Appearing before an Oct. 5 hearing of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, commander of US European Command, explained that, on average, 4,500 reservists are working within his command every day. They perform a range of missions spanning airlift, air refueling, command and control, intelligence, force protection, and special operations. He said that reservists comprise more than 10 percent of his uniformed headquarters staff. Jones favors two prime initiatives to improve the usefulness of reservists within his command: one would establish a sole pay and personnel system for active and reserve forces; the second would slash the number of reserve component duty statuses to help achieve equality in pay and benefits with their active duty counterparts.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III chaired a China-focused military briefing Oct. 27, part of a biweekly series of briefings with senior military commanders about China’s growing threat in the wake of an orbital hypersonic weapon test that elicited public worries from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “What we…