Since the Gulf War, the role the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard play in operations has drastically changed, moving from a back-up component to an integrated and essential part of today's military.
Several active duty service leaders that Air Force Times spoke with said that they can't carry out missions today without support from the reserve components — something that began in Desert Storm.
"In Desert Storm...we called in the National Guard," said Kenneth Bray, the associate director of intelligence for Air Combat Command.
"They did their duty, made a difference, and then when it was over, they went home," said Bray, who flew U2/TR-1 missions during Desert Storm. "Now…we have completely integrated the reserves and the Guard in everything that we do. They don't dwell at the same, but they are an integral partner. We cannot do the mission we do without them. We have to call on them on a daily basis."
A report from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) noted that "in August 1990 alone, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard volunteers flew 42 percent of the strategic airlift missions and 33 percent of the aerial refueling missions."
By the time Desert Storm began in the early morning hours between Jan. 16 and 17, 1991, "more than 188,000 personnel and 375,000 short tons of equipment had been airlifted by the Air Reserve Components to Saudi Arabia," the report noted.
"You need to be really proud of what they've done in Desert Storm and since then," said Maj. Gen. Rowayne Schatz, Jr., the vice commander of Air Mobility Command. "From there, to 9/11, to the start of Enduring Freedom, the first sorties [that] the U.S. gets involved in are usually air mobility sorties…We brought everybody to the fight so we could operate and win away from our shores…We couldn't do this job without our reservists or our Guardsmen."
"Ninety percent of our Desert Storm operations moved on our commercial reserve partners," he continued. "Today, majority of our traffic is through our commercial partners. That key synergy, with having an active duty core with our [reserve partners]...gives us that capacity to remain engaged."
When combat was underway, the reserves were just as busy. The DTIC report said that reserve component airmen "performed important maintenance, medical, civil engineering, aerial port, and security police operations."
Those mission duties were solely in the Air Force either.
"Volunteers from the other Reserve components also provided critical skills," the DTIC report said. "Army Reserve volunteers promptly addressed urgent water-purification, supply distribution and other support needs. Naval Reserve volunteers supported air operations with C-9 airlift and performed important medical, logistics support, intelligence and cargo handling missions."
The evolution in the way the Guard and Reserve are deployed is a change from the height of the Cold War, said Maj. Gen. Paul Johnson, the Director of Operational Capability Requirements for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Requirements.
"Remember when we began Desert Storm, the Cold War was crumbling before our very eyes, the wall was coming down," said Johnson, who flew A-10 combat missions during the Gulf War.
Johnson described how most who fought in Desert Storm was raised and trained during the Cold War. <
In the event of a fight — such as a much feared confrontation with the USSR — the "active-duty force would deploy, then we get into the fight. The reserve component would all be recalled, they would get up on step, they would get their currencies back, they would get their training done and then they would reinforce weeks later," Johnson said. "Well that's not what we do today. The reserve component is part and parcel and integrated completely into what we do every day, all day."
The Air Force has focused on building a "Total Force Continuum" that includes all three branches of the service. Johnson recalled how integrated the reserves were into operations when he served as a wing commander in Kandahar, Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011.
"I had reserve components sprinkled through the wing, and 99 percent of the time it never even dawned on me that someone would be active duty, Guard, or Reserve," he said. "It was transparent to leadership in that kind of a fight."
"That's a radically different approach for a reserve component than what we had built them for in the Cold War," Johnson continued. "The advertisement when I was a youngster was to be in the Guard and Reserve one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Well, we're a long way past that. Service in the reserve component is hard work, very demanding, because we can't execute the mission without them day to day. And I'd say that's a legacy of Desert Storm."
Oriana Pawlyk covers deployments, cyber, Guard/Reserve, uniforms, physical training, crime and operations in the Middle East, Europe and Pacific for Air Force Times. She was the Early Bird Brief editor in 2015. Email her at opawlyk@airforcetimes.com. Follow her on Twitter @Oriana0214.
Phillip Swarts can be reached at pswarts@airforcetimes.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @PFSwarts.
