More use of ready reserve planned

The Army also said it plans to step up recruitment efforts to try to meet goals to sign up 80,000 new soldiers for the regular Army and 22,000 for the Army Reserve in the fiscal year that began yesterday. The Army recruiting command's chief acknowledged the wars were deterring some potential recruits.

To plug shortages in certain skills in units being deployed, the Army has tapped the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), made up of 111,000 people who have completed voluntary military commitments and have returned to civilian life but remain eligible to be mobilized in a national emergency.

The Army said about 3,900 of the 5,600 IRR soldiers scheduled to be summoned to active duty already have received orders to report.

The mobilization, which began in July, is intended to yield about 4,400 soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming weeks and months after the Army provides service exemptions for medical problems and other hardships.

Army officials said 622 Individual Ready Reserve members who were supposed to report for duty by Tuesday failed to show up. Some requested more time. Others wanted to be excused entirely. Some have not responded at all.

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