Relevance of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) to the Post Cold War Army

The world is rapidly changing and greater demands are being placed on the United States as the worlds only super power. These demands include new global challenges for Americas Army that must continue to reevaluate itself for relevancy. The word relevancy is heard often and is used as a measuring stick to gauge how the Army will meet the challenges of todays uncertain global environment. Relevancy is a leadership issue for today, and in the future. Over the last several years, senior leaders sought to make the Army more relevant by undertaking such measures as reducing force structure and trimming the budget. The active and reserve components have worked to meet new standards to achieve increased relevance. Yet, there is still one corner of the Armys force that may have been left in the shadows and until recently, given little attention despite its significant role as a source of pretrained manpower the IRR.