Report to the Subcommittee on 

Personnel, Committee on Armed 

Services, U.S. Senate 

United States General Accounting Office 

GAO 

August 2003 MILITARY 

PERSONNEL 

DOD Actions Needed 

to Improve the 

Efficiency of 

Mobilizations for 

Reserve Forces 

GAO-03-921 
About 300,000 of the 1.2 million National Guard and Reserve personnel have 

been called to active duty since September 11, 2001. They fought on the front 

lines in Iraq; tracked terrorists throughout Asia and Africa; maintained the peace 

in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and now Iraq; and participated in a wide range of 

domestic missions. However, DOD’s process to mobilize reservists after 

September 11 had to be modified and contained numerous inefficiencies. 

Existing operation plans did not fully address the mobilization requirements 

needed to deal with the terrorist attacks or uncertain overseas requirements. For 

example, no previous requirements called for the extended use of National 

Guard and Reserve members to fly combat air patrols over the nation’s capital 

and major cities. Because DOD could not rely on existing operation plans to 

guide its mobilizations, it used a modified process that relied on additional 

management oversight and multiple layers of coordination, which resulted in a 

process that was slower and less efficient than the traditional process. Under 

the modified process, the Secretary of Defense signed 246 deployment orders to 

mobilize over 280,000 reservists compared to the less than 10 deployment orders 

needed to mobilize over 220,000 reservists during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 

DOD did not have visibility over the entire mobilization process primarily 

because it lacked adequate systems for tracking personnel and other resources. 

DOD’s primary automated readiness reporting system could not adequately 

track the personnel and other resources within the small units that were 

frequently needed. Also, visibility was lost because some services’ active and 

reserve systems for tracking personnel were incompatible, resulting in ad hoc 

coordination between active and reserve officials. Both groups often resorted to 

tracking mobilizations with computer spreadsheets. In addition, some reservists 

were deployed beyond dates specified in their orders or stayed on alert for more 

than a year and never mobilized because officials lost visibility. 

The services have used two primary approaches—predictable operating cycles 

and advance notification—to provide time for units and personnel to prepare for 

mobilizations. All the services provide predictability to portions of their forces 

through some type of standard operating cycle, but only the Air Force has a 

standard operating cycle that brings predictability to both its active and reserve 

forces. The Army prioritizes its units, and lower-priority units generally need 

extra training and preparation time before deploying. Yet, since September 11, a 

number of lower-priority units have been mobilized with relatively little advance 

notice. Despite the large number of lower-priority units within the Army Guard 

and Reserve, the Army does not have a standard operating cycle to provide 

predictability to its reserves. Without such a concept, the Army’s opportunities 

to provide extra training and preparation time to its reserve forces are limited. 

Mobilizations were hampered because one-quarter of the Ready Reserve was not 

readily available for mobilization. Over 70,000 reservists could not be mobilized 

because they had not completed their training requirements, and the services 

lacked information needed to fully use the 300,000 pretrained IRR members. 

On September 14, 2001, President 

Bush proclaimed that a national 

emergency existed by reason of the 

September 11, 2001, terrorist 

attacks. Under section 12302 of 

title 10, United States Code, the 

President is allowed to call up to 

1 million National Guard and 

Reserve members to active duty for 

up to 2 years. GAO was asked to 

review issues related to the call-up 

of reservists following 

September 11, 2001. GAO 

examined (1) whether the 

Department of Defense (DOD) 

followed existing operation plans 

when mobilizing forces, (2) the 

extent to which responsible 

officials had visibility over the 

mobilization process, and 

(3) approaches the services have 

taken to provide predictability to 

reservists. GAO also determined 

the extent to which the Ready 

Reserve forces, which make up 

over 98 percent of nonretired 

reservists, were available. 

GAO recommends that DOD 

improve mobilization planning, 

increase visibility over the 

readiness of small units, provide 

for the seamless transfer of 

reservists’ data, update 

mobilization guidance, improve 

predictability for Army units, 

increase access to the Individual 

Ready Reserve (IRR), and update 

IRR policies. DOD generally 

concurred with the 

recommendations in this report. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-921.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Derek B. 

Stewart at (202) 512-5559 or 

stewartd@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-03-921, a report to the 

Subcommittee on Personnel, Committee 

on Armed Services, U.S. Senate 

August 2003 

MILITARY PERSONNEL

DOD Actions Needed to Improve the 

Efficiency of Mobilizations for Reserve 

Forces 
Page i GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Letter 1

Results in Brief 3

Background 7

DOD’s Mobilizations after September 11, 2001, Were Not Based on 

Existing Operation Plans 19

DOD Officials Had Limited Visibility Over the Mobilization Process 24

The Services Have Two Approaches to Provide Preparation Time 

for Mobilizations and Deployments 31

DOD Has Limited Access to Portions of the Ready Reserve 36

Conclusions 42

Recommendations for Executive Action 43

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 44

Appendix I Scope and Methodology 46 

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Defense 50 

Appendix III Staff Acknowledgments 54 

Tables 

Table 1: Authorities Used to Mobilize Reservists after September 

11, 2001 9

Table 2: Numbers of Army National Guard or Army Reserve Units 

That Were on Alert in Excess of 90 Days (March 28, 2003) 28

Table 3: Fiscal Year 2002 Questionnaire Response Rates 38

Table 4: IRR Screening Event Participation Rates 40

Figures 

Figure 1: Flowchart of the Mobilization Process 11

Figure 2: Guard and Reserve Members on Active Duty (January 

2002-July 2003) 15

Figure 3: Reserve Force Mobilizations by Service (January 2002–

July 2003) 16

Figure 4: Reserve Force Mobilizations as Percentages of Service 

Ready Reserve Strengths (January 2002–July 2003) 17

Contents 
Page ii GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Abbreviations 

DOD Department of Defense 

GSORTS Global Status of Resources and Training System 

IRR Individual Ready Reserve 

OSD Office of the Secretary of Defense 

RFF Request for Forces 

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Page 1 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

August 21, 2003 

The Honorable Saxby Chambliss 

Chairman 

The Honorable E. Benjamin Nelson 

Ranking Minority Member 

Subcommittee on Personnel 

Committee on Armed Services 

United States Senate 

Mobilization is a complex process used to move the military from its 

peacetime posture to a heightened state of readiness to support national 

security objectives in time of war or other national emergency. It involves 

the activation of all or some of the 1.2 million members of the National 

Guard and Reserve components, as well as the assembling and organizing 

of supplies and materiel. The process involves many different 

organizations and, while reserve component officials have a role in the 

process, civilian leaders and active military officials within the Department 

of Defense (DOD) take the lead in the process. Active component officials 

generate and validate mobilization requirements, and civilian leaders 

approve requests to alert, mobilize, and deploy forces. In addition, when 

reservists1

 are mobilized they come under the operational control of the 

active forces. 

On September 14, 2001, President Bush proclaimed that a national 

emergency existed by reason of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. 

His proclamation2

 further stated that he intended to utilize section 12302 of 

title 10, United States Code (commonly referred to as the partial 

mobilization authority), which allows the President to call up to 1 million 

 1

 Unless specified otherwise, the terms “reserves” and “reservists” both refer to the 

collective forces of the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard, as well as the 

forces from the Army Reserve, the Naval Reserve, the Marine Corps Reserve, the Air Force 

Reserve, and the Coast Guard Reserve. Our review focused on DOD’s reservists and its 

mobilization process. We also included the Coast Guard Reserve in our review because it is 

considered a reserve component of the U.S. Armed Forces, even though it was part of the 

Department of Transportation when we began our review and part of the Department of 

Homeland Security when we completed our review. 

2

 Proclamation No. 7463 of September 14, 2001. 

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, DC 20548 
Page 2 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

National Guard and Reserve members to active duty for up to 

2 years. 

We were asked to review issues related to the call-up of reservists 

following September 11, 2001. As agreed with your offices, our review was 

focused on the efficiency of DOD’s process for mobilizing reservists from 

among its authorized 1.2 million Ready Reserve3

 members. Specifically, we 

examined (1) whether DOD followed existing operation plans when 

mobilizing reserve forces after September 11, 2001, (2) the extent to which 

responsible officials had visibility over the entire mobilization process, 

and (3) approaches the services have taken to provide predictability to 

reservists who were subject to mobilizations and overseas deployments. 

You also asked us to determine the extent to which the Ready Reserve 

forces were available for mobilization. 

To evaluate the efficiency of DOD’s mobilization process, we reviewed 

mobilization statutes, regulations, instructions, and guidance. We analyzed 

mobilization data obtained during meetings with military and civilian 

officials from the offices of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, the services, the reserve component headquarters, and a 

number of commands that used mobilized reservists. We also collected 

and analyzed information on the roles and responsibilities of key 

mobilization officials, the steps of the mobilization process, and the 

methods and systems used to track mobilization requirements and 

reservists who had been mobilized. To gain first-hand knowledge about 

the effects of mobilizations on individual reservists, we interviewed both 

unit and individual reservists at sites where they were deployed or 

undergoing mobilization processing4

 and training. We also observed DOD’s 

2-1/2 day November 2002 symposium where senior military and civilian 

officials came together and reviewed the mobilization process. A more 

thorough description of our scope and methodology is provided in 

appendix I. 

 3

 The Ready Reserve accounts for over 98 percent of nonretired reservists and consists of 

units and individuals who are liable for active duty under the provisions of 10 U.S.C.§ 12301 

and § 12302. 

4

 This processing included attendance at medical, legal, and family support briefings; 

personnel record screenings and updates; medical and dental processing, including 

receiving inoculations; and receiving combat equipment, camouflage clothing, Geneva 

Convention Cards, identification tags, and the new controlled access cards that have 

replaced laminated identification cards. 
Page 3 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

About 300,000 of the 1.2 million National Guard and Reserve personnel 

have been called to active duty since September 2001. They fought on the 

front lines in Iraq; tracked down terrorists throughout Asia and Africa; 

maintained the peace in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and now Iraq; and 

participated in a wide range of domestic missions. However, the process 

to mobilize reservists after September 11 had to be modified and 

contained numerous inefficiencies. 

DOD did not follow existing operation plans after the events of 

September 11, 2001, because those plans did not adequately address the 

mobilization requirements needed to deal with terrorist attacks at home 

and abroad, or with uncertain overseas deployment requirements. The 

following examples illustrate how the existing operation plans failed to 

accurately identify mobilization requirements. 

• No previous requirements existed for National Guard troops at the nation’s 

civilian airports. 

• No requirements called for the extended use of Guard and Reserve 

members to fly combat air patrols over the nation’s capital and major 

cities. 

• Overseas requirements focused on traditional operations against national 

military forces, rather than on tracking terrorists throughout Afghanistan 

and around the globe. 

• Requirements in the Iraq operation plan had to be modified to address the 

tenuous political environment, when assumed coalition partners and 

planned access to bases and airspaces became uncertain. 

• Requirements for individuals and small, tailored task forces were much 

greater than those contained in the operation plans. 

Because the existing operation plans had not adequately identified 

mobilization requirements, DOD began using a modified mobilization 

process after September 11, 2001. This modified process relied on 

additional management oversight and multiple layers of coordination 

among crisis action teams that were established to screen, clarify, and fill 

mobilization requirements. This additional oversight and coordination 

resulted in a modified mobilization process that was slower and less 

efficient than the traditional process of synchronized mobilizations and 

deployments based on existing operation plans. Coordination was much 

more difficult under the modified process due to the large number of 

deployment orders. For example, under the modified process, the 

Secretary of Defense signed 246 deployment orders to mobilize over 

280,000 reservists between September 11, 2001, and May 21, 2003, 

Results in Brief 
Page 4 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

compared to the less than 10 deployment orders needed to mobilize over 

220,000 reservists during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 

DOD officials did not have visibility over the entire mobilization process 

primarily because DOD lacked adequate systems for tracking personnel 

and other resources. First, DOD’s primary readiness reporting automated 

data system tracked only the readiness of large units and not the readiness 

of resources within the units that were frequently needed after September 

11, 2001. DOD’s readiness reporting system does capture separate 

information on the status of various personnel and equipment categories 

for the unit as a whole, but it does not capture information on the smaller 

units that make up the reporting unit. The Air Force had a system to report 

the readiness of small units, but the other services did not have similar 

capabilities. As a result, OSD, Joint Staff, and service headquarters 

officials could not view automated readiness information for the full range 

of units available to meet the small, tailored requirements. Instead, they 

had to spend considerable time to coordinate with individual units or 

reserve component headquarters to obtain this information. 

Second, visibility was lost because some services’ active and reserve 

component systems for tracking personnel were incompatible. The reserve 

systems had visibility over one part of the mobilization process and the 

active systems had visibility over a different part of the process, but the 

systems were not able to directly transfer information and data between 

the systems. As a result, the tracking of reservists required extensive ad 

hoc coordination between active and reserve component officials, and 

both groups often resorted to tracking mobilizations with computer 

spreadsheets. Also, DOD and service officials sometimes lost visibility 

over the length of deployments for mobilized reservists who, in turn, were 

inadvertently deployed beyond the original year specified in their orders. 

In other cases, hundreds of Guard and Reserve members were kept on 

alert to mobilize for more than a year, without ever mobilizing. 

In addition, visibility was sometimes lost when coordination and 

communication failed to take place due to outdated or conflicting 

guidance. For example, Air Force officials drafted a mobilization 

instruction to reflect changes to the roles and responsibilities of personnel 

and the flow of information that had occurred under the modified 

mobilization process. However, this instruction was never finalized and 

signed. Some Air Force mobilization officials followed the unsigned draft 

instruction, while others followed the older “official” instruction due to the 

officials’ uncertainty of which to follow. We discovered cases where air 

reserve component units had been mobilized without their reserve 
Page 5 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

component headquarters being informed of the mobilizations, because the 

new guidance had not been followed. 

The services have used two primary approaches—predictable operating 

cycles and formal advanced notification—to provide time for units and 

servicemembers to prepare for upcoming mobilizations and deployments. 

Key officials throughout DOD have acknowledged the importance of 

predictability in helping reserve forces to prepare for mobilization and 

deployment. Predictability helps units anticipate (1) downtime, so they 

can schedule lengthy education and training for personnel and lengthy 

maintenance for equipment and (2) the likely periods of mobilization or 

deployment, so they can focus on efforts to increase readiness, including 

last minute training and the screening of medical, dental, and personnel 

records. Predictability also helps individual reservists by giving them time 

to prepare their civilian employers and family members for their possible 

departures. All the services provide predictability to portions of their 

forces through some type of standard operating cycle, but only the Air 

Force has a standard operating cycle that brings predictability to both its 

active and reserve forces. Faced with a high and increasing pace of reserve 

operations, the Air Force adopted a standard operating cycle to help it 

manage its commitments while reducing the deployment burden on its 

people. Under the cycle, forces were scheduled to deploy for only 3 of 

every 15 months. The Army prioritizes its units, and lower-priority units 

generally need extra training and preparation time prior to deploying. 

However, a number of lower-priority units were mobilized with relatively 

little advance notice. For example, five transportation companies 

containing 976 reservists were alerted on February 9, 2003, and told to 

arrive at their mobilization stations by February 14, 2003. Despite the large 

number of lower-priority units within the Army National Guard and the 

Army Reserve, the Army does not have a standard operating cycle concept 

to provide predictability to its reserve forces. Without such a concept, the 

Army’s opportunities to provide extra training and preparation time to its 

reserve forces, particularly those with lower priorities, are limited. 

Lacking a standard operating cycle to provide predictability for its 

reservists, the Army strives to provide its reservists with official written 

orders 30 days in advance of mobilizations, in accordance with an OSD 

policy goal. Between September 2001 and March 2003, advance notice for 

Army personnel fluctuated from less than 72 hours to more than 4 weeks. 

While advanced notice is beneficial to individual reservists, it does not 

provide the longer lead times made possible by predictable operating 

cycles. Such cycles allow reserve units, which typically drill only once 

every 30 days, to schedule their training and maintenance so the units’ 
Page 6 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

readiness will build as the mobilization time approaches. While always 

important, predictability and preparation times are likely to become even 

more important when the pace of reserve operations is high. The Army has 

had more than 100,000 reservists mobilized since February 12, 2003, and 

the Army Manpower and Reserve Affairs office projected that 

mobilizations would remain high at least through the end of 2004. 

However, the Army does not employ standard operating cycles for its 

reserve forces, leaving it with limited time to prepare for the increased 

mobilization and deployment demands on its reserve forces. 

After September 11, 2001, mobilizations were hampered because about 

one-quarter of the Ready Reserve force was not readily available for 

mobilization or deployment. Over 70,000 reserve members could not be 

mobilized because they had not completed their training requirements. In 

addition, the services lacked vital information necessary to fully use an 

additional pool of over 300,000 pretrained individual reservists, known as 

the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Many of the IRR members were not 

available for mobilization because the services did not have valid contact 

information (addresses or phone numbers) for these individuals. For 

example, in April 2003, the Army estimated that it had inaccurate 

addresses for at least 40,400 of its IRR members. When the services were 

able to contact their IRR members and obtain vital information necessary 

to use their IRR pools, exemptions and delays often limited the services’ 

abilities to fully use these personnel. For example, in February 2003, the 

Army sent mobilization orders to 345 IRR members, but 164 of these 

reservists requested and were granted exemptions so they did not have to 

deploy. Another 35 were granted delays in their reporting dates. 

The services have used three primary methods to gain and maintain access 

to their IRR members. First, they brief the members when they leave 

active duty or drilling reserve positions to make them aware of their 

responsibilities as members of the IRR. Next, they send the members 

questionnaires to verify basic information, such as current addresses. 

Finally, the services conduct a limited number of 1-day screenings where 

certain IRR members are ordered to military facilities to physically verify 

their fitness for mobilization and deployment. However, service officials 

considered response rates for the questionnaires and participation rates 

for the screenings low, and the services have not developed resultsoriented goals and related performance metrics to collect and maintain 

updated IRR member information. In addition, some mobilized Marine 

Corps IRR members told us that their IRR responsibilities had not been 

clearly explained during exit briefings when they left active duty. 
Page 7 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

DOD’s reluctance to use the IRR has resulted in additional situations 

where the Ready Reserve force was not readily available for mobilization 

or deployment. For example, DOD and service policies have discouraged 

the use of the IRR because IRR members do not participate in any 

regularly scheduled training and are consequently not paid regularly. The 

policies call for the mobilization of reservists who have been participating 

in regular paid training, no matter the type of mobilization requirement 

that is being filled. This reluctance to use the IRR contributes to situations 

where individual mobilization requirements are filled with personnel from 

reserve units, thus creating personnel shortages within the units that had 

supplied the reservists and affecting the units’ readiness to mobilize and 

deploy. As the Army mobilized forces for the war in Iraq, it moved unit 

reservists from one unit to another to fill vacancies within the units, which 

were first to mobilize and deploy. When units that had supplied reservists 

were later mobilized, reservists from other units had to be transferred into 

these later deploying units. If IRR members had filled the initial 

requirements, many of the subsequent transfers would not have been 

necessary. Further, the reluctance of one service to use the IRR can affect 

other services. For example, the Air Force’s reluctance to access any of its 

more than 44,000 IRR members has left the responsibility for guarding Air 

Force bases to over 9,000 Army National Guard unit personnel. 

We are making several recommendations to enhance the efficiency of 

DOD’s reserve mobilizations. These recommendations are directed at 

improving mobilization planning, increasing visibility over the readiness of 

small units, providing for the seamless transfer of reservist information 

regardless of whether the reservists are in an active or reserve status, 

updating mobilization guidance, improving predictability for Army reserve 

units, increasing access to the IRR, and updating IRR policies. 

In commenting on a draft of this report, DOD fully concurred with six of 

our seven recommendations and partially concurred with our 

recommendation concerning the need for the Army and the Navy to 

capture additional readiness information. DOD stated that the Army and 

the Navy fully support capturing relevant information in the DOD 

readiness reporting system but that combatant commanders will need to 

establish resource requirements to include tailored mission requirements. 

We agree that improvements in readiness reporting should be closely 

linked to efforts to more clearly define requirements. 

Mobilization is the process of assembling and organizing personnel and 

equipment, activating or federalizing the reserve component, and bringing Background 
Page 8 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

the armed forces to a state of readiness for war or other national 

emergency. It is a complex undertaking that requires constant and precise 

coordination among a number of commands and officials. Mobilization 

usually begins with the President invoking a mobilization authority and 

ends with the mobilization of an individual Reserve or National Guard 

member. 

There are seven reserve components: the Army Reserve, Army National 

Guard, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard, Naval Reserve, Marine 

Corps Reserve, and Coast Guard Reserve. Reserve forces can be divided 

into three major categories: the Ready Reserve, the Standby Reserve, and 

the Retired Reserve. The Ready Reserve had approximately 1.2 million 

Guard and Reserve members at the end of fiscal year 2002, and its 

members were the only reservists who were subject to mobilization under 

the partial mobilization declared by President Bush on September 14, 

2001. 

Within the Ready Reserve, there are three subcategories: the Selected 

Reserve, the IRR, and the Inactive National Guard. Members of all three 

subcategories are subject to mobilization under a partial mobilization. 

• In fiscal year 2002, the Selected Reserve had 882,142 members. Members 

of the Selected Reserve are all the personnel who are active members of 

the National Guard or Reserve units who participate in regularly 

scheduled training. As a result, they draw regular pay for their reserve 

service. It also includes individual mobilization augmentees—individuals 

who train regularly, for pay with active component units. 

• In fiscal year 2002, the IRR had 314,037 members. During a partial 

mobilization these individuals, who were previously trained during periods 

of active duty service, can be mobilized to fill requirements. Each year, the 

services transfer thousands of personnel who have completed the active 

duty or Selected Reserve portions of their military contracts, but who have 

not reached the end of their minimum service obligations, to the IRR.5

 5

 While enlistment contracts can vary, a typical enlistee would incur an 8-year minimum 

service obligation, which could consist of a 4-year active duty obligation followed by a 

4-year IRR obligation. 

Reserve Components and 

Categories 
Page 9 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

However, IRR members do not participate in any regularly scheduled 

training, and they are not paid for their membership in the IRR.6

• In fiscal year 2002, the Inactive National Guard had 3,142 Army National 

Guard members. This subcategory contains individuals who are 

temporarily unable to participate in regular training but who wish to 

remain attached to their National Guard units. These individuals were not 

subject to mobilization prior to the declaration of a partial mobilization on 

September 14, 2001. 

Most reservists who were recalled to active duty for other than normal 

training after September 11, 2001, were mobilized under one of the three 

authorities listed in table 1. 

Table 1: Authorities Used to Mobilize Reservists after September 11, 2001 

U.S.C. Title 10 

Section 

Type of 

mobilization 

Number of Ready 

Reservists that 

can be mobilized 

Length of 

mobilizations 

12304 Involuntary 200,000a 270 days 

12302 Involuntary 1,000,000 2 years 

12301 (d) Voluntary Unlimited Unlimited 

Source: GAO. 

a

 Under this authority, the services can mobilize the Selected Reserve and up to 30,000 IRR 

members who count against the 200,000-person cap. 

DOD had the authority to use section 12304, the Presidential Reserve CallUp authority, to mobilize reservists in support of contingency operations 

in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Southwest Asia prior to September 11, 2001. It 

continued to use this authority to mobilize reservists for ongoing 

operations in these areas even after the partial mobilization authority 

(section 12302) was invoked on September 14, 2001. 

The partial mobilization authority has been used to support both domestic 

and overseas missions related to the global war on terrorism, including the 

 6

 IRR members can request to participate in annual training or other operations, but most 

do not. Those who are activated are paid for their service. There are also small groups of 

IRR members who participate in unpaid training. The members of this last group are often 

in the IRR only for short periods while they are waiting to transfer to paid positions in the 

Selected Reserve. IRR members can receive retirement credit if they meet basic eligibility 

criteria through voluntary training or mobilizations. 

Mobilization Authorities 
Page 10 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. After invoking section 12302 on 

September 14, 2001, the President delegated his mobilization authority to 

the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Transportation. The 

Secretary of Defense further delegated this authority to the service 

secretaries and allowed them to delegate the authority to any civilian 

official who was appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.7

When the Secretary of Defense delegated his authority, he set limits on the 

numbers of personnel that the services could mobilize. On September 14, 

2001, the Secretary of Defense assigned the Army a mobilization cap of 

10,000 personnel; the Navy a cap of 3,000; the Marine Corps a cap of 7,500; 

and the Air Force a cap of 13,000, for a total cap of 33,500. The caps were 

raised several times, but in aggregate they have remained below 300,000 

since they were first established. 

Since September 11, 2001, the services have also made extensive use of 

their section 12301(d) authority. This authority can involve complicated 

administrative processing because reservists must volunteer to be 

activated, and individuals who are brought on to active duty under this 

authority have varying starting and ending dates. However, this authority 

provides flexibility that is advantageous to both individual reservists 

members and the services. The reservists can schedule their active duty 

periods around family and work responsibilities, and the services are not 

constrained by the numerical caps and time limitations of other 

mobilization authorities. 

As figure 1 indicates, mobilization is a decentralized process that requires 

the collaboration of many organizations throughout DOD. 

 7

 Within each of the military departments, this authority was delegated to the offices with 

primary responsibility for reserve issues—the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower 

and Reserve Affairs), the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Manpower and Reserve Affairs), 

and the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Manpower and Reserve Affairs). 

Mobilization Process 
Page 11 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Figure 1: Flowchart of the Mobilization Process 

Note: Shaded blocks emphasize the extra coordination that was required under the modified process. 
Page 12 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

The mobilization process typically begins with the component 

commanders, who are responsible for commanding their services’ active 

and reserve forces within a combatant commander’s area of 

responsibility.8 The component commanders identify requirements for 

wars or contingency operations within their areas of responsibility and 

submit the requirements to the combatant commanders. The combatant 

commanders, who have responsibility and operational control over forces 

from two or more services, consolidate the requirements from their 

component commanders and develop “requests for forces” (RFF). Each 

RFF generally identifies the mission, along with the equipment, personnel, 

units, types of units, or general capabilities that are necessary to carry out 

the mission. RFFs may be very detailed or very general, depending on the 

nature of the mission. Furthermore, RFFs typically contain requirements 

that must be filled by more than one service. 

The combatant commanders send RFFs to the Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, who is the principal military advisor to the President and 

the Secretary of Defense on mobilization matters. The Joint Staff validates 

and prioritizes requirements from the combatant commanders and then 

sends draft deployment orders via E-mail to the supporting commanders, 

who will supply forces or equipment. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff considers (1) the assessments of the service headquarters, reserve 

component commanders, and supporting combatant commanders; 

(2) input from his own staff; and (3) the technical advice, legal opinions, 

and policies provided by OSD. The Chairman then makes a 

recommendation to the Secretary of Defense concerning the timing of 

mobilizations and the units or individuals to be mobilized. 

When the Secretary of Defense completes his review of the validated RFF 

and is satisfied with the mobilization justification, he authorizes the 

deployment of forces, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issues 

a deployment order. The services then review the approved requirements 

on the deployment order and coordinate with applicable force providers 

and reserve component headquarters to check the readiness of the units 

that had been projected to fill the requirements. If necessary, units or 

individuals may be identified to substitute for, or augment, the units and 

individuals that were originally projected. When the units or individuals 

 8

The number of combatant commanders is not fixed by law or regulation and may vary 

over time. While most of the combatant commands are organized on a geographical basis, 

some are organized on a functional basis. 
Page 13 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

are firmly identified for mobilization, the assistant secretaries of the 

military departments who have responsibilities for manpower and reserve 

affairs issues approve the mobilization packages.9

Finally, the services issue mobilization orders to units and individuals. 

These orders state where and when to report for duty, as well as the length 

of duty. In September 2001, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense 

(Personnel and Readiness), which is responsible for developing the 

policies, plans, and programs to manage the readiness of both active and 

reserve forces, issued a memorandum containing specific mobilization 

guidance. This guidance instructed the military departments to write 

mobilization orders for 1 year10 but allowed the service secretaries the 

option of extending mobilizations for a second year. 

In subsequent mobilization guidance, issued in January, March, and July 

2002, the Under Secretary instructed the services to use volunteers to the 

maximum extent possible, so that involuntary mobilizations would be 

minimized. In conjunction with the services, the Office of the Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, which has overall responsibility 

for reserve policies and procedures within DOD, set a goal to provide 

reservists with 30 days notice prior to mobilization, when operationally 

feasible. The services took different approaches when alerting their 

reservists prior to mobilization. The Army took the most formal approach 

and attempted to provide its reservists with official orders 30 days prior to 

their mobilization dates. The other services took less formal approaches 

and tried to notify reservists of impending mobilizations and deployments 

when requirements were identified or validated, or at some other key 

point in the mobilization process.11

According to DOD officials, the mobilization process—from the time a 

requirement is generated until the time that a reservist reports to a 

 9

 In September 2001, this final approval authority was delegated from the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense to the military departments. However, during the final buildup for 

Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) acted 

as the final mobilization authority. 

10 These orders did not prevent the services from demobilizing personnel prior to the end of 

the year. 

11 Some high-priority reserve units are required to be available for deployment within 72 or 

even 24 hours of notification so it is well-recognized that formal notification will not always 

be available 30 days prior to mobilization. Even informal notification may be short for 

quickly emerging requirements. 
Page 14 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

mobilization site to fill that requirement—can take anywhere from 1 day to 

several months, but it normally takes several weeks. Based on our 

observations at mobilization processing sites and discussions with 

mobilization officials, we found that most reservists were able to complete 

their required briefings, screenings, and administrative functions within 24 

to 96 hours after reaching their mobilization sites. However, some 

reservists required lengthy postmobilization training before they were able 

to deploy. 

Unreliable and inconsistent data make it difficult to quantify the exact 

change in the tempo of reserve operations since September 11, 2001.12

Officials from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve 

Affairs have characterized mobilization data from the early days and 

weeks following September 11 as questionable. In addition, because 

reservists can perform a wide variety of sometimes-overlapping training 

and operational missions, in a variety of voluntary or involuntary duty 

statuses, mobilization data have been captured differently over time. For 

example, because the state governors mobilized large numbers of National 

Guard troops to provide security at their civilian airports, DOD’s 

mobilization figures for most of 2002 included state active duty figures as 

well as figures for federal mobilizations. However, state active duty was 

dropped from DOD’s mobilization figures after the National Guard moved 

out of the last civilian airport in September 2002. It is also difficult to fully 

capture increases in reserve tempos because mobilization figures that are 

based strictly on section 12302 partial mobilization orders ignore the 

major contributions of reserve volunteers, some of whom are serving 

lengthy tours under section 12301(d) orders. Despite the identified data 

challenges, figure 2 uses consistently reported data to demonstrate that 

reserve mobilizations have not dipped below 50,000 during any week since 

January 2002. Figure 2 also shows the dramatic increase in mobilizations 

that began in January 2003 to support operations in Iraq. 

 12 Tempo refers to the total days reservists spend participating in normal drills, training, 

and exercises, as well as domestic and overseas operational missions. 

Reserve Tempo 
Page 15 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Figure 2: Guard and Reserve Members on Active Duty (January 2002-July 2003) 

Note: Data from the early days and weeks following September 11, 2001, are not reliable. Further, 

the services captured mobilization data differently over time, making it difficult to aggregate the data. 

To present the data consistently, our figures display data beginning with January 2002. 

Figures 3 and 4 show the mobilizations of each of the services between 

January 2002 and July 2003. 
Page 16 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Figure 3: Reserve Force Mobilizations by Service (January 2002–July 2003) 

Note: Data from the early days and weeks following September 11, 2001, are not reliable. Further, 

the services captured mobilization data differently over time, making it difficult to aggregate the data. 

To present the data consistently, our figures display data beginning with January 2002. 

Figure 3 shows that between January 2003 and July 2003, the Army had 

more reservists mobilized than did all the other services combined. 

However, figure 4 shows that the mobilizations were most wide reaching 

within the Coast Guard, which had more than one-third of its Ready 

Reserve forces mobilized during April 2003. 
Page 17 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Figure 4: Reserve Force Mobilizations as Percentages of Service Ready Reserve Strengths (January 2002–July 2003) 

Note: Data from the early days and weeks following September 11, 2001, are not reliable. Further, 

the services captured mobilization data differently over time, making it difficult to aggregate the data. 

To present the data consistently, our figures display data beginning with January 2002. 

Previously, we reported on several issues surrounding the increased use of 

reserve forces. Our June 2002 report noted that maintaining employers’ 

continued support for their reservist employees will be critical if DOD is to 

retain experienced reservists in these times of longer and more frequent 

Relevant GAO Products 
Page 18 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

deployments.13 We assessed the relations between reservists and their 

civilian employers, focusing specifically on DOD’s outreach efforts 

designed to improve these important relationships. We found that many 

employers we surveyed were not receiving adequate advance notice prior 

to their reservist employees’ departure for military duty. We reported that 

in spite of repeated memoranda from the Assistant Secretary of Defense 

for Reserve Affairs, advance notification continued to be a problem and 

that the services had not consistently met the 30-day advance notification 

goal. We recommended that the Secretary of Defense direct the services to 

determine how many orders are not being issued 30 days in advance of 

deployments and why, and then take the necessary corrective actions 

toward fuller compliance with the goal. DOD agreed with the merit to 

studying why the reserve components miss the 30-day goal. 

Citing the increased use of the reserves to support military operations, 

House Report 107-436 accompanying the Fiscal Year 2003 National 

Defense Authorization Act directed us to review compensation and benefit 

programs for reservists serving on active duty. In response, we are 

reviewing (1) income protection for reservists called to active duty, 

(2) family support programs, and (3) health care access. In March 2003, we 

testified before the Subcommittee on Total Force, Committee on Armed 

Services, House of Representatives, on our preliminary observations 

related to this work.14

During the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, health problems prevented the 

deployment of a significant number of Army reservists. To help correct 

this problem the Congress passed legislation that required reservists to 

undergo periodic physical and dental examinations. The National Defense 

Authorization Act for 2002 directed us to review the value and advisability 

of providing examinations.15 We also examined whether the Army is 

 13 U.S. General Accounting Office, Reserve Forces: DOD Actions Needed to Better Manage 

Relations between Reservists and Their Employers, GAO-02-608 (Washington, D.C.: 

June 13, 2002). 

14 U.S. General Accounting Office, Military Personnel: Preliminary Observations Related 

to Income, Benefits, and Employer Support for Reservists During Mobilization, 

GAO-03-549T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 19, 2003). We also provided a statement for the 

record to the Subcommittee on Personnel, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 

titled Military Personnel: Preliminary Observations Related to Income, Benefits, and 

Employer Support for Reservists During Mobilization, GAO-03-573T (Washington, D.C.: 

Mar. 19, 2003). 

15 Pub. L. No. 107-107, section 724. 
Page 19 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

collecting and maintaining information on reservists’ health. In April 2003, 

we reported that without adequate examinations, the Army may train, 

support, and mobilize reservists who are unfit for duty.16 Further, the Army 

had not consistently carried out the statutory requirements for monitoring 

the health and dental status of Army early deploying reservists. At the 

early deploying units we visited, approximately 66 percent of the medical 

records were available for review. We found that about 68 percent of the 

required physical examinations for those over age 40 had not been 

performed and that none of the annual medical certificates required of 

reservists had been completed by reservists and reviewed by the units. We 

recommended that the Secretary of Defense ensure that for early 

deploying reservists the required physical examinations, annual medical 

certificates, and annual dental examinations be completed. DOD 

concurred with our recommendations. 

DOD did not follow its existing operation plans after the events of 

September 11, 2001, to mobilize nearly 300,000 reservists. DOD’s 

traditional mobilization process relies on requirements from operation 

plans that have been coordinated with key mobilization officials prior to 

the start of the mobilization process. The operation plans in existence on 

September 11, 2001, did not include all the requirements that were needed 

to respond to the domestic terrorist threat. Overseas operation plans did 

not focus on terrorist threats or the uncertain political environment in 

southwest Asia. Nor did operation plans adequately address the increasing 

requirements for individuals and small, tailored task forces. Because DOD 

could not rely on existing operation plans to guide its mobilizations, it 

used a modified mobilization process that was slower than the traditional 

mobilization process. 

DOD has called about 300,000 of the 1.2 million National Guard and 

Reserve personnel to active duty since September 2001. These reservists 

fought on the front lines in Iraq; tracked down Taliban and al Qaeda 

members throughout Asia and Africa; maintained the peace in the Balkans, 

Afghanistan, and now Iraq; and participated in domestic missions ranging 

from providing security at airports and at the Salt Lake City Olympics to 

fighting drug trafficking and providing disaster relief. With many of these 

 16 U.S. General Accounting Office, Defense Health Care: Army Needs to Assess the Health 

Status of All Early Deploying Reservists, GAO-03-437 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 15, 2003). 

DOD’s Mobilizations 

after September 11, 

2001, Were Not Based 

on Existing Operation 

Plans 

About 300,000 Reservists 

Called to Active Duty 
Page 20 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

missions—including those associated with the global war on terrorism—

expected to continue, reserve force mobilizations are likely to persist for 

the foreseeable future. DOD recognized before September 11, 2001, that no 

significant operation could be conducted without reserve involvement. 

DOD’s mobilization process was designed to mobilize reservists based on 

the execution of combatant commander operation plans and a preplanned 

flow of forces. As a result, the mobilization process operates most 

efficiently when operation plans accurately and completely capture 

mobilization requirements. However, since DOD develops its operation 

plans using a deliberate planning process that involves input and 

coordination from OSD, the Joint Staff, and the services, the process can 

take years, and operation plans have not been quick to respond to changes 

in the threat environment. 

Prior to the events of September 11, 2001, we issued a number of reports 

highlighting the need for effective U.S. efforts to combat terrorism 

domestically and abroad.17 For example, we recommended that the federal 

government conduct multidisciplinary and analytically sound threat and 

risk assessments to define and prioritize requirements and properly focus 

programs and investments in combating terrorism.18 Threat and risk 

assessments are decision-making support tools that are used to establish 

requirements and prioritize program investments. DOD uses a variation of 

this approach. We also reported on DOD’s use of a risk-assessment model 

to evaluate force protection security requirements for mass casualty 

terrorists’ incidents at DOD military bases.19

While DOD’s goal is to conduct mobilizations based on operation plans 

developed through a deliberate planning process, the department 

recognizes that during the initial stages of an emergency it may have to 

resort to a crisis action response rather than adhering to its operation 

plans. This is particularly true if the emergency had not been anticipated. 

 17 See www.gao.gov for a complete listing of our reports on homeland security, terrorism, 

and airport security from 1980 to present. 

18 U.S. General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Selected Challenges and Related 

Recommendations, GAO-01-822 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 20, 2001). 

19 U.S. General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Status of DOD Efforts to Protect 

Its Forces Overseas, GAO-NSIAD-97-207 (Washington, D.C.: July 21, 1997) and Combating 

Terrorism: Efforts to Protect U.S. Forces in Turkey and the Middle East, 

GAO/T-NSIAD-98-44 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 28, 1997). 

Sound Operation Plans Can 

Help the Efficiency of DOD’s 

Mobilization Process 
Page 21 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

During such crisis response periods, DOD can use a variety of authorities 

to position its forces where they are needed. For example, following the 

events of September 11, 2001, DOD used voluntary orders and other 

available means to get and keep reservists on active duty. As of November 

8, 2001, almost 40,000 reservists had been mobilized under the partial 

mobilization authority for the global war on terrorism, but almost 19,000 

reservists were on active duty and positioned where they were needed 

under other federal authorities. By comparison, more than 53,000 

reservists were mobilized under the partial mobilization authority for the 

global war on terrorism on December 3, 2002, but the reservists on active 

duty under other federal authorities had dropped to less than 5,000.20

When DOD moved beyond its crisis action response to the events of 

September 11, 2001, it was not able to rely on operation plans to guide its 

mobilizations because operation plans did not contain requirements to 

address the domestic response to the terrorist threat. According to senior 

DOD officials, when terrorists crashed planes into the Pentagon, the World 

Trade Center, and a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, none of 

DOD’s operation plans contained requirements for National Guard troops 

to deploy to the nation’s civilian airports. In September 2001, we reported 

that some threats are difficult, if not impossible, to predict.21 Therefore, an 

effective antiterrorism program that can reduce vulnerabilities to such 

attacks is an important aspect of military operations. We also reported that 

the effectiveness of the DOD antiterrorism program was becoming an 

important aspect of military operations. However, the effectiveness of the 

program had been limited because DOD had not (1) assessed 

vulnerabilities at all installations, (2) systematically prioritized resource 

requirements, and (3) developed a complete assessment of potential 

threats. DOD has been taking steps to improve the program. 

Despite the lack of airport security requirements in operation plans, 

between November 2001 and April 2002, an average of approximately 

7,500 National Guard members were mobilized at the nation’s civilian 

airports.22 During the same period, an average of almost 1,900 National 

Guard members were on state active duty, many to provide security at 

 20 Reservists were also serving on active duty under state authorities on these dates. 

21 U.S. General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Actions Needed to Improve DOD 

Antiterrorism Program Implementation and Management, GAO-01-909 (Washington, 

D.C.: Sept. 19, 2001). 

22 These reservists were under the control of their state governors. 

Operation Plans Did Not 

Include Requirements to 

Address the Domestic Terrorist 

Threat 
Page 22 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

other key infrastructure sites such as tunnels, bridges, and nuclear power 

plants. According to senior Air Force officials, none of the operation plans 

that existed on September 11, 2001, contained requirements for the 

extended use of Guard and Reserve members to fly combat air patrols 

over the nation’s capital and major cities. Yet, reservists were performing 

that mission on September 11, 2001, and they continue to support the 

combat air patrol mission, particularly when the national threat level is 

raised. 

According to DOD officials, preexisting service mobilization plans called 

for Guard and Reserve forces to move to active duty bases and provide 

security at those bases after the active forces had departed from the bases. 

However, after September 11, many Guard and Reserve members were on 

active duty (voluntarily and involuntarily) at active and reserve bases and 

were filling security requirements that were not in any operation plan. For 

example, even while active forces remained, two selected Marine Corps 

battalions were mobilized for approximately 12 months—one at Camp 

Lejeune, North Carolina, and one at Camp Pendleton, California—to 

quickly respond to any additional terrorist attacks within the United 

States. In addition, the Air Force had to unexpectedly bring reservists on 

active duty to provide security for their reserve bases after 

September 11. In particular, Air National Guard security forces were 

needed to provide security at bases from which the Guard was flying 

combat air patrol missions. 

According to DOD officials, requirements in overseas operation plans 

focused on traditional operations against national military forces, rather 

than on tracking terrorists throughout Afghanistan and around the globe. 

For several years, defense planning guidance had been formulated around 

the concept that the military had to be ready to fight and win two major 

theater wars, generally viewed as one in southwest Asia and one on the 

Korean peninsula. According to DOD officials, operation plans for these 

areas focused on the threats posed by rogue countries. Moreover, even 

after defense planning guidance had begun to indicate a need for the 

military to be capability based rather than threat based, operation plans 

continued to focus on conventional adversaries. 

According to DOD officials, some of the mobilizations that took place in 

support of Operation Iraqi Freedom followed the order and timing 

established in the relevant operation plan and its associated time-phased 

force deployment and data file. However, the order and timing of other 

mobilizations changed due to the tenuous political environment and 

uncertainties concerning coalition partnerships and access to airspaces, as 

Overseas Operation Plans Did 

Not Focus on the Terrorist 

Threat or the Uncertain 

Political Environment in 

Southwest Asia 
Page 23 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

well as access to bases in Turkey, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Access-to-base 

issues had also arisen during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 

According to DOD officials, the combatant commanders’ requests for 

small, tailored task forces and individuals have been increasing since 

September 11, 2001, but the requirements for these small groups and 

individuals have not been fully addressed in the combatant commanders’ 

existing operation plans. Mobilization statistics demonstrate the large 

numbers of small groups and individuals that have been mobilized 

recently. For example, a DOD report showed that on March 5, 2003, the 

services had thousands of reservists mobilized as parts of small units or as 

individuals. The Navy had 266 one-person and 152 two-person units 

mobilized, and the Army also had hundreds of one-and two-person units 

mobilized. The Marine Corps strives to keeps its units intact, and Marine 

Corps policy states that detachments must consist of at least two people, 

but the Marine Corps had 24 two-person and 22 three-person units 

mobilized. The Air Force had just 6 units with less than 20 people 

mobilized on that date. However, the services also had 12,682 individual 

augmentees mobilized on March 5, 2003—1,438 of them from the Air 

Force’s two reserve components. 

After September 11, 2001, DOD used a modified mobilization process 

because existing operation plans had not adequately addressed 

mobilization requirements and changing priorities. The modified process 

was able to respond to changing priorities and new requirements. 

However, because key mobilization officials did not have a lengthy 

deliberate planning period to discuss these new requirements and 

changing priorities, coordination had to take place during the mobilization 

process, thus lengthening the process. Under the modified process, close 

to two dozen approvals are needed to mobilize one unit or individual. A 

contractor study conducted for the Army Operations Office looked at how 

long it took from the time the U.S. Central Command issued a RFF until 

the time a deployment order was issued. Preliminary results showed that 

the monthly averages from February through June 2002 ranged from 18 to 

19 days for this portion of the mobilization process.23

Coordination was much more difficult under the modified process due to 

the large number of deployment orders. For example, under the modified 

 23 The minimum time was 1 day and the maximum time was 45 days. 

Operation Plans Did Not 

Adequately Address 

Increasing Requirements 

for Individuals and Small, 

Tailored Task Forces 

The Modified Mobilization 

Process Was Slower and Less 

Efficient Than the Traditional 

Process 
Page 24 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

process, the Secretary of Defense signed 246 deployment orders to 

mobilize over 280,000 reservists between September 11, 2001, and May 21, 

2003, compared to the less than 10 deployment orders needed to mobilize 

over 220,000 reservists during the 1991 Gulf War. The longer modified 

mobilization process is less efficient than the traditional process primarily 

because it relies on additional management oversight and multiple layers 

of coordination between the services, OSD, and the Joint Staff during the 

validating, approving, and filling of mobilization requirements. Many of 

these factors are detailed in the sections below. 

DOD officials did not have visibility over the entire mobilization process 

primarily because DOD lacked adequate systems for tracking personnel 

and other resources. First, DOD’s primary automated readiness reporting 

system could not adequately track the personnel and other resources 

within the small units that were frequently needed by combatant 

commanders. Second, some systems used by the active and reserve 

components to track personnel were incompatible. In addition, outdated 

mobilization guidance led to communication and coordination problems 

amongst the components. 

DOD officials had limited visibility over the readiness of the entire force 

because DOD’s primary readiness reporting data system tracked the 

readiness only of large units and not the readiness of resources within the 

small units that made up the larger reporting units. These smaller units 

were often sufficient to meet the combatant commanders’ requirements 

for the small, tailored units that were frequently requested after 

September 11, 2001. 24 Because DOD officials did not have quick access to 

readiness information of these small units, they had to coordinate with 

reserve headquarters officials and, in some cases, the individual units 

themselves to obtain the readiness information needed to determine which 

unit would be best able to fill the combatant commanders’ requirements. 

The Global Status of Resources and Training System (GSORTS) is DOD’s 

single automated system for reporting the readiness of all operational 

units within the U.S. armed forces. It does not function as a detailed 

 24 For example, an Army battalion would report its overall readiness as well as its overall 

personnel and equipment readiness, but it would not report the readiness of individual 

platoons within its companies. 

DOD Officials Had 

Limited Visibility Over 

the Mobilization 

Process 

Data Systems Unable to 

Track Readiness of 

Resources Within Units 
Page 25 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

management information system, but it does provide broad information on 

selected readiness indicators25 and include a commander’s assessment of 

the unit’s ability to undertake the missions for which the unit was 

organized or designed. Units provide readiness reports to a central site 

where the data are processed and stored and then distributed to decision 

makers. The information in the system is supposed to support crisis 

response planning as well as deliberate planning. However, the services 

are only required to register forces that are included in operation plans or 

other war-planning documents. Generally, all large units report their 

readiness in the system. However, resources within the units are not 

necessarily reported. For example, GSORTS could show that a specific 

unit is not ready to perform its mission, but fail to capture information that 

would indicate that some of the personnel and equipment within the unit 

are capable of performing their mission. Such information would benefit 

the services in their efforts to assemble the forces needed to meet joint 

organizational requirements. 

Because the Air Force combined various capabilities into nontraditional 

force groups in support of its Aerospace Expeditionary Force, it 

recognized the need to report readiness for small “building block” units 

that could be combined to provide the needed capabilities. As a result, the 

Air Force developed its own readiness reporting system that reported the 

readiness of more than 67,000 units in January 2003. 

The Army and the Navy do not report readiness at this small unit level. 

Consequently, when the combatant commanders submit RFFs that do not 

coincide with the forces that are reported in GSORTS, the decision makers 

within the services must coordinate with active and reserve component 

commanders to determine the readiness of the forces that would be 

available to fill the requested requirements. 

DOD officials also lost visibility over the mobilization of reservists because 

some active and reserve component personnel tracking systems were not 

compatible. Some components within the respective services maintain 

personnel data in their own data systems for different purposes. In those 

cases, both the active and reserve components require data that are 

provided only in the other’s data systems. Yet, in some cases, active and 

reserve component systems were not always compatible with each other, 

 25 Specifically, units report personnel levels, equipment and supply levels, condition of 

equipment, and training levels. 

Some Active and Reserve 

Personnel Tracking Systems 

Were Incompatible 
Page 26 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

resulting in cumbersome workarounds or extensive ad hoc coordination 

between active and reserve officials, and, according to DOD officials, the 

sometimes outright loss of visibility over the length of reservists’ 

mobilization or deployment status. 

The reserve and active components within some of the respective services 

maintain personnel data for different purposes. The individual reserve 

components maintain the mobilization data in their respective systems in 

order to track and maintain visibility over reservists’ physical location and 

mobilization status. The reserve systems also maintain information on 

reservists’ mobilization dates. Active components’ systems maintain 

personnel data for forces that are under their control. Using a variety of 

data systems, the active components track such information as the 

number of personnel, the units to which the personnel are attached, and 

the location of the unit. However, the active components cannot always 

discern between the regular active and mobilized reserve servicemembers 

in their data systems. 

The services’ active and reserve components have developed their 

respective computerized systems to track their personnel data, but they 

are often unable to directly transfer information and data between their 

systems. Often, these systems do not report information in a standardized 

format and are not integrated with each other. For example, while most of 

the services provide DOD with unclassified mobilization data, some 

services provide classified mobilization data. DOD must then aggregate 

selected unclassified information on a separate computer file that can be 

used to produce a single consolidated mobilization report. 

The incompatibilities between some active and reserve component data 

systems required mobilization officials to develop workarounds to acquire 

the information needed. Air Force officials cited the lack of a central 

automated system to manage and track mobilized reservists as a major 

problem that required extensive coordination between active and reserve 

components. Some components, like the Air National Guard and the Air 

Force Reserve, developed their own mobilization reporting systems to 

track the location and status of their reservists using computer 

spreadsheets. 

The use of local, nonintegrated data systems also affects the validity of 

some mobilization data. For example, we requested mobilization data from 

the Army Reserve on several occasions during our review, but Army 

Reserve officials cautioned us concerning the use of figures from their 

computerized database. They stated that the figures were unreliable and 
Page 27 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

conflicted with the overall number of personnel they thought had been 

mobilized. Without an automated means for quickly and reliably capturing 

mobilization data, the Army has had to rely on a slow mobilization process 

that requires constant coordination between active and reserve 

component officials. 

The coordination between active and reserve component officials within 

the Army and the Navy often takes the form of relatively inefficient 

methods to determine the status of mobilized reservists. For example, in 

the initial months following September 11, 2001, the Navy had no 

automated means to track reservists from their home stations to their 

gaining commands. The entire mobilization process was based on paper, 

telephone calls, faxes, and e-mail messages. 

The lack of compatibility between automated data systems, and the 

sometimes cumbersome workarounds undertaken by the services to 

obtain reservists’ information, has at times led to the outright loss of DOD 

visibility over the length of reservists’ mobilization or deployment status 

and resulted in cases where reservists were inadvertently deployed 

beyond the original year specified in their orders. Additionally, Air Force 

officials told us that their major commands have had trouble filling new 

requirements because they cannot consistently determine who has 

volunteered and who is already serving on active duty. Because of limited 

visibility, some Navy processing personnel did not know in advance which 

reservists had been ordered to their mobilization processing sites or when 

the reservists were expected to report. 

Air Force officials said that they either totally lost or had diminished 

visibility over their reservists once they were mobilized and assigned to 

active commands. Reserve component officials from the Air Force said 

that a tracking system does not exist to effectively monitor reservists from 

the time they are mobilized and assigned to an active command to the time 

they are demobilized and return to their normal reserve status. As a result, 

reservists were deployed beyond their scheduled return dates and were 

not able to take the leave to which they were entitled prior to the 

expiration of their orders. Reserve officials said that this happened 

because replacement personnel had not arrived in time to relieve the 

reservists and the active commands were not willing to send the deployed 

reservists home until replacements had arrived. In many cases, Air Force 

reserve component headquarters said they did not have visibility over the 

replacement personnel because these personnel were coming from active 

component units. 
Page 28 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

The Army experienced situations where the lack of visibility contributed 

to the breaking of service policies. During the current partial mobilization, 

the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) 

issued a verbal policy that stated that units were not to be placed on alert 

for more than 90 days. The Army’s force providers were to review the list 

of units on alert each month and determine whether the units needed to 

remain on alert. If the force providers needed to keep any units on alert 

beyond 90 days, they could request an extension from the Assistant 

Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs).26 Table 2 shows 

that on March 28, 2003, 204 units had been on alert for more than 90 days 

and that 12 units—representing hundreds of Guard and Reserve 

members—had been on alert for more than a year. The Assistant Secretary 

of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) told us that he was not 

aware that the 12 units had been on alert for more than a year. He worked 

to resolve this matter as soon as we brought it to his attention. 

Table 2: Numbers of Army National Guard or Army Reserve Units That Were on 

Alert in Excess of 90 Days (March 28, 2003) 

Days on alert Number of units on alerta

> 365 12 

181 to 365 20 

91 to 180 172 

Sources: U.S. Army (data); GAO (analysis). 

a

 The Army’s “Units On Alert” report does not identify the actual numbers of reservists on alert, but it 

does include authorized strength information for some units. Authorized strength figures were 

available for 8 of the 12 units that had been on alert for more than a year and totaled 1,939. 

Some service components developed their own systems to gain visibility 

over their mobilized reservists. For example, the Navy adapted a system 

from the Marine Corps in February 2003 that provides all Navy 

mobilization officials with the capability to track reservists throughout the 

mobilization process. Commands now have visibility over the entire 

mobilization process and can monitor the status of reservists en route to 

their commands, including the reservists’ current locations. Since 

implementing this system, the Navy has processed more than 8,000 

mobilization orders and 6,000 demobilization orders. 

 26 Officials provided several reasons why units might remain on alert for more than 90 days 

including: changing mission requirements or unit readiness and rotational requirements. 
Page 29 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

The Marine Corps implemented its system in 1994 to provide visibility over 

its reserve forces. This local area network-based system supports the 

continuous processing and tracking of newly mobilized Marines. However, 

this system is not integrated with the Navy’s system, and data cannot be 

exchanged between the two systems. As a result, the Navy is not 

automatically made aware of requirements for Navy medical, religious, or 

other support personnel who are embedded in Marine Corps units, when 

the associated Marine Corps units are mobilized. 

Finally, key DOD and service guidance—including mobilization 

instructions and publications—had not been updated in all instances to 

reflect the modified mobilization process, leading to failures in 

communication and coordination between components and further 

reducing officials’ visibility over the mobilization process. In some 

instances where DOD and the services did draft updated guidance to 

reflect the modified mobilization process, it was not clear to all 

mobilization officials which guidance to follow. The lack of updated 

guidance and the appearance of conflicting guidance resulted in situations 

where the components were not effectively coordinating and 

communicating their mobilization efforts with each other. 

OSD and the Joint Staff provide guidance and instructions on the 

mobilization policy, roles and responsibilities of mobilization officials, and 

mobilization planning and execution. Similar guidance and instructions are 

provided by the respective services for planning and executing 

mobilization within their respective commands. However, some of DOD’s 

guidance failed to clearly identify the steps of the modified mobilization 

process, the roles and responsibilities of mobilization officials, and the 

flow of information. While the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and 

Readiness) has issued several mobilization guidance memorandums since 

September 11, 2001, many of DOD’s key mobilization instructions, 

directives, and publications have not been updated to reflect current 

changes to the mobilization process. For example, 

• DOD’s “Wartime Manpower Mobilization Planning Policies and 

Procedures” instruction has not been updated since 1986; 

• DOD’s “Activation, Mobilization, and Demobilization of the Ready 

Reserve” directive was last updated in 1995; and 

• DOD’s “Management of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) and the 

Inactive National Guard (ING)” directive was last updated in 1997. 

Outdated Mobilization 

Guidance Led to 

Communication and 

Coordination Problems 
Page 30 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

In addition, the Joint Staff had not updated its key mobilization guidance. 

The “Joint Doctrine for Mobilization Planning” publication was under 

revision when we completed our review, but the update to the 1995 

publication had not yet been released. 

Within the Air Force, the lack of clear and consolidated guidance hindered 

the mobilization process. The service’s mobilization guidance was issued 

in 1994, and although several draft revisions to this guidance have been 

circulated since September 11, 2001, the guidance has yet to be officially 

updated. Officials in both the Air National Guard and the Air Force 

Reserve told us that they did not know whether they were supposed to 

follow the old “official” instruction or the revised (but unsigned) 

instructions. The lack of clear guidance led to situations where Air 

National Guard units had been mobilized without the knowledge of the Air 

National Guard headquarters’ crisis action teams, consisting of officials 

responsible for matching requirements with available units and personnel. 

For example, on February 22, 2003, the Air Mobility Command mobilized 

the 163rd Air Refueling Wing at the March Air Reserve Base. When we 

contacted the Air National Guard crisis action team 3 days later, the team 

was unaware that the 163rd had been mobilized. According to a senior 

level Air National Guard official, the Air Mobility Command had bypassed 

the Guard’s crisis action team and directly notified the unit of the 

mobilization. According to this official, the Guard’s crisis action team had 

been bypassed on mobilizations directed by both the Air Mobility 

Command and the Air Combat Command. 

The lack of clear guidance for mobilizing reservists also slowed down the 

Army’s mobilization process. On October 24, 2001, the Army issued 

guidance on the mobilization process. However, according to senior Army 

policy officials, the Army’s initial personnel replacement policy was 

unclear. This led to cases where the Army Reserve would send a request 

for a requirement to fill an empty position through the entire mobilization 

process rather than simply attempt to fill the position with another 

qualified individual. Between September 2001 and June 2002, the Army 

Reserve submitted 567 requests for just one individual because the initial 

person selected could not fill the position. These requests slowed down 

the mobilization process as each request was reviewed. The Army recently 

drafted a policy to clarify its replacement procedures. 

The Navy’s failure to update its guidance on the delegation of mobilization 

authority led to a redundancy of efforts. In June 2002, the Secretary of 

Defense, under the President’s partial mobilization authority, delegated 

mobilization authority to the service secretaries and permitted further 
Page 31 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

delegation only to civilian officials who were appointed by the President 

and confirmed by the Senate. However, the Navy had not updated its 

mobilization authority guidance, and consequently the Secretary of the 

Navy continued delegating mobilization authority to the Chief of Naval 

Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who in turn 

continued to approve mobilizations until 2003. When the Assistant 

Secretary of the Navy became aware that mobilization authority had been 

improperly delegated to military leaders within the Department of the 

Navy, he rescinded the delegated authority and reviewed and revalidated 

previously approved mobilizations, in addition to all new mobilization 

requests. 

In some cases, the failure of mobilization guidance to define the roles and 

responsibilities of officials participating in the mobilization process also 

resulted in delays. For example, the Air Force found that the roles and 

responsibilities of its crisis action teams had not been adequately defined 

and that there was insufficient coordination between these crisis action 

teams during the planning and execution stages of the mobilization 

process. This led to different interpretations of the policies concerning the 

use of volunteers. Moreover, a lack of an established coordinated process 

resulted in delays getting policy, guidance, and tasks to the field. For 

example, whereas the requirement is to mobilize within 72 hours, there 

were instances where the mobilization process took 9 days. 

The services have used two primary approaches—predictable operating 

cycles and formal advanced notification—to provide time for units and 

servicemembers to prepare for upcoming mobilizations and deployments. 

All the services provide predictability to portions of their active forces 

through some type of standard operating cycle, but only the Air Force has 

a standard operating cycle that brings predictability to both its active and 

reserve forces. The Army assigns priority categories to its units, and lowerpriority units generally need extra training and preparation time prior to 

deploying. Advanced mobilization notice, while important, does not 

provide the long lead times made possible by predictable operating cycles. 

The increased use of the Army’s reserve forces heightens the need for 

predictability so these units and individuals can prepare for upcoming 

mobilizations and deployments. 

The Services Have 

Two Approaches to 

Provide Preparation 

Time for 

Mobilizations and 

Deployments 
Page 32 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

The Air Force is the only service that uses a standard operating cycle—

providing deployments of a predictable length that are preceded and 

followed by standard maintenance and training periods—to bring 

predictability to both its active and reserve forces. The Navy and the 

Marine Corps have used a variety of operating cycles to bring such 

predictability to portions of their forces. Likewise, the Army has used an 

operating cycle concept to bring predictability to a portion of its active 

force, under its Division Ready Brigade program.27

Key officials throughout DOD have acknowledged the importance of 

predictability in helping reserve forces to prepare for mobilization and 

deployment. Predictability helps units anticipate (1) downtime, so they 

can schedule lengthy education and training for personnel and lengthy 

maintenance for equipment and (2) the likely periods of mobilization or 

deployment, so they can focus on efforts to increase readiness, including 

last minute training28 and the screening of medical, dental, and personnel 

records. Predictability helps individual reservists by giving them time to 

prepare their civilian employers and family members for their possible 

departures. 

In the years following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Air Force Reserve 

and Air National Guard forces, which already had the highest tempos of 

any of DOD’s reserve component forces, faced increasing tempos. 29 In 

August 1998, the Air Force adopted the Expeditionary Aerospace Force 

concept to help it manage its commitments while reducing the deployment 

burden on its people. This concept established a standard 15-month 

operating cycle and divided the Air Force into 10 groups, each containing a 

mix of active, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve forces. Two 

groups were scheduled to deploy during each of the five, 3-month 

increments within the standard 15-month operating cycle. However, 

 27 Within the Army’s active divisions, brigades are rotated into an alert status for 1-month 

periods. 

28 Because some skills (1) are very perishable (certifications may last for 1 year or less), 

(2) require long training times, and (3) may not be needed prior to deployment, units may 

be reluctant to send their personnel to the required schools if the units do not know when 

they are going to deploy. Predictability helps units to efficiently and effectively schedule 

personnel for certification schools. Army officials cited combat lifesaver and hazardous 

materiel coordinators as two of these certified skills. 

29 Between fiscal year 1992 and 1999, tempos in the Air Force’s reserve components had 

risen from 55 to 65 days of active duty per year, while the tempos in the other reserve 

components had remained much lower—between 33 and 47 days per year. 

Air Force Standard 

Operating Cycle Provides 

Predictability to Active and 

Reserve Forces 
Page 33 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

because two groups contained more forces than were generally needed to 

cover worldwide contingency operations, and because the predictable 

cycles provided reservists with months of advance notice, the Air Force 

Reserve and the Air National Guard were able to rely on volunteers to 

meet significant portions of their requirements, thus avoiding large-scale 

involuntary mobilizations. 

While the predictability offered by the Air Force’s standard operating cycle 

has proved beneficial during “steady state” operations, the Expeditionary 

Aerospace Force concept is not yet able to deal with large and rapid 

surges in requirements. When the concept was first implemented, Air 

Force officials stated that the expeditionary concept would not be used to 

deploy forces to a major war prior to 2007. In the months immediately 

following the September 11th attacks and during the buildup for—and 

execution of—the 2003 war in Iraq, the Expeditionary Aerospace Force 

operating cycles broke down. For example, personnel with certain 

high-demand skills were involuntarily mobilized for longer than the 

intended 3 months—up to 2 full years, in some cases. However, for much 

of 2002, the Air Force used its operating cycles, and it has a plan to return 

to normal 15-month operating cycles by March of 2004. 

The Army prioritizes its units, and lower-priority units generally need extra 

training and preparation time prior to deploying. The Army allocates 

human capital and other resources using a tiered resourcing system that is 

based on the placement of units in existing operation plans. Units that are 

identified as the first to mobilize and deploy are resourced at the highest 

level. Units identified for later deployment are placed in subsequently 

lower resourcing tiers, based on their planned deployment dates. A unit’s 

resource tier affects its priority with respect to (1) recruiting and filling 

vacancies, (2) full-time staffing, (3) filling equipment needs, 

(4) maintaining equipment, (5) obtaining access to schools and training 

seats, and (6) funding for extra drills. Consequently, lower-priority units 

need more time to prepare for mobilization and deployment. 

The Army’s resourcing strategy is a cost-effective means for maintaining 

the Army’s reserve forces when reserve forces will have long lead times to 

mobilize. However, a large number of reserve forces were quickly 

mobilized—from less than 30,000 on January 1, 2003, to over 150,000 on 

March 26, 2003—to respond to the rapid surge in requirements for 

operations related to Operation Iraqi Freedom and the global war on 

terrorism. Because existing operation plans had not accurately identified 

all mobilization requirements, a number of lower-priority units were 

Preparation Time Is 

Especially Important to the 

Army’s Lower-Priority 

Units 
Page 34 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

mobilized with relatively little advance notice. For example, 

5 transportation companies containing 976 reservists were alerted on 

February 9, 2003, and told to arrive at their mobilization stations by 

February 14, 2003. On January 20, 2003, four other lower-priority Army 

National Guard companies, with over 1,000 reservists, were alerted and 

told to report to their mobilization stations by January 27, 2003. If these 

units had been able to plan for their mobilizations and deployments based 

on a standard operating cycle, they may have been able to complete some 

of their mobilization requirements during normally scheduled training 

periods prior to their mobilizations. 

Despite the large number of lower-priority units within the Army National 

Guard and the Army Reserve, the Army does not have a standard operating 

cycle concept to provide predictability to its reserve forces.30 Without such 

a concept, the Army’s opportunities to provide extra training and 

preparation time to its reserve forces, particularly those with low 

priorities, are limited. 

OSD established a goal of providing reservists with at least 30 days notice 

prior to mobilization when operationally feasible, but such advanced 

notice does not provide the longer lead times made possible by predictable 

operating cycles. Nonetheless, OSD’s advanced notice policy was written 

in recognition of the benefits of such notice to individual reservists. 

The Army, lacking a standard operating cycle to provide predictability for 

its reservists, strives to provide its reservists with official written orders 

30 days in advance of mobilizations in accordance with DOD’s policy. 

However, in the early days following September 11, 2001, this level of 

advanced notice was often not possible because reservists were required 

immediately. In the weeks and months that followed, advanced notice 

increased. Army data covering the mobilizations of over 6,400 personnel 

between June and August of 2002 showed that 83 percent of the personnel 

had 4 or more weeks advanced notice. However, advanced notice dropped 

again in the weeks leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. During the first 

15 days of March 2003, 95 percent of the Army units that were mobilized 

received less than 30 days advanced notice,31 and 8 percent of the units 

 30 While the Army scheduled some of its reserve forces for deployments to the Balkans 

several years in advance of the deployments, the deployments were not part of an 

operating cycle and the deployed forces did not know when they might be deployed again. 

31 Within these units, 21,908 personnel were mobilized. 

Advanced Notice Is Not As 

Beneficial As Predictable 

Operating Cycles 
Page 35 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

received less than 72 hours advanced notice. Much of this short notice is 

attributable to the extra time that was required to validate and approve 

requirements under the modified mobilization process. 

While 30 days advanced notice is clearly beneficial to individual reservists, 

it does not provide the longer lead times made possible by predictable 

operating cycles. As discussed earlier, such cycles allow reserve units, 

which typically drill only once every 30 days, to schedule their training and 

maintenance so the units’ readiness will build as the mobilization time 

approaches. 

While always important, predictability and preparation times are likely to 

become even more important when the pace of reserve operations is high. 

Figure 3, on page 16, shows the shift that occurred in July 2002 when the 

number of Army reservists on active duty exceeded the number of Air 

Force reservists on active duty. The figure also shows the dramatic 

increase in Army mobilizations in 2003. During calendar year 2002, the 

Army had an average of about 30,000 reserve component members 

mobilized each week. By February 12, 2003, the Army had more than 

110,000 reservists mobilized, and mobilizations peaked in March 2003, 

when more than 150,000 of the 216,811 reservists mobilized were members 

of the Army National Guard or the Army Reserve. On June 18, 2003, over 

139,000 Army reservists were still mobilized, and the Army Manpower and 

Reserve Affairs office projected that mobilizations would remain high at 

least through the end of 2004.32 Given its ongoing commitments in Iraq, the 

Balkans, Afghanistan, and at home, many of the Army’s reserve 

component forces will likely face the same types of high operational 

tempos that Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve forces faced in the 

1990s. 

As described above, the Air Force has effectively used predictable 

operating cycles to help prepare its reserve units and individuals for 

mobilization and deployment and to mitigate the negative factors33

associated with high operational tempos. However, the Army does not 

employ such operating cycles for its reserve forces, thus leaving those 

 32 An estimate placed the mobilization number at 90,000 through the end of 2004. 

33 Senior DOD officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that repeated mobilizations of 

the reserves could eventually lead to recruiting and retention problems. 

Increased Reliance on the 

Army’s Reserve Forces 

Heightens the Need for 

Predictability 
Page 36 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

forces with limited time to prepare for the increased mobilization and 

deployment demands facing them. 

After September 11, 2001, mobilizations were hampered because about 

one-quarter of the Ready Reserve was not readily accessible. Some 

Selected Reserve members could not be mobilized due to the lack of 

training. Furthermore, the services lack information that is needed to 

make full use of the IRR. Finally, OSD and service policies reflect a 

reluctance to use the IRR, resulting in situations where Ready Reserve 

forces were not readily available for mobilization or deployment. 

In fiscal year 2002, most of the military’s approximately 880,000 Selected 

Reserve members were available for mobilization and deployment, but 

over 70,000 Selected Reserve members had not completed the individual 

training that is required prior to deploying.34 By law, members of the armed 

forces are not permitted to deploy outside the United States and its 

territories until they have completed the basic training requirements of the 

applicable military services.35 The law further stipulates that in time of a 

national emergency (such as the one in effect since September 11, 2001) 

the basic training period may not be less than 12 weeks, except for certain 

medical personnel.36 The over 70,000 Selected Reserve members who were 

not deployable in fiscal year 2002 included personnel who had entered the 

service and were awaiting their initial active duty training,37 personnel who 

were awaiting the second part of a split initial active duty training 

program, and reservists who were still participating in initial active duty 

training programs. Each year between fiscal year 1997 and 2002, 7 to 10 

percent of Selected Reserve members were not deployable because they 

had not completed their required initial training. 

 34 In fiscal year 2002, the Selected Reserve made up 74 percent of the Ready Reserve. 

35 10 U.S.C. § 671. 

36 10 U.S.C. § 671(c). 

37 The Fiscal Year 2003 National Defense Authorization Act (section 533 (a) P.L. 107-314, 

Dec. 2, 2002) increased the maximum time that reservists may delay commencement of 

their initial active duty training from 270 days (10 U.S.C. § 12103) to 1 year after their 

enlistments. 

DOD Has Limited 

Access to Portions of 

the Ready Reserve 

Many Selected Reserve 

Members Could Not Be 

Mobilized Due to the Lack 

of Training 
Page 37 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

While most members of the Selected Reserve had met the initial active 

duty training requirements in fiscal year 2002 and were therefore available 

for mobilization, a portion of these personnel belonged to units that would 

have required lengthy periods of unit training before they would have been 

deployable. In particular, the reserve forces from the Army’s bottom two 

resourcing categories generally require lengthy postmobilization training 

periods before they are deployable. Because both the Presidential Reserve 

Call-up38 and partial mobilization39 authorities prevented the services from 

mobilizing reservists specifically for training, the Army could not use many 

of its tier three and four Guard and Reserve units to meet requirements 

that had to be filled immediately. On April 10, 2003, DOD proposed that 

Congress change portions of the United States Code to allow the military 

departments to order reservists to active duty for up to 90 days of training 

in order to meet deployment standards.40

The services lack the vital information necessary to fully use their IRR 

pools of over 300,000 pretrained individual reservists.41 Many of the IRR 

members were inaccessible because the services did not have valid 

contact information (addresses or phone numbers) for these individuals. 

Moreover, the services’ use of three primary access methods—exit 

briefings, questionnaires, and screenings—did not obtain the results 

necessary to gain and maintain access to their IRR members. Finally, the 

services have not developed results-oriented goals and performance 

measures to improve the use of their primary methods to access IRR 

members. 

The services could not access many IRR members because they did not 

have valid addresses or phone numbers for the members. For example, in 

April 2003, the Army estimated that it had inaccurate addresses for more 

than 40,400 of its IRR members. When the services were able to contact 

their IRR members and obtain the vital information necessary to use its 

IRR pool, exemptions and delays often limited the services’ abilities to 

 38 10 U.S.C. § 12304. 

39 10 U.S.C. § 12302. 

40 “The Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act” had not been signed into law as 

of the date of publication of our report. 

41 In fiscal year 2002, the IRR and the Inactive National Guard made up 26 percent of the 

Ready Reserve. 

Services Lack Vital 

Information That Is 

Necessary to Make Full 

Use of the IRR 

Services Lacked Valid Contact 

Information for IRR Members 
Page 38 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

fully use these personnel. For example, in February 2003, the Army sent 

mobilization orders to 345 IRR members, but 164 of these reservists 

requested and were granted exemptions for specific reasons, such as 

medical issues, so they did not have to deploy, and another 35 were 

granted delays in their reporting dates. 

The services’ use of their three primary IRR access methods did not obtain 

the results necessary to gain and maintain full access to their IRR 

members. These methods include (1) briefings provided to members when 

they leave active duty or a drilling reserve position; (2) questionnaires to 

verify basic member information, such as contact information; and 

(3) 1-day screenings to verify member fitness for mobilization. 

First, the services brief the members when they leave active duty or a 

Selected Reserve position. These briefings are designed to make the 

individuals aware of their responsibilities as members of the IRR. 

However, mobilized reservists that we spoke with said that IRR 

responsibilities had not been clearly explained during exit briefings when 

they left active duty. For example, Marine Corps reservists stated that the 

separation briefings did not provide the detail necessary for them to fully 

understand their commitment and responsibilities when entering the IRR. 

They stated individuals conducting these briefings should emphasize that 

reservists entering the IRR must keep their reserve component informed 

of specific changes, including their home address, marital status, number 

of dependents, civilian employment, and physical condition. They added 

that reservists assigned to the IRR need to know that they may volunteer 

for active duty assignments to refresh or enhance their military skills. 

Next, the services send the members questionnaires to verify basic 

information—such as current addresses, marital status, and physical 

condition—to ascertain whether the reservists are available immediately 

for active duty during a mobilization. However, response rates to the 

questionnaires have been considered low, as shown in table 3. 

Table 3: Fiscal Year 2002 Questionnaire Response Rates 

Army Navy Air Force Coast Guarda 

40.41% 51.47% 28.97% 25.00% 

Source: GAO analysis of service data. 

Note: The Marine Corps did not conduct a survey during fiscal year 2002 and could not provide 

survey specific information for prior years. 

a

 Coast Guard responses include questionnaires returned by members of the Selected Reserve and 

the IRR. 

Services Did Not Obtain the 

Results Necessary to Fully 

Access Their IRR Members 
Page 39 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

The services attributed the low response rate, in part, to incorrect mailing 

addresses as indicated by the questionnaires returned as undeliverable. 

During fiscal year 2002, for example, the Air Force stated that 12 percent 

of the questionnaires mailed out were returned as undeliverable. The Air 

Force is the only service that specifically tracks undeliverable rates, but 

the Navy estimated a 30 to 40 percent undeliverable rate and the Army 

estimated that approximately 30 percent of its questionnaires were 

returned as undeliverable. The Coast Guard has not measured the number 

of questionnaires returned as undeliverable. Although the Marine Corps 

did not send out questionnaires in fiscal year 2002 and could not provide 

documented response rates for prior years, a Marine Corps official 

indicated that the Corps had experienced about a 10 percent undeliverable 

rate in previous years; but he was unable to provide any data to support 

the claim. According to this official, most of the returned questionnaires 

were mailed to junior enlisted personnel, including lance corporals, 

corporals, and sergeants who appeared to change residences more 

frequently than senior enlisted personnel or officers. 

The services have taken some specific steps to correct bad addresses and 

improve servicemember reporting of required mobilization-related 

information. Specifically, the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps use 

commercial contractors to try to update inaccurate address information. 

For the last 4 years, a contractor has been regularly matching the Army’s 

entire personnel database of bad addresses with a credit bureau’s address 

database. For over 10 years, the Army has used another contractor to 

update a small number of addresses, one at a time. Despite these efforts, 

the Army still had over 40,000 bad addresses in its database as of April 

2003, and it recently contracted with its second contractor to do batch 

updates rather than one-at-a-time updates. The Marine Corps just started 

using its contractor. Finally, the Army and the Coast Guard have 

implemented Web-based systems that encourage IRR members to update 

critical contact information on the Internet.42 According to an official 

representing the Naval Reserve Personnel Center, the Navy has also 

started to create a Web-based screening questionnaire to better track IRR 

members. However, these efforts are not linked to a results-oriented 

management framework that establishes specific goals to improve access 

 42 The Coast Guard’s Web-based system had only been in place for part of fiscal year 2002, 

when the 25 percent response rate was reported. Response rates, which reached 48 percent 

after the Web-based system had been deployed for a full year, are being reported monthly. 
Page 40 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

to accurate addresses and identifies the resources and performance 

measures necessary to ensure success. 

Finally, the services order a small number of their IRR members to 

participate in a 1-day screening event at a specific site to verify they are fit 

and available for mobilization.43 The screening events focus on a specific 

number of IRR members to verify their physical existence, condition, and 

personal contact data. Even though the total number of IRR members 

ordered to report for screening during a fiscal year is relatively small, the 

services have met with limited success as the screening event participation 

rates in table 4 indicate. 

Table 4: IRR Screening Event Participation Rates 

 Navy 

Marine 

Corps Air Force Army 

Last available fiscal year that screening 

occurred 2002 2002 2001 2000 

Total IRR population for applicable fiscal 

year 71,140 58,039 47,940 161,622 

Total number of orders mailed to 

reservists 3,990 4,100 4,656 2,714 

Percentage of personnel that attended 

screening event 35.9 56.4 51.3 25.8 

Source: GAO’s analysis of service data. 

Note: The Coast Guard does not require members of the IRR to participate in screening events. 

As indicated in table 4, the Army and the Air Force have not conducted 

screenings since 2000 and 2001, respectively. An Army Personnel 

Command After Action Report concluded that screenings should not be 

conducted until clear objectives are established and realistic cost and 

benefit assessments are completed. The Air Force also decided not to 

conduct screening events. Thus, these two services are not using one of 

their three primary methods to gain and maintain access to their IRR 

members. 

Furthermore, table 3 shows that the participation rates are relatively low. 

The services indicated that the low screening event participation rates 

were based on the services’ inability to contact members of the IRR 

 43 The services call these screenings musters. 
Page 41 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

because of incorrect addresses; IRR members who were excused because 

of stated conflicts involving work, vacation plans, religious issues, or 

physical disabilities among others; and members who ignored orders and 

avoided participation in the screening events. 

The services do not have results-oriented goals and performance measures 

to improve their reliance on the three primary methods to access IRR 

members. Specifically, the services have concentrated their efforts on exit 

briefings, questionnaires to update critical information, and periodic 

screening events. However, they have not focused on the results of those 

activities, as evidenced by persistent low response rates to questionnaires 

and low screening event participation rates. By focusing on the execution 

of these activities rather than their results, the services have not 

• established objective, quantifiable, and measurable performance goals to 

improve the results of their three primary efforts to access; 

• established a basis for comparing actual program results with the goals in 

order to develop performance indicators to track their progress in 

attaining results-oriented goals; and 

• described the resources and means required to verify and validate 

measured values. 

OSD and service policies have discouraged the use of the IRR because IRR 

members do not participate in any regularly scheduled training and thus 

are not regularly paid. The policies are also intended to avoid the negative 

effects on individual IRR members. For example, the Under Secretary of 

Defense for Personnel and Readiness provided guidance dated July 19, 

2002, to the services that emphasized the use of volunteers before 

involuntarily mobilizing reservists to minimize the effects of mobilization 

on the lives of the reservists, their families, and their employers. 

Policies intended to avoid the negative effects on individual reservists may 

be disruptive to all reservists as well as to entire units, because they 

contribute to situations where individual mobilization requirements are 

filled with personnel from reserve units, thus creating personnel shortages 

within the units that had supplied the reservists and affecting the units’ 

readiness to mobilize and deploy. For example, in its reluctance to use the 

IRR, the Army filled many of its individual mobilization requirements with 

personnel from reserve units. In doing so, the Army created personnel 

shortages within the units that had supplied the reservists. In some cases, 

the Army had to later locate and transfer replacement personnel into these 

units when the units were mobilized, thus transferring several unit 

The Services Lack 

Results-Oriented Goals and 

Performance Measures to 

Improve Use of IRR Access 

OSD and Service Policies 

Have Discouraged the Use 

of the IRR 
Page 42 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

personnel as a result of a single individual requirement. Specifically, the 

Army mobilized a combat support hospital unit that was 142 individuals 

short, including the commanding officer, of its authorized strength of 509 

personnel. To increase the hospital unit’s strength to an acceptable level 

for mobilization, the Army took a commanding officer and other needed 

personnel from four reserve units. By taking this course of action, the 

Army immediately degraded the mission capability and readiness of the 

four affected units. The Army compounded this negative effect when it 

later mobilized the already significantly degraded unit that gave up its 

commanding officer to the hospital unit. 

Further, the reluctance of one service to use the IRR can affect other 

services. For example, the Air Force’s reluctance to access any of its more 

than 44,000 IRR members has left the responsibility for guarding Air Force 

bases to over 9,000 Army National Guard unit personnel. According to a 

senior Air Force official, the Air Force did not even consider using its own 

IRR pool. Because the Army National Guard volunteered for the mission, 

the Air Force did not consider mobilizing any of its 3,900 IRR members 

who held security force specialty codes. 

About 300,000 of the 1.2 million National Guard and Reserve personnel 

have been called to active duty since September 11, 2001. They fought on 

the front lines in Iraq; tracked down terrorists throughout Asia and Africa; 

maintained the peace in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and now Iraq; and 

participated in a wide range of domestic missions. However, the process 

to mobilize reservists had to be modified and contained numerous 

inefficiencies. Existing operation plans did not adequately address the 

mobilization requirements needed to deal with terrorist attacks and 

overseas requirements. We recognize that some threats are impossible to 

predict but until the combatant commanders identify all of the 

mobilization requirements that have evolved since September 11, 2001—

and create or update their operation plans as necessary to account for 

these requirements—DOD risks the continued need for additional 

management oversight and coordination between officials to fill 

mobilization requirements, thus slowing the mobilization effort and 

making it less efficient. 

DOD officials also did not have visibility over the entire mobilization 

process. Specifically, without the ability to capture the readiness of 

personnel and other resources within the small units that were frequently 

needed by combatant commanders, the Army and the Navy will continue 

to face difficulties in their efforts to assemble the forces needed to meet 

Conclusions 
Page 43 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

joint organizational requirements. Furthermore, until all of the services 

develop fully integrated automated systems that provide for the seamless 

transfer of reservists’ information between reserve and active 

components, the components will continue to face cumbersome 

workarounds to obtain the data to track the length of reservists’ 

mobilization or their deployment status. In addition, until the services 

update key mobilization instructions, notices, and publications to reflect 

the modified mobilization process, DOD and the services risk continued 

mobilization slowdowns and duplication of efforts. 

All of the services provide predictability to portions of their active forces 

through some type of standard operating cycle, but only the Air Force has 

a standard operating cycle that brings predictability to both its active and 

reserve forces. Moreover, the Army’s reserve forces face increasing use to 

meet operational requirements. However, without a standard operating 

concept to help increase predictability for its units, the Army risks 

mobilizing units and individuals that are unprepared for deployment. 

Finally, the services have limited access to portions of the Ready Reserve 

and are thus forced to spread requirements across the remaining reserve 

force, leading to longer or more frequent deployments. Specifically, the 

services’ use of their primary IRR access methods—exit briefings, 

questionnaires, and screenings—did not obtain the results necessary to 

gain and maintain access to their members. Until the services develop 

results-oriented goals and performance measures to improve the use of 

their primary methods to access IRR members, the services will be unable 

to systematically identify opportunities to better access their IRR 

members for mobilization. Moreover, OSD and service policies have 

discouraged the use of the IRR in order to avoid the negative effects on 

individual IRR members. However, until the services review and update 

their IRR policies to take into account the nature of the mobilization 

requirements and the types of reservists who are available to fill the 

requirements, the services will risk the continued disruption to units that 

provide individual personnel rather than mobilizing IRR members. 

We are making several recommendations to enhance the overall efficiency 

of the reserve mobilization process. Specifically, we recommend that the 

Secretary of Defense direct 

• the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to identify all of the mobilization 

requirements that have evolved since September 11, 2001, and create or 

update operation plans as necessary, to account for these requirements; 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action 
Page 44 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

• the Secretaries of the Army and the Navy to capture readiness information 

on the resources within all the units that are available to meet the tailored 

requirements of combatant commanders so that these resources will be 

visible to key mobilization officials within DOD, the Joint Staff, and the 

service headquarters; 

• the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, in 

conjunction with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, to 

develop a single automated system or fully integrated automated systems 

that will provide for the seamless transfer of reservists information, 

regardless of whether the reservists are in an active or reserve status; 

• the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Assistant Secretary of the Air 

Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs to update their applicable 

mobilization instructions, notices, and publications; 

• the Secretary of the Army to develop a standard operating cycle concept 

to help increase predictability for Army reserve units; 

• the service secretaries to develop and use results-oriented performance 

metrics to guide service efforts to gain and maintain improved information 

on IRR members; and 

• the service secretaries to review and update their IRR policies to take into 

account the nature of the mobilization requirements as well as the types of 

reservists who are available to fill the requirements. 

In written comments on a draft of this report, DOD generally concurred 

with our recommendations. The department specifically concurred with 

our recommendations to (1) create or update operation plans as 

necessary, to account for mobilization requirements that have evolved 

since September 11, 2001, (2) develop an automated system to provide for 

the seamless transfer of reservists’ information, (3) update mobilization 

notices and publications, (4) develop a standard operating cycle to 

increase predictability for Army Reserve and National Guard units, 

(5) develop and use results-oriented performance metrics to gain and 

maintain information on IRR members, and (6) update IRR policies to take 

into account the nature of mobilization requirements and the types of 

reservists who are available to fill the requirements. 

DOD partially concurred with our recommendation that the Army and the 

Navy capture readiness information on the resources within all units that 

are available to meet the tailored requirements of combatant commanders 

so that these resources will be visible to key officials within DOD. DOD 

stated that the Army and the Navy fully support capturing relevant 

information in the DOD readiness reporting system but that combatant 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation 
Page 45 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel

commanders will need to establish resource requirements to include 

tailored mission requirements. We agree that improvements in readiness 

reporting should be closely linked to efforts to more clearly define 

requirements. DOD also stated that the Army is currently developing and 

implementing a system to provide visibility on readiness issues in support 

of the combatant commanders. We did not evaluate this system because it 

was not fully implemented during our review. 

DOD also provided technical comments from the Joint Staff, and we 

received technical comments from the Coast Guard. These technical 

comments were incorporated in the final draft as appropriate. DOD’s 

comments are reprinted in appendix II. 

We performed our work between September 2002 and June 2003 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretaries of Defense, the 

Army, the Navy, and the Air Force; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff; the Secretary of Transportation; and the Commandant of the Coast 

Guard. We will also make copies available to others upon request. In 

addition, the report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at 

http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staffs have any questions concerning this report, please 

contact me at (202) 512-5559 or stewartd@gao.gov or Brenda S. Farrell at 

(202) 512-3604 or farrellb@gao.gov. Others making major contributions to 

this report are included in appendix III. 

Derek B. Stewart 

Director, Defense Capabilities and Management 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 46 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

To evaluate whether the Department of Defense (DOD) and the services 

followed their existing operation plans when mobilizing reserve forces 

after September 11, 2001, we reviewed and analyzed a small group of 

requests for forces from the combatant commanders and discussed 

differences between planned and actual requirements with the 

mobilization officials responsible for validating and approving 

mobilization requirements. To find out how the services screen and fill 

requirements, as well as their procedures for turning generic “capability” 

type requirements into actual unit and personnel requirements, we met 

with, and collected and analyzed data from, a variety of active and reserve 

component offices within each of the services. Specifically, we met with 

officials from the following offices or commands: 

• National Guard Bureau; 1

• Department of the Army, Army Operations Center; 

• Office of the Chief, Army Reserve; 

• Army National Guard, Headquarters; 

• U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Georgia; 

• U.S. Army Reserve Command, Fort McPherson, Georgia; 

• Department of the Air Force, Headquarters; 

• Air National Guard, Headquarters; 

• Air National Guard Readiness Center; 

• Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; 

• Air Force Reserve Command, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia; 

• Air and Space Expeditionary Force Center, Langley Air Force Base, 

Virginia; 

• Navy Personnel Command, Millington, Tennessee; 

• Commander Naval Forces Command, New Orleans, Louisiana; 

• U.S. Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Headquarters, 

Quantico, Virginia; 

• Marine Forces Reserve, Headquarters, New Orleans, Louisiana; 

• U.S. Coast Guard, Headquarters; and 

• U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Maintenance Logistic Command, Norfolk, 

Virginia. 

 1

 Unless otherwise noted, the officials listed in this appendix have their offices in the 

Pentagon or at other locations in the Washington D.C., metropolitan area. 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 47 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

We reviewed our prior work on risk management and issues related to 

combating terrorism. We met with RAND Corporation officials to discuss 

and coordinate ongoing work related to the requests for forces. We also 

met with the Assistant Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air 

Force who are responsible for approving mobilization orders. 

To determine the extent to which responsible officials had visibility over 

the entire mobilization process, we reviewed sections of the United States 

Code, Executive Orders, Secretary of Defense memoranda, Joint Staff 

publications, and service instructions related to mobilization. We also met 

with senior and key mobilization officials involved with the various phases 

of the mobilization process to document their roles and responsibilities 

and collect data about the process. We observed a 2-1/2 day DOD 

symposium in November 2002, where senior military and civilian officials 

came together to review the entire mobilization process. We reviewed 

relevant GAO reports and reports from other audit and inspection 

agencies. We also met with Army Audit Agency and Air Force Audit 

Agency officials. We reviewed the services’ detailed flowcharts, which 

documented the mobilization process from different service perspectives. 

We also discussed and observed the operation of the classified and 

unclassified automated systems that are being used to track mobilized 

units and individuals, as well as mobilization requirements. The Office of 

the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs served as our 

primary source for aggregate personnel and mobilization data. However, 

data from the early days and weeks following September 11, 2001, are not 

reliable. Further, the services captured mobilization data differently over 

time, making it difficult to aggregate the data. To present the data 

consistently, our figures display data beginning with January 2002. 

To evaluate the services’ approaches to provide predictability to reservists 

subject to mobilization and deployment, we met with officials from the Air 

Force offices that were responsible for the development and 

implementation of the rotational Air Expeditionary Force concept and 

analyzed data that documented the successes and challenges that the 

program had experienced since September 11, 2001. We discussed the 

30-day advance notice goal with service officials and officials from the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) office, which had issued the goal. 

We also discussed efforts to increase advanced warning or predictability 

with officials from the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps and, where 

data were available, compared alert dates to mobilization dates. To gain 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 48 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

first-hand knowledge about the effects of mobilizations on individual 

reservists, we visited a number of sites where reservists were deployed or 

were undergoing mobilization processing and training.2

 At these sites, we 

collected mobilization data, obtained copies of mobilization processing 

checklists, and observed the preparations for deployment that take place 

after reservists have been mobilized. Specifically, we met with officials 

from the offices or commands listed below: 

• Army Headquarters, I Corps, Fort Lewis, Washington; 

• 4th Brigade, 91st Division (Training Support), Fort Lewis, Washington; 

• 2122nd Garrison Training Support Brigade, Fort Lewis, Washington; 

• 2122nd Garrison Support Unit, North Fort Lewis, Washington; 

• Soldier Readiness Processing Site, Fort Lewis, Washington; 

• Soldier Readiness Processing Site, Fort McPherson, Georgia; 

• Central Issue Facility, Fort Lewis, Washington; 

• Navy Mobilization Processing Site, Millington, Tennessee; 

• Navy Mobilization Processing Site, San Diego, California; 

• Marine Corps Mobilization Processing Center, Mobilization Support 

Battalion, Camp Pendleton, California; 

• 452nd Air Mobility Wing, March Air Reserve Base, California; and 

• Coast Guard Integrated Support Command, Portsmouth, Virginia. 

While at these sites, we interviewed individual and unit reservists who had 

been mobilized, as well as the active duty, reserve, and civilian officials 

who were conducting the mobilization processing and training. At the 

mobilization processing stations, we observed reservists getting medical, 

legal, and family support briefings; having their personnel, medical, and 

dental records screened and updated; and receiving inoculations, combat 

equipment, camouflage clothing, Geneva Convention Cards, identification 

tags, and the controlled access cards that have replaced laminated 

identification cards. We also observed weapons qualification training. 

To determine the extent to which Ready Reserve forces were available for 

mobilization, we reviewed sections of the United States Code and OSD 

and service policies on the use of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). We 

 2

 A small number of personnel were undergoing demobilization processing during some of 

our site visits. 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 49 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

collected and analyzed longitudinal data on the sizes of different segments 

of the Ready Reserve. We examined the data for trends, specifically 

focusing on the IRR and the portion of the Selected Reserve that was still 

in the training pipeline. We also collected and analyzed data from the 

commands that are responsible for managing the IRR, specifically 

• the U.S. Army Reserve Personnel Command, St. Louis, Missouri; 

• the Naval Reserve Personnel Center, New Orleans, Louisiana; 

• the Air Reserve Personnel Center, Denver, Colorado; 

• the Marine Corps Reserve Support Command, Kansas City, Missouri; and 

• the Coast Guard Personnel Command, Washington, D.C. 

Officials from these commands also provided data on IRR members that 

we analyzed to determine (1) response rates to questionnaires to verify 

basic member information and (2) participation rates at 1-day screening 

events to verify member fitness for mobilization. 

We conducted our review from September 2002 through June 2003 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense 

Page 50 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Defense 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense 

Page 51 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

 Now on p. 44. 

 Now on p. 44. 

 Now on p. 43. 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense 

Page 52 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

 Now on p. 44. 

 Now on p. 44. 

 Now on p. 44. 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense 

Page 53 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

 Now on p. 44. 
Appendix III: Staff Acknowledgments 

Page 54 GAO-03-921 Military Personnel 

James R. Bancroft, Larry J. Bridges, Michael J. Ferren, Chelsa L. Kenney, 

Irene A. Robertson, and Robert K. Wild also made significant contributions 

to the report. 

Appendix III: Staff Acknowledgments 

Acknowledgments 

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