Congress first created a Federal Reserve Force in 1908, the Medical Reserve Corps, to remedy mobilization and preparedness challenges experience during the Nation’s wars of the 1800s. At the time, no reserve force existed under direct command and control of the federal government. Led by former President Theodore Roosevelt, the “Preparedness Movement” set the stage for the National Defense Act of 1916, which created the Officer’s Reserve Corps and the Enlisted Reserve Corps, the predecessors to today’s current Army Reserve.
TODAY’S OPERATIONAL RESERVE
Today’s Army Reserve is the Nation’s Federal Reserve Force. This flexible, scalable, complementary force sustains any mission anytime and anywhere it is needed by the Army or Joint Force.
Organized as the only component of the Army that is also a single command, the Army Reserve is integrated into and directly supports every Army Service Component Command and Combatant Command, with a “footprint” encompassing all states and territories, the District of Columbia, and more than 30 countries.
Pictured top: Members of the 80th Infantry Division receive bayonet training from a British noncommissioned officer at Boque Maison, France, April 1918. The 80th Division today is an Army Reserve Training Division headquartered in Richmond, Va.