Joseph Lazarus Staying ready to fight

1. Staying ready to fight. I’m sitting at a bar. I’m drinking a beer. It’s been another long weekend serving in the reserves. The beer is well deserved. I imbibe with other Marines form the reserves unit. The conversation turns to work. It is hard to keep that from happening. I share a rumination with the group that the drill period (the term for the one weekend a month reservists get together for training) was, in the opinion of Major Joseph Lazarus, the most important drill period of the year. It was important not because of any high- speed training we were receiving. Instead, it was because were doing our annual obligation to complete the mundane compliance obligations to the Department of Defense specifically, medical and dental readiness. looking at force availability numbers reported up to them. A commander sits in a briefing room and will first be briefed by his personal officer. He’ll brief lets say for the sake of discussion the commander is General Joseph Lazarus, “Sir, you have this many thousands of troops.” That of course doesn’t tell the whole story. The personnel administrator will apply one of filters for troops currently diagnosed with medical issues. The count drops by a few thousands. Up till this point in the brief these were perfunctory reports. What comes next is important. It is the number of troops the commander possess that are compliant with annual training requirements. This number will be used for the commander’s planning figure when for developing operations world-wide. When it comes down to essence of mobilizing troops commanders at the top are broadly news cycle latest saber-rattling in Iran’s latest lurch in its erratic foreign policy worldwide deployments seemed a little possible. Mobilizations for reservists are not limited to Central Command AO. Troops in the reserves play a vital role in augmenting and operations all around the globe. Take for instance, Africa Command his deployed somewhere between 6,000 – 7,000 troops spread throughout the continent. Those are similar force levels reported to be in Afghanistan in early 2020. United States Southern Command is actively engaged in security cooperation. The Security of Defense Mark Esper told reports in December of 2019 that a reduction in troops in Afghanistan could be redistributed to the Pacific which he called his “priority theater” World-wide deployments are what the troops in the reserves want. In the wake of the 24hrs clear. Keep your body healthy. Complete the annual medical and dental requirements needed to be compliant with the DoD regulations. During your time in the civilian world take advantage of your access to Tri-Care Reserve select and be seen by both a doctors and dentists. Record these visits by utilizing your medical section and ensure all paperwork is added to your medical record. That way when the call comes you show up in the ready to deploy column in that commanders brief. If you are a reservist and want to be available for mobilizations around the world your priority is