A new Pentagon policy for veterans still in the Individual Ready Reserve puts a sharper tone on how the Pentagon views inactive soldiers, moving from a last resort to a backup source for manpower.
“First and foremost, the [Individual Ready Reserve] is a mobilization asset. Deliberative plans will be in place that account for the use of the IRR, especially in plans for full mobilization,” according to a Department of Defense instruction released March 23.
The Individual Ready Reserve, or IRR, is made up of service members who have left active duty or traditional reserve roles with remaining time on their original service contract. IRR members return to civilian life and are considered veterans rather than military members, but are subject to recall to active duty in times of war or national emergency if needed.
The updated IRR rules arrive just months after Congress directed the military to do a 21st-century mass mobilization exercise.
Though the day-to-day policies in the new guidance are largely unchanged from the last decade, including the rules around attending musters, the language reflects a “new philosophy” for the Inactive Ready Reserve, said Steve Minyard, director at Reserve Organization of America.
“The IRR used to be a place where you would just go and sit and the military didn’t really care what you did, and they didn’t care your skill set, because you just sat there to fulfill your full contract,” said Minyard, a former senior enlisted advisor for the Pentagon office that oversees IRR policy and guidance. “You may have done four years on active duty, and then you owe four years into the IRR, you don’t want to actively drill, so you just sit there.”
But laying out a vision for the Inactive Ready Reserve as a “mobilization asset” suggests a new role.
“That is new,” Minyard said. “That was not in the other one. So this isn’t just a place for people to ride out their contract.”
Kate Kuzminski, director of studies for the Center for New American Security, said the IRR has always been part of the Pentagon’s strategy to “fill necessary requirements in wartime,” which includes large-scale mobilizations.
As with previous IRR guidance, the services will keep a roster of service members’ personal information, like their health, military qualifications, service availability, and even their civilian occupational skills. Also, as with previous IRR rules, “healthcare practitioners” will need to keep their licenses and certification on file.
Veterans in the IRR who have relevant skills for “contingency operations” will be screened annually, according to the updated Pentagon policy. Each service will also prepare plans for “refresher training” on certain military skills and keep track of who might need it.
That “refresher training” language closely mirrors the previous set of IRR rules, which date to at least 2013.
“There could be [military occupational specialties] in there that don’t exist anymore. People operating drones or cyber warriors, those are new fields, and there’s probably not much in the IRR for them,“ Minyard said. “The Army Reserve got rid of a lot of their amphibious landing craft a couple of years ago. Some of the people that were the pilots of those craft are probably sitting in the IRR, we would want to pull them, even though we divested of all that shipping. We might need them again.”
Veterans on IRR will be screened in person each year unless they’re in a specific exempt category. Others might have to complete muster duty by filling out forms through the mail or online, according to the policy.
“A virtual muster is what they would probably term this, where they send them a letter, they say, ‘Hey, what’s your civilian occupation? Where’s your address? Are you in generally good health?’ and then they mail it back, as opposed to having to actually come into a Reserve center,” Minyard said. “The services are generally not well funded and not well manned to do a whole bunch of these everywhere, like they used to decades ago during the Cold War.”
War with Iran
The policy comes amid the ongoing U.S. war with Iran, which has already prompted conversations and fears about a military draft. However, the reality is that the U.S. would first turn to its full active duty force, then activate its Reserve and National Guard units, and finally call back the IRR, according to Kuzminski.
“They’ve probably been working on this for a while because these issuances take forever,” Minyard said. “But hey, you never know. If Iran drags on, maybe you’ll need to use the IRR.”
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Pentagon officials did not respond in time for publication about questions regarding the timing of the policy release.
Between March 2003 and August 2006, the Army and Marine Corps Reserve recalled approximately 18,000 soldiers and Marines and nearly 8,400 deployed to Iraq.
No mobilization since ‘Nifty Nugget’
If the Pentagon runs an exercise to test the Inactive Ready Reserve, Minyard said, it would be the first since a 1970s exercise known as Nifty Nugget.
The 21-day exercise conducted in 1978 revealed major planning and logistics gaps. Nearly half a million were late to the simulated fight, and the U.S. suffered 400,000 simulated casualties. The exercise prompted the creation of U.S. Transportation Command.
Since the Cold War, the IRR population has shrunk from nearly 450,000 soldiers in 1994 to 76,000 soldiers today, according to a 2023 Army War College report from Army Reserve Lt. Col. Stephen Trynosky.
