An armed conflict between the U.S. and China, Russia or Iran will require the U.S. Army to immediately mobilize active-duty and reserve component forces for large-scale combat operations. Eighty percent of U.S. Army sustainment units required to support warfighting units are in the U.S. Army Reserve and Army National Guard, collectively known as the reserve component.
When preparation and deployment efficiency at home mean lives saved abroad, the mobilization model for reserve component sustainment units fails the soldier.
Requiring all units to assemble at local armories, move to mobilization bases, then train for 30 to 45 days prior to deploying assures one outcome—that reserve component forces will be late to support war-fighting units.
Ensuring Success

To ensure reserve component success in supporting warfighters, Army sustainment leaders must identify sustainment units that do not need to go to a mobilization base, but they also must identify sustainment equipment for pre-positioning and identify sustainment units that can go to a mobilization base for a shorter period. Senior sustainment leadership also must identify reserve component sustainment units that can immediately deploy to perform vital support functions.
Not all sustainment units need to go to mobilization bases. For example, medical units, movement control teams and theater-opening elements are critical in the initial days of large-scale combat operations and do not benefit from additional training at mobilization bases.
Most medical personnel in the reserve component are civilian medical professionals current on licensure, certifications and continuing education training required to perform their medical duties. Immediate deployment of medical units ensures that they are forward early and that the wounded are properly treated.
Likewise, movement control teams and theater-opening units are essential to moving equipment and commodities forward. By coordinating onward movement of everything coming into the theater, these units are critical to eliminating bottlenecks at airfields and ports. These reserve component sustainment units can and should deploy immediately, avoiding unnecessary deployment delays at mobilization bases.
If 80% of sustainment units are in the reserve component, then 80% of sustainment equipment is as well. Senior sustainers must identify and pre-position reserve component sustainment equipment forward to expedite direct support to war-fighting units.
Active-duty units pre-position equipment, but this equipment does not meet the needs of reserve component sustainment units deployed at the onset of conflict. At the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, active-duty units flew into Germany, immediately collected pre-positioned equipment and moved forward in three days. This demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of having the right pre-positioned equipment in place.
Saving Lives
Time and lives are saved by having the right equipment forward, rather than moving equipment from an armory to a port via railroad or line haul, then carrying it by ship. Reserve component units providing critical functions at the onset of large-scale operations must have their equipment already in theater.
Getting soldiers into the fight faster is only half the equation; getting the right equipment there faster is the other half.
Expedite Tasks
Finally, senior sustainers must identify critical reserve component units whose tasks can be expedited at mobilization bases. The current mobilization model identifies completion tasks by region and anticipated type of conflict, regardless of the type of unit. Also, there are tasks soldiers must complete that are irrelevant to their deployment mission. This might include clearing rooms using a four-man stack technique, or land navigation on foot with a compass.
A truck company, for example, needs limited additional training and should qualify for reduced time at a mobilization base because of its significance in moving commodities around the battlefield. Likewise, senior-level sustainment headquarters, water-purification units and maintenance could have their mobilization time cut in half by eliminating completion of tasks unnecessary for their mission.
The Army can effectively expedite assets on the ground to move fuel, food, water, ammunition and other necessities to the warfighter earlier and more effectively during initial conflict engagements.
Opponents will argue that all Reserve and National Guard units must be validated and that the training provided is the training needed. While there are reserve component units that will perform complex missions and need the full time for additional training at a mobilization base, units that are less complex should not have that model applied. Sustainment units that perform fewer complex missions meet those criteria.
Unless more space is created for sustainment units in the active-duty force, the Army must have a plan for getting reserve component sustainment units forward faster.
Senior DoD leaders warn that the next conflict will be against another superpower—and possibly more than one—equally competent in its military capability. This requires full-scale mobilization of all reserve component units in an environment facing attacks on the homeland that delay deployments.
Now is the time to consider how to best mobilize critical sustainment units and pre-position equipment. Success means creating a plan that allows reserve component sustainment units to arrive in time of need to achieve victory on the battlefield.
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Maj. Gen. Thomas Vickers Jr., Alabama Army National Guard, is commanding general of the 167th Theater Sustainment Command, Fort McClellan, Alabama. Previously, he was commanding general of the 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command. He deployed once to Iraq and twice to Kuwait. He has two master’s degrees: one in education from Columbus State University, Georgia, and one in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.