Reserve Forces

Component of the U.S. military consisting of individuals who train and serve part-time. The U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force all maintain reserve forces.

The reserve consists of both soldiers who have retired from active military duty as well as individuals who enlist directly into the Reserve. Reservists typically spend one weekend per month in inactive duty training and two consecutive weeks of active-duty training each year. Reserve forces are divided into two components: the Selected Reserve and the Individual Ready Reserve. The Selected Reserve is the primary pool from which the armed forces draw reserve personnel. Those who train on weekends or who are on full-time support status make up the Selected Reserve. The Individual Ready Reserve consists of retired former soldiers and other standby forces.

Many critical support capabilities are located either exclusively or primarily in the reserves. The Army Reserve, for example, contains all the services training divisions, railway units, enemy prisoner of war (POW) brigades, and chemical brigades. It also has most of the Army's civil affairs; psychological operations; medical and transportation units; and a large portion of its public affairs, engineer, and power projection assets. All the Army's bridging capability is also assigned to reserve units.

The Army and Navy reserve forces both began as informal support units that were later institutionalized by the U.S. Congress. The Naval Reserves can trace their origin to the actions of American citizens who took to the seas to harass British shipping during the Revolutionary War. State naval militias provided a reserve force of sorts for the United States throughout the 19th century, but by the outbreak of World War I, it was clear that the navy required a more formal reserve system. On March 3, 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating a naval reserve force.

[Page 629]The Army Reserve formally came into being at about the same time as the Naval Reserve. Like the Navy, the Army relied heavily on state militias and volunteers to serve as a reserve force. Their training and readiness, like that of naval militia members, was uneven and often of dubious quality. In 1908, the U.S. Congress authorized the Army to create a reserve corps of medical officers. Four years later, the Army Appropriations Act created the Regular Army Reserve. The National Defense Act of 1916 formed the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC); a year later the Medical Officers Corps was incorporated into the Regular Army Reserve to form what is now the U.S. Army Reserve.

The U.S. Air Force Reserve is the youngest of the reserve forces, created as a result of the National Defense Act of 1947. It was officially designated an agency of the Air Force on April 14, 1948. It did not become a separate command (the status of the Army and Navy Reserves) until 1997. The Air Force Reserve participated in the Berlin airlift that relieved the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in 1949. Since that time, Air Force Reserve units have seen action in the Gulf War of 1991 and the Iraq War of 2003, and participated in many humanitarian and disaster relief efforts.

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