Information on the Strategic Review Of UK Reserve Forces

UK Ministry of Defence, The MOD has released the following detailed information following the Defence Secretary's announcement on the Strategic Review of UK Reserve Forces. 
 
KEY POINTS: 
— On 19 March 2008, the Secretary of State for Defence announced a Strategic Review of the United Kingdom’s Reserve Forces to ensure we have Reserve Forces that meet Defence’s needs now and into the future. 
 
– The Review will be in line with MOD’s vision of Reserve Forces as an increasingly integral part of Defence capability. It is an opportunity to ensure we are making the most of our Reservists, and its key focus will be on the generation of relevant military capability. 
 
– The review is fully supported by the heads of the Royal Navy, Army, and Royal Air Force, and will take into account the Reserves’ recent considerable operational experience.  
 
– It will also be conducted in an open and transparent manner, seeking opinions from across the Defence community and beyond.  
 
– Reserve Forces are, and will remain, an essential component of the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces. They have played a vital part in maintaining the level of operational activity we have witnessed over the last five years, and longer. 
– The review team will be seeking views from as many people with an interest in the Reserves as possible. Their contact details are below. 
 
DETAIL: 
1. On 19 March 2008, the Secretary of State for Defence announced a strategic review of the United Kingdom’s Reserve Forces. The review is designed to ensure that our Reserve Forces are in the best shape to meet Defence’s current and future needs. Our Reserve Forces comprise both volunteer (primarily the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve, Territorial Army, and Royal Auxiliary Air Force) and ex-regular reservists. 
 
2. Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 17,000 reservists have served on operations around the world. They make up around nine percent of British Forces in Afghanistan, and four percent of British Forces in Iraq. Within the UK, they contribute substantially to the community, especially when responding to a crisis or emergency. 
 
3. While they continue to provide a strategic reserve for UK Defence, they have also increasingly demonstrated their utility on operations and have played a vital part in our ability to mount and sustain operations, in particular over the last five years. 
 
4. Even before the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, MOD has been working towards a vision of the Reserve Forces as an increasingly integral part of Defence capability. We need to make sure that we are getting the best out of our Reservists; that their training and other opportunities are as good as they can be; and that Reserve Forces are structured, managed and equipped to deliver the capability that Defence needs. 
 
The Review 
5. The Review of the UK’s Reserve Forces will start in April 2008 and report in October 2008. The Service Chiefs are in full support, noting that the review is policy-led and not resource-driven and that it represents an opportunity to look at the Reserves on their own merits and in their own right. It will be informed by significant operational lessons and trends, as well as the better management information now available. It also follows recent internal work confirming that in broad terms our existing Reserve Forces policies remain sound, and clarifying the policy starting points for those aspects that would benefit from for further development. 
 
The review has a broad remit. In particular, it will look at: 
a.) How best to refine the balance between the Regular and Reserve forces with a view to providing the required levels of capability and readiness. 
b.) Options for closer integration of Reserves and Regular units to gain greater utility of Reservists at all scales of operations. 
c.) How to capitalise on reservists’ civilian skills with the consent of the reservist and their civilian employer where appropriate. 
d.) Which niche capabilities might best be filled by the Volunteer Reserves, particularly in the light of current operations. 
e.) The degree to which Reservists should be used in stabilisation tasks – supporting one of the key implications for Defence arising from the recently published National Security Strategy. 
f.) Improvements to the Civil Contingencies Reaction Force concept with a view to providing a flexible tool that ensures the optimum use of Reservists in times of crisis at home, without affecting their utility for primary overseas tasking. 
g.) The continued validity of current Sponsored Reserves and Full Time Reserve Service models within the Illustrative framework defined in Future Reserves. 
h.) The degree to which reservists can be managed flexibly and, outside niche capabilities, integrated with their Regular counterparts where possible – we should seek to minimize the duplication of overheads in infrastructure, training delivery and the chain of command. 
 
6. Reservists mobilised for operations draw strength from the support they receive from their families, their employers, and the wider reserve community and we fully acknowledge that for this review to be successful, it will need to consult extensively.