I think your perspective is exactly what GO's are concerned with; current optempo and demand signal from combatant commanders that nobody wants to say no to coupled with the need to recoup capability means that the reserve & national guard are getting tapped more and more.
The question to pose is when are we going to start saying no to stuff, or when are we going to better define what is really a vital interest and what isn't.
I was talking with my (active duty) wife tonight about this. She's off at CGSC for the next four months so she's living and breathing force management doctrine right now. She asked me for specific examples but I could really only provide my personal anecdotal evidence.
I told her that I see the Army Reserve as having two general types of servicemembers: you have the meat-and-potatoes Soldiers and their leadership who fulfill most of the combat service and support roles. These are your transportation and quartermaster line units, the horizontal and vertical engineer units doing construction and route clearance, etc. My basic branch is engineer and I served as a PL in one of these units. The joes and the officers alike were mostly blue collar guys. Prison guards, construction workers, truck drivers, etc. Unless the economy is really booming, there will always be plenty of bodies to fill these jobs no matter the OPTEMPO.
The other type, in my view, is the specialists. These are your civil affairs specialists, your medical folks, the JAGs, the civil engineers, etc. These are people that the military most desperately needs because they are the ones bringing their knowledge from their civilian jobs to the field and they're vitally important to any stabilization operation. They're also the most likely, I think, to be burnt out by overuse and mismanagement but that's exactly what we're doing to them. They're being run into the ground with long OCONUS exercises and ridiculous annual computer-based training requirements. Commanders often make things even worse by being neglectful of their civilian employers when they do things like springing last-minute schedule changes on their troops. (No shit, I once found out about my Captain's Career Course date at Ft. Bragg with only three weeks notice.)
This is just how I see it from the Army Reserve perspective. I'm sure that the situation is similar for Air Force Reserve pilots and the rest. The nation really needs participation from civilian professionals in the military but so many commanders just seem clueless about what it takes to retain these people.
Well, that was a lot of bitching. Nobody needs a complainer without solutions so here are a few ideas:
First, offer the part-timers with civilian professional careers the option of condensing their battle assembles/drills into one or two week-long periods every year. My last unit, a Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, did this and it was great. I would still be there if they weren't based in Hawaii and it didn't cost me $2K out of pocket to participate.
Second, reduce or eliminate the annual training requirements. I'm talking about AT level 1, cyber awareness, SHARP, etc. The frequency of this training is ridiculous, especially for a reservist. You end up spending half your unit time working on this training that has nothing to do with your MOS. Make these things once every four years requirements instead of once a year.
Third, require every commander to send their Soldiers home with a commander's letter to their civilian employers. I had one commander that did this and it was fantastic. Introduce yourself, explain what will be required of the Soldier, demonstrate willingness to be flexible in the event of civilian job time conflicts, and provide a contact phone number.
Finally, allocate some funding to pay for Soldiers' lodging and transportation so that professionals with specific and vital experience can feasibly travel from out-of-state to participate. This was the killer for me. My Hawaii-based MEB only offered up $200 in travel pay and this was so flaky and unreliable that I actually never once received it. Total crap.