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'Noble Eagle' needs 35,000 reservists

by Joe Burlas

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 20, 2001) -- President George W. Bush authorized a partial mobilization of the reserves Sept. 15 for homeland defense and civil support missions in response to the terrorist attacks Sept. 11 at the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

While the authorization legally allows Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to call up to a million reserve soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines and Coast Guard members for up to two years of active duty, service chiefs said they only need about 35,000 between them for the stated missions collectively dubbed Operation Noble Eagle.

The Army share of the presidential order is about 10,000 soldiers from the Army Reserve and National Guard Bureau. The Air Force plans to call up around 13,000 reservists; the Navy, 3,000; the Marine Corps, 7,500; and the Coast Guard, 2,000.

"The kinds of units that might be called up include air defense, airlift, intelligence support, military police, medical, logistics, engineers, search and rescue, civil affairs, chaplains and so forth," said Craig W. Duehring, principal deputy for the assistant secretary of defense for Reserve Affairs. "The last partial mobilization order occurred on Jan. 18, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, when 265,322 National Guard and Reserve members were mobilized."

Most of the reserve-component soldiers who will be called up to augment the active force for homeland defense and civil support will likely be volunteers, reserve leaders told reporters, as thousands have already called in to say they are ready to report for duty wherever needed. Some of them are already at work at the World Trade Center and Pentagon in an extended annual training status, they said.

Under a "handshake" agreement with the White House, Rumsfeld will have to coordinate with the president for any call up exceeding 50,000 reservists, Duehring said. The current call up is just for homeland defense and civil support. However, nothing in the order precludes it from expanding to include a call-up of the reserves for "Infinite Justice," the name recently given the operation which covers retaliatory action the country might take against terrorists.

Duehring praised Colorado Springs Utilities, Advance Auto Parts and Georgia Pacific for calling into the Department of Defense to ask how they can assist in easing the transition of many their employees to federal service.

"To those of you who are employers of these people, we ask you to help make their transition an easy one as they leave their homes and families to perform their military service," Duehring said. "For those of you who know a member of the National Guard or the Reserve, take time to thank them for the sacrifice they are making as they join the ranks of the heroes what are even now working so hard in New York City and just outside our building here at the Pentagon."