{"id":84518,"date":"2025-04-29T16:47:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T16:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/04\/29\/marine-reserve-planning-largest-mobilization-drills-in-decades\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:20:15","slug":"marine-reserve-planning-largest-mobilization-drills-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2025\/04\/29\/marine-reserve-planning-largest-mobilization-drills-in-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Reserve planning largest mobilization drills in decades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Drilling Marine Corps reservists across the command\u2019s components may see an increased emphasis on job proficiency and readiness as Marine Corps Reserve Command prepares for wide-ranging mobilization exercises set to begin next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking at the Modern Day Marine<\/a> Expo in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Reserve operational planner Lt. Col. Doug Toulotte said the exercises \u2014 the first of their kind in decades \u2014 will kick off no later than the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, stress-testing the Corps\u2019 ability to mobilize its select reserve component in the event of a major military contingency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toulotte noted that the last Defense Department-wide reserve mobilization plan was completed in 1988, and the last study on reserve mobilization was published in 1947, leaving the Defense Department and the services with significant unknowns about how moving reserve forces into the active ranks en masse would work in practice, and how the active components would receive, train and integrate them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared with the start of the Korean War in 1950 \u2014 Toulotte\u2019s case study for a successful mass mobilization \u2014 today\u2019s Marine Corps has a slightly larger combined Reserve and active component: approximately 250,000 Marines now, compared with about 204,000 then, he said. But the Marine Reserve now has just eight infantry battalions, compared to 26 then, and one fighter squadron, compared to 30 then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo put this in the context of the Reserve component training on modern equipment, the active component will have had the F-35 for 17 years before the first one is seen in the Reserve component,\u201d Toulotte said. \u201cSo if we were to throw the switch today like we did in 1950, our ability to seamlessly integrate the Reserve component rapidly would likely be jeopardized in some very critical areas, because you\u2019re going to have to wall off time to train the Reserve component that will delay force flow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While smaller-scale mobilization exercises have taken place more recently, and the Individual Ready Reserve holds routine musters to monitor responsiveness, Toulotte said nothing from the recent past can compare to the exercises Marine Corps Reserve Command is now planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marine Forces Reserve troops participate in Integrated Training Exercise 4-24 in Twentynine Palms, California, in 2024. (Lance Cpl. Orion Stpierre\/Marine Corps)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would say it\u2019s probably the first time since the beginning of [Operation Enduring Freedom in 2003] that we\u2019ve deliberately looked at this: How can we speed the response of the Reserve component in response to a peer threat?\u201d he told Marine Corps Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nature of the drills is still in planning; Toulotte said the first one is likely to be small. But they will test, he said, how quickly units can aggregate together with all the fighting gear they need for deployments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared with the norm in previous years, when Reserve component activations for deployments may be planned years in advance, \u201cour exercises are going to test our ability to get those units aggregated quickly,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot just the personnel, because oftentimes, over the last 20 to 25 years, we would just send our personnel forward and they would fall in on the equipment forward. We\u2019re assuming that that won\u2019t be the case. So what we\u2019re driving towards is, how do we pick up all of our people, all of our equipment, and push that forward to wherever the active component tells us we need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Marine Reserve, Toulotte said, is also seeking to add the ability to activate as a component of readiness scoring in the military-wide Defense Readiness Reporting System. <\/p>\n\n\n\t