I cannot believe it’s been almost a year since I’ve been with the Reservist. If you don’t know, the magazine has been staffed with just two civilians. With the addition of myself as the Assistant Editor, we now have a team of three, but I am their padawan! Chris Rose, the Creative Director, has been with the magazine for 25 years. He’s our resident historian of the publication. Our Editor, Anastasia Devlin, has been telling the story of the Reserve since 2017 — skillfully weaving together stories to share with our readers.
This issue is focused on mobilization. There are many terms and acronyms thrown around that you have likely heard and maybe not quite understood on how it relates to reservists (e.g., activation, mobilization, deployment, contingency, ADOS, USERRA, and TAMP).
I think that’s one of the things we, as a Service need to get back to— knowing the basics; but lately there’s one Commandant Instruction that’s stood out to me.
And I know this is such a chief thing to say—I read the instruction (in this case, the Activation of the Reserve Component instruction). The ARC, as we call it, was released last year, and it combines and condenses a lot of information. It gives definitions of terms, breaks down roles and responsibilities of stakeholders to the Component, and defines the elements of readiness and what reservists are required to maintain. I highly recommend reading it—it answers a lot of questions I see asked on online forums and also gives the references needed to research further.
In the dynamic workforce we serve in, policies are updated, techniques change, and we expect our leaders (and the fleet) to stay ahead of it.
I hope this issue gives you some reference points on where to start.
From the initiatives that are taking shape at headquarters to the operations being conducted out in the fleet, we want to know what’s happening in our Component! To our contributors who submit content to the magazine, THANK YOU! We truly appreciate your support.