Where I come from, the "Commander, Carrier Air Wing Reserve 20" was a guy; "CVWR-20" was an organization.
Usually, (by usually, I mean in the Navy) "Carrier Air Wing ONE" is the Air Wing. "Commander Carrier Air Wing ONE" is the Commander and his staff - in other words, if you looked up my UIC when I was a CAG LSO, I was not attached to "Carrier Air Wing ONE" but "Commander Carrier Air Wing ONE."
Clear as mud?
Not clear which you are calling useless, which is a strong word either way.
If you are a deploying wing, the CAG staff's job is to support the squadrons and facilitate deployment. At Cag 20, the staff spent most of their time tasking and basically trying to justify their existence. Perhaps that has changed. I doubt it.
There are two problems with USNR in general:
1. The real Navy (I prefer that term to "Big Navy" it is more accurate.) does not use the reserves effectively, or really, at all. IAs do a great job of filling the gaps, but you don't need all the structure we currently have to provide IAs. With the exception of IAs/CBs/MPs and Docs, what does the great big USNR contribute to GWOT or OIF/OEF? Not USNRs fault, in fact it is USN leadership fault. They still haven't learned what USAF and USA learned long ago - if you beat up the reserves, you will lose a lot less of the active force. That is what the reserves are for.
2. Too many senior "leaders" in USNR want to keep the USNR status quo. When Balls Cotton and CEO Clark started talking about revamping USNR so that they REALLY contributed, which involved (gasp) TARs and the rest of us yahoos deploying and more then 1 weekend/month 1 week/year for the Prairie Navy, the howling from reserve Captains and Flags was unbelievable. At VAW-78, we prepared a brief about the most effective use of our people and assets. We figured out that on 15% of what we did actually contributed to the mission of the Navy. The rest was basically squadron level and wing level masturbation. Our proposal was to get rid of the reserve "CAG" and chop the squadrons to the typewings where they could do some good - support the RAGs, augment deploying squadrons, etc. The CAG at the time told us to never give that brief again...
Clark is gone, Mullen was no fan of the reserves, don't know about the new CNO, but if I were a betting man, I'd bet that nothing will change.