Individual ready reserves and the Afghanistan surge

Predictably, the mainstream media has been focused on the politics surrounding President Obama's Afghanistan speech at West Point Tuesday night. But there are many questions about which military families want to know:

• What impact will sending an additional 30,000 troops to have on the Army National Guard and Reserves?
• Will units currently deployed to Afghanistan be extended an additional three months as they were in Iraq?
• Will this surge increase the number of individual ready reserves who have already been mobilized after returning to civilian life?
• Will the surge have an impact on the dwell time that units receive once it has completed a deployment?

Currently, there are 104,659 National Guard and Reserves that have been activated, of which 4,379 are mobilized individual ready reserves, according to a recent Department of Defense press release. And that's just the Army.

Trying to find current information on IRR mobilizations is next to impossible. From what's out there on the web, there was a mobilization in October and another Nov. 17. About 14,000 former soldiers were called to a one-day muster this year to assess mental health and physical condition. No word on what will happen in 2010.