Growing Role of the USAF Reserves

[@MudlangenTango]

Adding in reserves to the active component during wartime is not as easy as it sounds. Both the I.R.R. (Individual soldier's) and the Ready Reserve. (Reserve Units that drill one weekend and two weeks during the year) Require training prior to deployment. And not every soldier or unit makes the standard even then. This has been repeatedly documented over and over. If you want a reserve force capable of deploying you need to increase training time for longer periods for both. Which is not going to happen. What they are doing is rotating reserve units on a deployment cycle so the ramp up increasing training time and then deploy or stand down. The Reserve force as a whole is not ready to deploy without notice. Can they half ass it? Sure, most of the Reserve is support and logistics. Leadership is where it starts to fall apart, both at the Officer and NCO levels, many are not prepared to be full time Leaders, it quickly becomes apparent when leaders no longer have a month to plan what is going to occur for a two day training period and don't have to deal with the daily routine of supervising subordinates, mission planning, conducting operations and handling the stressors of the job. This often results in a unit failing in it's mission and the removal of key leaders in the middle of a deployment. Make no mistake, the reserves will deploy but they will not at the same standard as the active component