Book Description

This report reviews the Military Service's programs for utilization of military retirees during mobilization. More than 1.5 million military retirees are eligible for recall to active service. Recognizing that these retirees are a valuable source of pretrained manpower that could be used to help meet the critical personnel needs during time of war, OSD has issued, to the Services, guidance to develop programs for use of these retirees. The basic philosophy and resulting plans for retiree utilization vary significantly from Service to Service, with the most dramatic difference being in the use of preassignment orders. While the Army has preassigned more than 125,000 retirees to specific mobilization positions, the other three Services have preferred to remain more flexible by limiting their preassignment orders and, instead, preparing to make assignments quickly once mobilization begins. These variations among the retiree programs are well justified by the diverse missions of the Services and need to be preserved. In a major, national mobilization, however, the need will occur for experienced military people to serve in positions beyond parent Service boundaries. Many of the needs will occur within DoD itself, but other agencies and activities will have wartime demand for service by uniformed representatives of the Military Services. In many instances, that service should be performed by recalled military retirees.