Hi all; Counting the Reserves... The DoD recently announced that they would activate approximately 9,000 reservists from the Army to replace Air Force reservists:
The Departments of the Army and the Air Force have signed a memorandum of agreement under which the Army will mobilize approximately 9,000 Army National Guard soldiers to augment security at 163 Air Force installations in the United States.
...
"Our intent is to reduce the burden on the Air Force security forces personnel, in particular those Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve members who are serving into a second year of mobilization. We believe this is a prudent and judicious use of our reserve component forces."
... #reply-18342681
The above suggests that the mobilization of 4,704 reservists this past week is associated with the Air Force handing off routine guard duties to the Army. That is, as Army reservists are trained to take over the Air Force duties, the total reserve count will return to equilibrium. The net result will be that the Air Force numbers go down about as much as the Army numbers go up.
But is this interpretation supported by the figures? My ongoing chart of reservists are by total only, but the DoD publishes figures for the individual services. So we can go back through the last month or so and chart the figures for the individual branches of service:
Air Coast
Date Army Navy Force Marines Guard
------------- ------ ------ ------ ------- -----
Sep 4, 2002 39,357 6,333 26,097 3,789 1,082
Sep 11, 2002 38,195 6,337 24,728 3,778 1,082
Sep 18, 2002 38,195 6,283 23,006 3,790 995
Sep 25, 2002 35,360 6,148 21,421 3,807 944
Oct 2, 2002 34,727 5,968 20,053 3,805 858
Oct 9, 2002 31,324 5,881 18,356 3,697 732
Oct 16, 2002 30,679 5,770 18,356 3,686 606
Oct 23, 2002 30,679 5,615 17,450 3,684 705
Oct 30, 2002 30,702 5,594 17,009 3,718 698
Nov 6, 2002 25,306 5,517 16,087 3,725 701
Nov 13, 2002 25,369 5,559 16,011 3,740 679
Nov 20, 2002 25,375 5,330 15,440 3,797 679
Nov 27, 2002 24,677 5,330 16,544 3,843 679
Dec 4, 2002 24,913 5,118 16,159 3,858 707
Dec 10, 2002 25,368 4,931 15,974 3,825 727
Dec 18, 2002 30,334 4,931 15,673 3,833 759
In the above figures, note that from October 30 to December 18th, the Army figures are essentially unchanged while the Air Force figures are down substantially. Since November 20th, the Army figures are up by 5,000 while the Air Force is essentially constant. These are consistent with what the military is claiming, that the activation of 9,000 soldiers is for the purpose of replacing Air Force reservists with Army.
What remains is to look up the numbers of reservists in the above 5 categories and compute the percentage that has been called up. Here's a good source:
defenselink.mil
The above shows that the total ready reserves (at that date) were 1,241 thousand. Of those, the Army National Guard + US Air Force component was 239,000 or 19%. But even the latest figures for mobilization show that of the 55,530 reservists now mobilized, the Air Force accounts for 28%. As of November 20th, the Air Force accounted for 30.5%, so the military is slowly correcting this excess amongst the Air Force by moving duties over to the Army.
-- Carl |
