US running short of reserve troops: report.

The United States military may run out of national guard and reserve troops for the war on terrorism because of existing limits on involuntary mobilisations, a congressional watchdog agency warned in a report released overnight (AEST).

Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the US Government has considered changing the policy to make members of the 1.2 million-strong guard and reserve subject to repeated involuntary mobilisation, so long as no single mobilisation exceeds 24 consecutive months.

In commenting on the report, the Department of Defence (DOD) says it plans to keep its current approach.

"Under DOD's current implementation of the authority, reserve component members can be involuntarily mobilised more than once, but involuntary mobilisations are limited to a cumulative total of 24 months," the report said.

"If DOD's implementation of the partial mobilisation authority restricts the cumulative time that reserve component forces can be mobilised, then it is possible that DOD will run out of forces."

The guard and reserve are crucial to the US war effort because they include specialised units such as military police, intelligence and civil affairs that are in high demand but in short supply in the active duty force.

The Pentagon also has turned to the guard and reserve to ease the strain on active duty infantry divisions that have had to deploy repeatedly to Iraq.

More than 47,600 members of the guard and reserve were serving in Iraq as of last month, about a third of the 140,000-member US force currently deployed.

When those deployed in Afghanistan and rear areas are added, the total is in excess of 66,000, according to Pentagon figures.

Since September 11, 2003, more than 335,000 guard and reserves have been involuntarily mobilised for active duty - 234,000 from the army alone.

--AFP

Thanks to the eight years of the Klintoonista social experiment, officers and SNCO's, who may have stayed to retirement, LEFT for private industry. That does not include the young troops, caught up in a web of political correctness, LEFT after their first four because of the CHICKENSH*T pervasive in those years. The ONLY things that the troops ask for is support, decent pay and beenies, and ADULT LEADERSHIP!

That's funny, I took a volunteer backfill slot at an active duty base because my unit won't be deployed for a while. Lots of reservists want to go, and have wanted to go since the war started, and haven't, yet.

But if some Aussie thinks the Reserves (in general) are streched thin in the US, ok.

I'll just think he's clueless.

/john

The report is deliberately misleading and fails to provide the overall numbers. There are currently about 150,000 troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan combined - 90% of them in Iraq incidentally - and the same number of army and marine reservists and guardsmen on active duty. One third of the forces in those places are guard or reserve, two thirds are active. The remaining two thirds of the call up are providing service and support in the rest of the world or taking the place of active duty forces deployed to Iraq.

The deployment overall is 150k. The active duty military is ten times that size. And the reserve military is about as much again. Half the army are reserves, about a third of the air force, a fifth of the other branches. The force is designed to use the reserves in wartime, we are in wartime, so they are used extensively. But the force involved is much smaller than the overall force. Yes troops are rotated through - deliberately, to keep the strain on individual units down, cover all the DoD's other commitments around the world, and provide time for continuing training back in the states. Only a modest portion of the army is in Iraq at any one time, but a large portion (still by no means all - since some units are dedicated to other theaters) will serve there at some point.

The notion being peddled here, that the US military, with a $400 billion annual budget and over 2 million volunteers, can't keep less than 10% of them on station indefinitely, is a deliberate lie. They have been, are, and will continue to do so. The men are certainly sweating, but the system as a whole was designed to take on the Warsaw Pact, and a few militias in podunk aren't even going to slow it down.

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