More IRR Callup Info

Date Published: 30 June 2004

More IRR Callup Info

Fox23News Reports

One Army official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that as few as 2,000 IRR soldiers might actually be assigned to units preparing to deploy abroad.

Army Public Affairs Announcement

Stars and Stripes

About 2,100 IRR soldiers already have been activated, but those have been volunteers, Maj. Gen. Franklin L. “Buster” Hagenbeck, the Army’s chief for personnel matters, told reporters June 2. [Apparently nobody mentioned me or others like me who were activated in May to him]

The Stars and Stripes article also has some good info on how the various reserves work.

Slate

Title 10 of the United States Code gives the president the authority to muster 200,000 reservists whenever "it is necessary to augment the active forces." Of that 200,000, who must serve for a period of 270 days, no more than 30,000 can be members of the IRR....

...One problem the Army has encountered with the IRR is the tendency of ex-soldiers to change addresses without notification. Of the 118,000 soldiers in the Army's individual reserve—each branch has its own IRR—approximately 40,000 can't currently be located. The Pentagon has reportedly toyed with the idea of examining IRS records to track down the lost reservists, to the chagrin of privacy advocates.

Financial Times

"The army has made every effort to minimise the call-up's impact by first contacting individual IRR soldiers and soliciting volunteers, prior to initiating mandatory call-ups," the army said in a statement. Despite such efforts, only 1,100 soldiers from the IRR have volunteered for active duty since the September 11 2001 attacks on the US.

That's all the news I have time for today - more to come in a few minutes during a 10:30 briefing, but I'm flying back to Ft. Bliss in a few minutes.

Steve Smith

About Ardalis

Software Architect

Steve is an experienced software architect and trainer, focusing on code quality and Domain-Driven Design with .NET.