The Individual Ready Reserve (IRR): Present and Future Strategy

In the 21st century the U.S. Army will face some major national security challenges. The Army must carefully determine the size and composition of its active and reserve forces. The Army will be limited in its military objectives by its force capabilities. In the next century the reserve component will be entrusted with more strategic responsibilities and a greater share for our nations security. With these extraordinary responsibilities, the reserves must be able to achieve their specific wartime objectives. Future fiscal and manpower constraints will require the Army to re-evaluate resources to maintain a potent and viable force. This force must ensure the highest state of readiness for the individual, the unit and the total force. This force must be deployable any where and it must be trained to fight effectively. The ability of the military to meet its force requirements for mobilization will become a progressively difficult problem in the 21st century. As both the active forces end strength and reserve units end strength decline another manpower pool will grow--the Individual Ready Reserve IRR. Future levels of conflict will require the total force to quickly field a highly trained, technologically advanced and lethal force. This force will be greatly dependent on a highly trained and technologically proficient IRR force. The IRR soldier will emerge more and more as a partner in the nations military and security interests. The IRR will then represent this countrys largest pool of deployable pre-trained individual manpower. The significance of having this highly trained , rapidly deployable, large manpower pool will manifest itself in future defensive strategic planning.