The Reserve Officer Commissioning Program

摘要

The term "operational reserve" is not a new one, but it was revived during the mid-2000's as a way for Marine reserve units returning from Operation IRAQI FREEDOM or Operation ENDURING FREEDOM to maintain their skill proficiency gained from years at war. In 2011, a hearing of the Committee on Armed Services at the House of Representatives convened to discuss the way forward with recommendations on maintaining a strong operational reserve in all branches of Service. One of the speakers, Marine MajGen Dar-rell Moore, Director, Reserve Affairs Division, stated before the committee, "One thing I can tell you is that the Marine reserves and their families, and the employers of our Marine reserves expect our Marine reserves to continue to deploy." With those words, the Marine reserves was transformed from a strategic reserve to an operational one. In the years following, with the decline of combat roles and the dwindling wars on terror, the operational mission of the reserves expanded to utilization as a Special Purpose MAGTF. This task force is used to replace active duty rotations for international training commitments to locations such as Okinawa, Romania, Republic of Georgia, and the Ukraine, as well as Central and South America, thus helping to further liberate active duty Marines from their increasingly-dense long-range training plans. Former MARFORRES Commander LtGen Richard Mills stated in an interview several years ago to the Marine Corps Times, "We fill a unique roll among all reserve components in the U.S. military. We are an operational force, not a strategic capability. During 14 years of conflict we were very active in Iraq and Afghanistan. We want to continue that same momentum." Although Marines are trained to fight and win battles in any clime and place, there was one battle that continued to plague leadership. Since enacting a new operational reserve force, there has been a large gap where experienced junior officers should be filling the ranks, particularly within the rapidly deploying reserve battalions. This gap led to a change in reserve officer recruiting strategy in order to find more junior officers to fill its empty billets.