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.
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.
