What are the Reserve component categories?
Title 10, US Code states: "The Reserve components of the armed forces are Army National Guard of the United States, The Army Reserve, The Naval Reserve, The Marine Corps Reserve, The Air National Guard of the United States, The Air Force Reserve Command and The Coast Guard Reserve."
There are over 465,000 members in the Air Force Ready Reserve, Standby and Retired Reserve. All Reserve members who are currently serving or subject to recall are assigned to one of these three categories:
- Ready Reserve (Selected Reserve (SelRes) & Individual Ready Reserve (IRR)) are made up of nearly 118,000 trained reservists who may be recalled to active duty to augment active forces in time of war or national emergency. Within the Ready Reserve, greater than 75,500 reservists are members of the SelRes [Unit , Active Guard/Reserve (AGR) and Individual Mobilization Augmentees (IMA)] who train regularly and are paid for their participation in unit or individual programs. These reservists are combat ready and can deploy to anywhere in the world in 72 hours. Within the SelRes, over 13,000 are assigned in the IMA category and are charged with directly supplementing the active duty. Additionally, more than 42,000 are part of the IRR. IRR members continue to have a service obligation. Some members continue to participate in a non-paid status. Certain categories of the IRR are subject to recall.
- Standby Reserve are members whose civilian jobs are considered key to national defense, or who have temporary disability or personal hardship. Most standby reservists do not train and are not assigned to units. There are over 15,242 members in the Standby Reserve.
- The Retired categories include approximately 215,000 reserve members.
Another special category consists of retired members who are either over 60 years of age or have served more than 30 total years. The approximate total in this category is 515,000 members. These members will not be recalled under any circumstances.