The Air Force is surging reservists with experience in ISR in order to assist in ongoing operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The service has 72 ISR reservists who have volunteered for the operations, an Air Force spokesman said. The active component is funding them through military personnel appropriation funds, which are used for such circumstances.

James Poss, a retired Air Force major general and deputy chief of staff for ISR, praised the capabilities of the ISR reserve and their National Guard counterparts, which can draw from a pool of experienced candidates whose day jobs involve other intelligence services such as the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency.

"In many cases, they are more capable than our active duty people are in the ISR realm," Poss said. "They are very, very good at [analysis], which is something that takes a more mature airman — which is available in large numbers in the reserve and Guard and it takes an airman with a longer breadth of experience you get in the reserve or Guard."

Poss also credited Guard and reserve components for identifying ISR as a gap for an Air Force transitioning from Cold War threats to needing pinpoint accuracy.

"We spend hours wondering about what to do with a single 500-pound bomb in order to achieve the effect the commander wants without causing any damage to a civilian," he said. "As a result, you're seeing more demand for ISR manpower, because we spend a lot more time exercising a lot more care and judgment before applying air power."

Col. Mark Montee, the director of ISR for Air Force Reserve Command, described the reservists' role as providing the active service "additional support. ... It's giving them the depth and relief they need."

Poss said, "These guys are coming to the rescue just like we planned."

And indeed, it is a plan, one the reserve has focused on significantly in the past three years.

"We've got about 3,000 reserve intelligence professionals really throughout the world, everything from reserve generals to airmen who provide support," Montee said. "We've gone through a major reconfiguration over the last three to four years where we've grown a lot of capability."

Part of that reconfiguration includes a focus on recruiting ISR professionals who are separating from the Air Force in order to keep that expertise around. Montee said the reserve recruited more intelligence experts in the past year "than we did in the last 10."

That includes everything from intelligence analysts to tech support experts who help maintain and monitor the large stream of information coming back from the anti-Islamic State group operations.

Speaking Sept. 15 at the Air Force Association's annual conference, Lt. Gen. James Jackson, chief of Air Force Reserve, highlighted his components' surge capability as a major plus for the service.

"Obviously, we have the ability, we've proven it every single day, to show that the Air Force Reserve is ready to go at a moment's notice," Jackson said, according to a service transcript. "When the Air Force needs to turn up the dial they come to us and the Air National Guard to do that because we have the capacity, the capability to do that."

Jackson noted how the reserve was supporting ISR missions in Iraq at that point, highlighting the 63rd Intel Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, that was called upon to assist operations.

"They have all the experience. They have the ability to go ahead and process the data and fuse all the data," he said. "When they get done, when we get done, they'll go back to their civilian employer. That's how we do business."

In January, the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force recommended moving more ISR work into the reserve and Guard as a cost-saving measure, something Air Force leadership, including Secretary Deborah Lee James, has indicated will be looked at closely.

Meanwhile, the service has shaken up its ISR enterprise on the active side, turning its ISR agency into a numbered air force in July. The newly-christened 25th Air Force operates under Air Combat Command, which service officials said was done with a greater eye toward integrating ISR capabilities into the broader service.

The Air Force is also undergoing a series of rapid analysis on force structure in order to inform the fiscal 2016 budget request, which will likely feature some movement of ISR capabilities toward the reserve components.

The question now for the reserves is: how long will this surge last? After all, officials ranging from President Obama to Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have emphasized this is an operation that will persist for some time.

Poss believes the ISR assets needed directly correlates to how quickly the allied forces on the ground, such as Kurdish militias in Syria and Iraq, can begin ground operations.

"If the two sides dig in in Syria and neither side attacks, then I can see us ramping down the ISR operations," Poss said. "But if the Kurds start moving again, the [Islamic State group] guys start moving again, there's a lot more troops in contact, then the demand for ISR will remain constant." ■

About Aaron Mehta

Aaron Mehta was deputy editor and senior Pentagon correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Defense Department and its international partners.

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