Marine Reserve planning largest mobilization drills in decades
By Hope Hodge Seck
Apr 29, 2025, 12:47 PM
Drilling Marine Corps reservists across the command’s components may see an increased emphasis on job proficiency and readiness as Marine Corps Reserve Command prepares for wide-ranging mobilization exercises set to begin next year.
Speaking at the Modern Day Marine Expo in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Reserve operational planner Lt. Col. Doug Toulotte said the exercises — the first of their kind in decades — will kick off no later than the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, stress-testing the Corps’ ability to mobilize its select reserve component in the event of a major military contingency.
Toulotte noted that the last Defense Department-wide reserve mobilization plan was completed in 1988, and the last study on reserve mobilization was published in 1947, leaving the Defense Department and the services with significant unknowns about how moving reserve forces into the active ranks en masse would work in practice, and how the active components would receive, train and integrate them.
Compared with the start of the Korean War in 1950 — Toulotte’s case study for a successful mass mobilization — today’s Marine Corps has a slightly larger combined Reserve and active component: approximately 250,000 Marines now, compared with about 204,000 then, he said. But the Marine Reserve now has just eight infantry battalions, compared to 26 then, and one fighter squadron, compared to 30 then.
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/04/29/marine-reserve-planning-largest-mobilization-drills-in-decades/
