This past April, at the Modern Day Marine Expo, Marine Forces Reserve Command announced that 2026 would be the start of increased mobilization exercises. But operational planner Lt. Col. Bo Kennedy doesn’t believe that they’re doing anything all that new.
“We’ve been continuously activating units ever since 9/11,” said Kennedy, a 24-year veteran of the Marine Corps. “That really hasn’t stopped. We are shifting our process from supporting these pre-planned rotational activations, as we’ve done for the past 20 years — shifting our mindset to prepare for a national level, full mobilization.”
Lt. Col. Timothy Irish, public affairs officer for Marine Forces Reserve, believes there is a broad misconception of the role the Reserve plays as a vital complement to the active-duty military.
“We currently are very operational,” Irish said. “We activate units. We augment the total force frequently.”
For example, the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines recently activated to Okinawa, Japan, to augment the active component of III Marine Expeditionary Force.
But the goal of the new exercises is to prepare for potential larger mobilizations to join with the total force, in anticipation that future military conflicts could require simultaneous activation of many components of the Reserve.
“This is the direction the whole Joint Forces is going towards as we shift from counterinsurgency focus to large-scale combat operations and training for what the next war could be,” Irish said.
According to Kennedy, the plan is to optimize the events they already have in place to practice mobilization.
“It’s actually using exercises that we are already programmed and budgeted for,” he said, “then baking in the mobilization activities inside of that.”
Kennedy thinks the mobilizations should effectively use existing processes to achieve the Marine Reserve Command’s end goal. “The actions necessary to activate a unit and get it out the door for the total force are the same things that happen during a mobilization,” Kennedy said. “The only difference is it’s all happening at the same time. So you’re talking at scale.”
The Reserve will use a phased approach to analyze and exercise their ability to mobilize formations en masse. In 2026 they will begin with a “crawl phase,” exploring staff processes and operational planning, concluding with a tabletop exercise. Next, they will move to a “walk phase,” including the mobilization component within a preexisting training event for a single company-sized element.
“By FY2028, ideally we would be in a position where we could use it with a battalion-level event, tying in lots of different people and places,” Kennedy said, explaining the longer term stages of the initiative.
In the end, Kennedy and Irish don’t believe these plans should change the day-to-day lives of Marine reservists, but the opportunity to explore methods for broad mobilization could expand the capabilities of the total force in future combat.
“At the battalion level or below, it probably is going to look no different to those Marines,” Irish said. “They just know that they’re training, and then they’re going someplace. That mobilization lets us learn how we do this at scale and across the country.”
