The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2004, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called reservists, are categorized as being in either the Selected Reserve (SELRES), the Training and Administration of the Reserve (TAR), the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), or the Retired Reserve.

Organization The mission of the Navy Reserve is to provide strategic depth and deliver operational capabilities to the Navy and Marine Corps team, and to the Joint forces, in the full range of military operations from peace to war.

The Navy Reserve consists of 56,254 officers and enlisted personnel who serve in every state and territory as well as overseas as of June 2023.

Selected Reserve (SELRES)

The largest cohort, the Selected Reserve (SELRES), have traditionally drilled one weekend a month and performed two weeks of active duty annual training during the year, receiving base pay and certain special pays (e.g., flight pay, dive pay) when performing Inactive Duty Training (IDT, aka "drills"), and full pay and allowances while on active duty for Annual Training (AT), Active Duty for Training (ADT), Active Duty for Operational Support (ADOS), Active Duty for Special Work (ADSW), under Presidential Selected Reserve Call-up (PSRC) / Mobilization (MOB) orders, or when otherwise recalled to full active duty.

Every state, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico, has at least one Navy Reserve Center (NRC, formerly known Naval Reserve Centers (NAVRESCEN) until 2005 and formerly known as Navy Operational Support Centers (NOSC) from 2005 to 2021), staffed by full-time active duty Training and Administration of the Reserve (TAR) personnel, where SELRES officers and sailors typically come to do their weekend drills. The size of these centers varies greatly, depending on the number of assigned SELRES. Some NRCs may be collocated with Marine Corps Reserve Centers (MARESCEN) and were often known as Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Centers (NAVMARCORESCEN) prior to 2005. Other NRCs may be part of or tenant commands at Armed Forces Reserve Centers or Joint Reserve Centers with Army Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, and/or Army National Guard units.

Navy Reserve Centers are intended mostly to handle administrative functions and classroom style training. However, some NRCs have more extensive training facilities, including SECRET or SCIF level intelligence centers, damage control trainers and small boat units. Some NRCs are co-located on existing military facilities, but many are "outside-the-wire" standalone facilities that are often the only U.S. Navy representation in their communities or even the entire state, commonwealth or territory. Because of this, NRCs outside of the Navy's Fleet traditional Concentration Areas (e.g., Norfolk, VA; San Diego, CA; Jacksonville, FL, Honolulu, HI, etc.) are also heavily tasked to provide personnel, both TAR staff and SELRES, for participation in Funeral Honors Details. This service provided to the local community is one of the NRC's top two priority missions (the other being training and mobilization of SELRES).

Many SELRES are assigned to front-line operational units outside of the NRC structure, many of them combat-coded, such as Naval aviators, Naval Flight Officers, Naval Flight Surgeons, enlisted Naval Aircrewmen, and other officer and enlisted personnel assigned to Navy Reserve or Active-Reserve Integrated (ARI) aviation squadrons, air groups and air wings, or personnel assigned to major unified combatant command, Fleet and other major staff positions. These personnel, especially active flight crew, are typically funded for far more duty than the notional one weekend per month/two weeks per year construct typically associated with the Reserve and often perform military duty well in excess of 100-man-days per year. SELRES have also performed additional duty in times of war or national crisis, often being recalled to full-time active duty for one, two or three or more years and deploying to overseas locations or aboard warships, to include active combat zones, as seen during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

Training and Administration of the Reserve / Full Time Support TAR (Training and Administration of the Reserve) personnel are Navy Reserve personnel who serve in uniform year round and provide administrative support to Navy Reserve SELRES and IRR (to include VTU) personnel, active duty Navy personnel in areas where there are no major naval installations (i.e., Navy Recruiting Command personnel and NROTC staff at civilian colleges and universities), retired military personnel and family members of all the U.S. military services, and operational support for the Navy.

TAR officers and sailors are full-time career active duty personnel, but reside in the Reserve Component (RC) and perform a role similar to Active Guard and Reserve (AGR), Air Reserve Technician (ART) and Army Reserve Technician in the Air Force Reserve Command, the Air National Guard, the U.S. Army Reserve, and the Army National Guard. As opposed to most AGR personnel in the Army Reserve/Army National Guard and Air Force Reserve/Air National Guard, Navy Reserve TAR personnel are on continuous active duty with a career track paralleling and mostly mirroring their Regular Navy counterparts until they either retire from active duty or opt to separate from the TAR program to transfer to SELRES status. TAR personnel first came into being in 1952 as a sub-category of Naval Reserve personnel retained on full-time active duty in the years following World War II to administer the then-Naval Reserve infrastructure during the Cold War.

In 2005, the term TAR was replaced with Full Time Support (FTS). In November 2021, the term FTS was discontinued and the term TAR reinstated for this category of personnel.

Individual Ready Reserve

The Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) is composed of Navy Reserve personnel who do not typically drill or train regularly but can be recalled to service in a full mobilization (requiring a Presidential order). Some IRR personnel who are not currently assigned to SELRES billets, typically senior commissioned officers in the ranks of commander or captain for whom "with pay" status SELRES billets are limited, will serve in Volunteer Training Units (VTU) or will be support assigned to established active duty or reserve commands while in a VTU status. These personnel will drill for retirement for points but without drill pay and are not eligible for Annual Training with pay. However, they remain eligible for other forms of active duty with pay and mobilization. The largest source of IRR Officers in the Navy Reserve are commissioned from the United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA). USMMA graduates make up more than 75% of the Navy's Strategic Sealift Officer Community which is focused on strategic sealift and sea-based logistics.

Mobilization Reservists are called to active duty, or mobilized, as needed and are required to sign paperwork acknowledging this possibility upon enrollment in the reserve program.

After the 11 September attacks of 2001, reservists were mobilized to support combat operations. The war on terrorism has even seen the activation of an entire Navy Reserve strike fighter squadron, the VFA-201 Hunters, flying F/A-18C Hornet aircraft, which deployed on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) as part of Carrier Air Wing EIGHT (CVW-8), flying multiple combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

More than 52,000 Navy reservists have been mobilized and deployed to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, including more than 8,000 who have done a second combat tour. They have served alongside Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard and service personnel from other countries, performing such missions as countering deadly improvised explosive devices, constructing military bases, escorting ground convoys, operating hospitals, performing intelligence analysis, guarding prisoners, and doing customs inspections for units returning from deployments.

Between 2013 and 2021, two Navy Reserve maritime patrol squadrons, VP-62 and VP-69 flying P-3C BMUP+ aircraft, have also been repeatedly mobilized, either in part or as entire squadrons, and forward deployed to the Western Pacific for six-month rotations to meet critical Navy Global Force Management (GFM) shortfalls.

History

Revolutionary War

Reflecting the importance of reservists in the naval history of the United States, the first citizen sailors put to sea even before the Continental Congress created the Continental Navy, forerunner of today's U.S. Navy. On 12 June 1775, inspired to act after hearing the news of Minutemen and British regulars battling on the fields of Lexington and Concord, citizens of the seaside town of Machias, Maine, commandeered the schooner Unity and engaged the British warship HMS Margaretta, boarding her and forcing her surrender after bitter close quarters combat. In the ensuing years of the American Revolution, the small size of the Continental Navy necessitated the service of citizen sailors, who put to sea manning privateers, their far-flung raids against the British merchant fleet as important as the sea battles of John Paul Jones in establishing the American naval tradition.

Following the American Revolution, the expense of maintaining a standing navy was deemed too great, resulting in the selling of the last Continental Navy ship in 1785. However, attacks by Barbary pirates against American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea prompted a change in course in 1794. A navy that helped give birth to the nation was now deemed essential to preserving its security, which faced its most serious threat during the War of 1812. Not only did reservists raid British commerce on the high seas, but they also outfitted a fleet of barges called the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla in an effort to defend that vital body of water against British invasion. Though overwhelmed by an enemy superior in numbers, these men, most recruited from Baltimore, continued to wage war on land, joining in the defense of Washington, D.C.

Civil War

Having fought against a foreign power, naval reservists faced a much different struggle with the outbreak of the Civil War, which divided a navy and a nation. Within days of the attack, President Abraham Lincoln authorized an increase in the personnel levels of the Navy, which assumed an important role in the strategy to defeat the Confederacy with a blockade of the South and a campaign to secure control of the Mississippi River. By war's end the Navy had grown from a force numbering 9,942 in 1860 to one manned by 58,296 sailors. A total of 101,207 men from twenty-one states enlisted during the war and volunteers were present during some of the storied naval engagements of the American Civil War, including serving in Monitor during her battle with CSS Virginia and the daring mission to destroy the Confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle. The latter action resulted in the awarding of the Medal of Honor to six reserve enlisted men.

Late 19th century and World War I