The Army Reserve is composed primarily of citizen soldiers who balance the demands of a civilian career with military service on a part-time basis. During the Cold War, it was expected that the Army Reserve would be a force to supplement active forces in the event of extended conflict. However, since the mid-1990s, the Army Reserve’s citizen soldiers have been continuously mobilized to support operations worldwide, including those in Bosnia and Kosovo. In today’s strategic environment, the Army Reserve’s role has evolved to a complementary force, continuously supplying specialized skills for combat support and combat service support for Operations Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Iraqi Freedom. Rather than the historical part-time employment in the Army Reserve, some Army Reserve personnel have now been involuntarily activated for over a year. The members of the Army Reserve fall into three major categories: the Ready Reserve, the Standby Reserve, and the Retired Reserve. (See fig. 1.) Members of all three categories are subject to mobilization in the event of national emergency. The Army's Ready Reserve includes about 310,000 members and is made up of two subcategories: the Selected Reserve, which has about 197,500 members, and the Individual Ready Reserve, which comprises about 112,500 members. The Selected Reserve includes soldiers who are assigned to units and participate in at least 48 scheduled drills or training periods each year and serve on active duty for training at least 14 days each year; soldiers who voluntarily serve on extended tours of active duty; and soldiers assigned on an individual basis to various headquarters where they would serve if mobilized and train on a part- time basis to prepare for mobilization. Members of the Individual Ready Reserve include individuals who were previously trained during periods of active service, but have not completed their service obligations; individuals who have completed their service obligation and voluntarily retain their reserve status; and personnel who have not completed basic training. Most of these members are not assigned to organized units, do not attend weekend or annual training, and do not receive pay unless they are called to active duty. The Army's Standby Reserve represents about 1,030 personnel who maintain their Army affiliation without being in the Ready Reserve. Standby Reserve personnel have been designated key civilian employees who have responsibilities that would keep them from being mobilized, such as members of the Congress, or have temporary hardships or disabilities that prevent them from participating in reserve activities. These personnel can be mobilized if necessary to fill manpower needs in specific skills. The Army Retired Reserve comprises all reserve officers and enlisted personnel who receive retired pay on the basis of active or reserve service and may be ordered to active duty in emergency situations. Currently, about 747,000 personnel are in the Retired Reserve. The majority of the reserve forces mobilized for current operations have been members of the Selected Reserve, who are members of units and attend monthly drills. Some members of the Individual Ready Reserve and Retired Reserve have also been mobilized to provide specialized skills. In addition to personnel in these categories, the Army Reserve relies on a small number of full-time personnel to provide the day-to-day administrative, training, and maintenance tasks that units need to be able to attain readiness for their missions and deploy. The Army Reserve full- time support personnel are equal to about 13 percent of the authorized number of reservists. The Army Reserve is headed by the Chief, Army Reserve who is the principal advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Army for all Army Reserve matters. Among other duties, the Chief, Army Reserve provides reports to the Secretary of Defense and the Congress, through the Secretary of the Army, on the state of the Army Reserve and the ability of the Army Reserve to meet its missions; manages the full-time support program; justifies and executes the personnel, operation and maintenance, and construction budgets for the Army Reserve; and participates in formulation and development of Army policies. The Army Reserve is a part of the total Army, which also includes the active Army and the Army National Guard. The Chief of Staff of the Army is charged with integrating reserve component matters into Army activities and provides strategic guidance to the Army Reserve on transformation. The Chief of Staff of the Army, as senior military leader of the Army, participates in the development of Army plans, policies, programs, and activities and supervises their execution. The Secretary of the Army, as the senior official of the Department of the Army, is responsible for its effective and efficient functioning. Reserve forces may be called to active duty under a number of mobilization authorities. As shown in table 1, two authorities enable the President to mobilize forces, but with size and time limitations. Full mobilization, which would enable the mobilization of forces for as long as they are needed, requires a declaration by the Congress. The Office of the Secretary of Defense implements the activation of reservists under mobilization authority. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, who reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, is responsible for providing policy, programs, and guidance for the mobilization and demobilization of the reserve components. On September 14, 2001, President Bush declared that a national emergency existed as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and he invoked the partial mobilization authority. On September 20, 2001, DOD issued mobilization guidance that among other things directed the services as a matter of policy to specify in initial orders to Ready Reserve members that the period of active duty service would not exceed 12 months. However, the guidance allowed the service secretaries to extend orders for an additional 12 months or remobilize reserve component members under the partial mobilization authority as long as an individual member’s cumulative service did not exceed 24 months under the President’s partial mobilization authority. Since September 11, there have been six separate rotations of troops to support Operation Enduring Freedom and four rotations of troops to support Operation Iraqi Freedom, which began in 2001. The Army has identified the personnel and units that are expected to deploy in 2005 in the seventh rotation of forces for Operation Enduring Freedom and the fifth rotation for Operation Iraqi Freedom. To address the continuing demand for ground forces, in 2004, the Army extended the time that reservists must be deployed overseas for missions related to Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq or Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The Army’s current guidance is that soldiers should serve 12 months with their “boots on the ground” in the theater of operations, not including the time spent in mobilization and demobilization activities, which could add several more months to the time a Reserve member spends on active duty. The Army’s Forces Command identifies the Army units and personnel to be deployed to meet the requirements of the combatant commanders. The Army Reserve has provided ready forces for ongoing military operations since September 11, 2001, by transferring personnel and equipment to deploying units; however, it is running out of personnel who can be mobilized under current policies and equipment that meets deployment standards for three key reasons. First, the Army Reserve is having difficulty continuing to support ongoing operations because its units are not routinely resourced with all the personnel and equipment needed to deploy. Therefore, to meet combatant commanders’ requirements that deploying units have all the personnel they require for their missions and have equipment that is compatible with other units in the theater of operations, the Army Reserve has had to transfer uniformed personnel and equipment from nonmobilized units to prepare mobilized units. This has left nondeploying units with shortages in personnel and equipment, which hampers their ability to train for future missions. Second, based on data provided by the Army Reserve, about 40 percent of Army Reserve personnel have already been mobilized once and under personnel policies cannot be mobilized again. This, in addition to emerging recruiting issues that contribute to the availability of personnel, has led to a smaller pool of reservists eligible for deployment and is making it more difficult for the Army Reserve to provide trained and ready personnel with the specific grades and skills needed for future operations. Third, the Army Reserve has been experiencing increasing shortages of the full-time support staff who maintain equipment, train personnel, and conduct the day-to-day administration of nonmobilized and returning units. This hampers the Army Reserve’s ability to maintain unit readiness. These challenges, when viewed collectively and in view of emerging recruiting challenges, threaten the Army Reserve’s ability to provide ready units for ongoing operations and prepare units for future missions. To provide the ready forces required to meet mission requirements since September 11, 2001, the Army Reserve has had to transfer personnel and equipment from nonmobilized units to mobilized units—a practice that has left nonmobilized units with shortages of resources and challenges the Army Reserve to continue to support near-term operations. The Army Reserve, like the National Guard, has been structured according to a “tiered resourcing” approach. Under tiered resourcing, the Army has accepted some operational risks to save money by funding Army Reserve units to maintain fewer personnel and less equipment than they would need in the event of a deployment. Instead, units train at lower states of readiness with the expectation that there would be sufficient time to add the required personnel and equipment prior to a deployment. Units anticipated to be needed earlier in an operation are provided a larger portion of their required personnel and equipment, while units that are not likely to be needed until later during an operation, if at all, are given lower levels of resources. This strategy effectively supported the types of operations that were anticipated before September 11, 2001, but in the current environment combatant commanders have required that Army Reserve units deploy with all the personnel and equipment they needed for their missions. While the Army Reserve has met these requirements, it has done so by transferring resources from nonmobilized units, which has impaired its ability to train for future missions. It has used this approach because its personnel and equipment levels have not increased significantly since September 11, 2001, despite the high pace of operations.