as ever and doubly inspiring for that reason.

Please join me in wishing our new deployers well on their assignments, and in thanking those who are deployed or have mobilized for their service. Take every measure you can to support them – and this goes especially for their COs, SJAs and seniors. They are at the vanguard of what we do, and epitomize our capabilities and dedication – a source of pride and sober commitment for all of us.
 
Norton Joerg

April, 2008