Mobilization is the process of assembling and organizing personnel and equipment, activating or federalizing units and members of the National Guard and Reserves for active duty, and bringing 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 between a number of commands and officials. Mobilization usually begins when the President invokes a mobilization authority and ends with the voluntary or involuntary mobilization of an individual Reserve or National Guard member. Demobilization is the process necessary to release from active duty units and members of the National Guard and Reserve components who were ordered to active duty under various legislative authorities. Mobilization and demobilization times can vary from a matter of hours to months depending on a number of factors. For example, many air reserve component units are required to be available to mobilize within 72 hours while Army National Guard brigades may require months of training as part of their mobilizations. Reserve component members’ usage of accrued leave can greatly affect demobilization times. Actual demobilization processing typically takes a matter of days once the member arrives back in the United States. However, since members earn 30 days of leave each year, they could have up to 60 days of leave available to them at the end of a 2-year mobilization. DOD has six reserve components: the Army Reserve, the Army National Guard, the Air Force Reserve, the Air National Guard, the Naval Reserve, and the Marine Corps 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 National Guard and Reserve members at the end of fiscal year 2003, and its members were the only reservists who were subject to involuntary 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 Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), and the Inactive National Guard. Members of all three subcategories are subject to mobilization under a partial mobilization. At the end of fiscal year 2003, DOD had 875,072 Selected Reserve members. The Selected Reserve’s members included individual mobilization augmentees—individuals who train regularly, for pay, with active component units—as well as members who participate in regular training as members of National Guard or Reserve units. At the end of fiscal year 2003, DOD had 274,199 IRR 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 military service obligations, to the IRR. However, IRR members do not participate in any regularly scheduled training, and they are not paid for their membership in the IRR. At the end of fiscal year 2003, the Inactive National Guard had 2,138 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 unit. Appendix II contains additional information about end strengths within the various reserve components and different categories. Most reservists who were called to active duty for other than normal training after September 11, 2001, were mobilized under one of the three legislative authorities listed in table 1. 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 City, New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and he invoked 10 U.S.C. § 12302, which is commonly referred to as the “partial mobilization authority.” On September 20, 2001, DOD issued mobilization guidance that, among a host of 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 under 10 U.S.C. § 12302 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 10 U.S.C. § 12302. It further specified that “No member of the Ready Reserve called to involuntary active duty under 10 U.S.C. 12302 in support of the effective conduct of operations in response to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, shall serve on active duty in excess of 24 months under that authority, including travel time to return the member to the residence from which he or she left when called to active duty and use of accrued leave.” The guidance also allowed the services to retain members on active duty after they had served 24 or fewer months under 10 U.S.C. § 12302 with the member’s consent if additional orders were authorized under 10 U.S.C. § 12301(d). Combatant commanders are principally responsible for the preparation and implementation of operation plans that specify the necessary level of mobilization of reserve component forces. The military services are the primary executors of mobilization. At the direction of the Secretary of Defense, the services prepare detailed mobilization plans to support the operation plans and provide forces and logistical support to the combatant commanders. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, who reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, is to provide policy, programs, and guidance for the mobilization and demobilization of the reserve components. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after coordination with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, the secretaries of the military departments, and the commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands, is to advise the Secretary of Defense on the need to augment the active forces with members of the reserve components. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also has responsibility for recommending the period of service for units and members of the reserve components ordered to active duty. The service secretaries are to prepare plans for mobilization and demobilization and to periodically review and test the plans to ensure the services’ capabilities to mobilize reserve forces and to assimilate them effectively into the active forces. Within the constraints of the existing mobilization authorities and DOD guidance, the services have flexibility as to how, where, and when they conduct mobilization and demobilization processing. Unit readiness also affects time frames. For example, air reserve component units, which must be ready to deploy on short notice, generally complete their mobilization processing much quicker than Army units that have been funded at low levels under the Army’s tiered readiness concept. However, higher-priority units may take longer to complete demobilization processing because, at the end of the processing, they must be ready to deploy on short notice again. The reserve components differ in their approaches to the mobilization and demobilization processes. The Army and Navy use centralized approaches, mobilizing and demobilizing their reserve component forces at a limited number of locations. The Army utilizes 15 primary sites that it labels “power projection platforms” and 12 secondary sites called “power support platforms.” The Navy has 15 geographically dispersed Navy Mobilization Processing Sites but is currently using only 5 of these sites because of the relatively small numbers of personnel who are mobilizing and demobilizing. By contrast, the Air Force uses a decentralized approach, mobilizing and demobilizing its reserve component members at their home stations—135 for the Air Force Reserve and 90 for the Air National Guard. The Marine Corps uses a hybrid approach. It has five Mobilization Processing Centers to centrally mobilize individual reservists and is currently using three of these centers. However, the Marine Corps uses a decentralized approach to mobilize its units. Selected Marine Corps Reserve units do most of their mobilization processing at their home stations and then report to their gaining commands, such as the First or Second Marine Expeditionary Force located at Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, respectively. Individuals usually demobilize at the same location where they mobilized and units generally demobilize at Camp Pendleton or Camp Lejeune. See appendix III for a listing of the services’ mobilization and demobilization sites. Figure 1 shows reserve component usage on a per capita basis since fiscal year 1989 and demonstrates the dramatic increase in usage that occurred after September 11, 2001. It shows that the ongoing usage—which includes support to operations Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom—exceeds the usage rates during the 1991 Persian Gulf War in both length and magnitude. While reserve component usage increased significantly after September 11, 2001, an equally important shift occurred at the end of 2002. Following the events of September 11, 2001, the Air Force initially used the partial mobilization authority more than the other services. However, service usage shifted in 2002, and by the end of that year, the Army had more reserve component members mobilized than all the other services combined. Since that time, usage of the Army’s reserve component members has continued to dominate DOD’s figures. On June 30, 2004, the Army had about 131,000 reserve component members mobilized while the Air Force had about 12,000, the Marine Corps about 9,000, and the Navy about 3,000. Under the current partial mobilization authority, DOD increased not only the numbers of reserve component members that it mobilized, but also the length of the members’ mobilizations. The average mobilization for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-91 was 156 days. However, by December 31, 2003, the average mobilization for operations Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom was 319 days, or double the length of mobilizations for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. By March 31, 2004, the average mobilization for the three ongoing operations had increased to 342 days, and that figure is expected to continue to rise.