The Pentagon must conduct a study of the kind of large-scale mobilization of reserve military units that would be required to support active-duty forces in a possible war with China in the Indo-Pacific region.
The mandate is contained in a section of the $900 billion defense authorization act, which was signed into law by President Trump on Thursday.
The section requires the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of the Indo-Pacific Command to complete within three months a comprehensive study on mobilizing the reserves.
Another provision of the law requires the Pentagon to report to Congress on addressing critical shortages of munitions for weapons and the propellants needed to conduct conflicts in two geographical locations.
Both legal measures reflect bipartisan concern in Congress that growing tensions with China could ignite into a major conflict.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned U.S. allies during a speech in Singapore in May that the threat of a conflict with China over a military advance on Taiwan is real and “could be imminent.”
The reserve mobilization study provides specific requirements for conducting what the law calls a “reserve mobilization exercise to assess the capability of the armed forces to respond to a high-intensity contingency in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The military currently includes 1.3 million active-duty troops in all services, plus about 800,000 to 1 million reserve and National Guard members.
According to the law, the mobilization planning must be modeled after the 1978 military drill called “Nifty Nugget,” a large-scale test of the American military’s ability to rapidly mobilize military and civilian forces for a potential war in Europe.
That exercise revealed that the military was unprepared to respond to a short-warning conflict, highlighting large-scale shortfalls in logistics, airlift, industry support and interagency coordination.
From the lessons of the drill, the military’s U.S. Transportation Command was established, along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The required military reserve study will assess the ability of the armed forces to rapidly mobilize, deploy and sustain active and reserve forces in response to a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, or similar flashpoints in the Indian and Pacific oceans.
It must assess strategic military lift for all services, including maritime shipping, air cargo capabilities, rail, road networks, and prepositioned stocks.
As part of the report, the Pentagon also will identify critical logistics vulnerabilities, bottlenecks to mobilization and command and control threats.
Congress wants the Pentagon study to analyze government coordination procedures and civilian emergency-support capabilities.
Another key element contained in the study will be an evaluation of joint military functions and interoperability with allied forces “with particular attention to coordination mechanisms with Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and Taiwan.”
The report must also inventory the civilian skills of reservists, such as foreign language proficiency, advanced academic credentials, and industrial and technical skills such as cybersecurity training, engineering, logistics and manufacturing.
Dan Green, a national security expert with The Heritage Foundation, stated in a recent report that analysts have noted weaknesses in defense-industrial bases but also need to recognize problems with military forces’ mobilization.
“Effective mobilization of reserve forces is key not only to supporting the operations of active-duty forces, which often require reserve support to operate, but to sustaining combat operations in a prolonged conflict,” Mr. Green stated.
The military has not conducted a full-scale mobilization exercise since 1978 and thus “it’s not a stretch to say that the U.S. largely lacks the ability to quickly access, mobilize, and deploy reserve forces en masse for combat duty,” he said.
Mr. Green urged the Pentagon conduct mobilization drills, noting that while the Trump administration is seeking stable ties with China, Beijing continues to pursue confrontational and adversarial policies toward the U.S.
A large-scale Indo-Pacific-focused mobilization exercise would be an important first step in dissuading Chinese aggression and testing the resiliency of the mobilization of reserve forces.
“It would also signal that if it comes to conflict, the U.S. is resolved both to fight and to win,” he said.
In another section of the new defense law, the Pentagon is now required to report to defense committees of Congress by April on stockpiles of critical munitions and propellants used for artillery, rockets and missiles.
A Senate Armed Services Committee report on the measure said: “The committee understands the defense industrial base currently lacks sufficient surge capacity for energetic material production, including propellants that are required across a broad spectrum of critical munitions programs.”
The report on critical munitions will include an analysis of the current defense-industrial bases for munitions and components for all military services and an assessment of costs for expanding propellant production.
The law also will assess projected munitions requirements of U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific for U.S. weapons.
U.S. stockpiles of such weapons as Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have dwindled from being sent to Ukraine, and those could be needed in the Indo-Pacific if war were to break out against China, military and defense leaders have testified to Congress.
