U.S. reserve forces to become more mobile: official

The U.S. military is restructuring its 1.1-million-strong reserve components to create a more mobile force like active-duty troops, a senior Pentagon official said Friday.

The transformation is taking place because of the new national security realities that emerged after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and during the "long war" on terror, Thomas F. Hall, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, was quoted by U.S. military media as saying.

During the Cold War era, the reserve components, including the National Guard and the Reserve, were structured to perform as a backup force to active-duty forces, so they used to drill one weekend a month and perform two weeks of annual training, he said.

However, the end of the Cold War and the terror attacks changed all that, Hall said.

The far-flung war against terrorism also requires well-trained and agile military forces that can be quickly mobilized for deployment anywhere in the world, he said.

Therefore, fielding a more mobile and capable reserve component force, Hall said, is necessary for "achieving victory over the terrorists."

He said efforts will be made to upgrade benefits available to activated Guard and Reserve members to mirror those provided to the active-duty military.

Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the United States have deployed some 40 percent of its Guard and Reserve forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places around the world to support the "war on terror."

Source: Xinhua