Active Duty - United States

United States

In the United States military, active duty refers to military members who are currently serving full-time in their military capacity. Members of a reserve component are not generally considered active duty. However, in support of the Global War on Terror and other contingency operations, a large number of Reservists in all branches have been called to active duty in an operational capacity. Many will argue that today's Reserve forces are no longer the "strategic" Reserve of the Cold War. Those Reservists deployed in support of contingency operations, either as a unit or by individual augmentation, are also considered active duty. These terms may also be applied to military forces of other nations, although the details concerning obligations to serve may differ.

Read more about this topic:  Active Duty

Famous quotes related to united states:

    “When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing to the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
    —Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    “The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    “... the yearly expenses of the existing religious system ... exceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?”
    —Frances Wright (1795–1852)