I spent 6+ years serving in the United States Navy. As a reservist I had the opportunity to witness the many pros and cons of the Navy Reserves, particularly when it comes to modern technology. Simply put, the resources and websites provided to reservists are lacking. I’m taking my 10+ years of experience in the tech industry to solve the problem from outside the Navy. Today my Navy shipmate and I launch The Reserve Force.

Why Create The Reserve Force?

Today The Reserve Force goes live but what is it’s mission?

To provide the digital and social resources required to bridge the gap between the U.S. Military active and reserve components.

The military as a whole needs more resources and support. Veteran healthcare and suicide prevention are top issues in my mind. The majority of the resources that we do get tend to cater to active duty. This leaves reservists to fend for themselves. A great reserve unit will help but there aren’t many of those around leaving gaps in knowledge and support for reservist. The Resource Force aims to fill those gaps and bring the reserve component up to the same spotlight that active duty enjoys.

The Technology

Today’s launch is an MVP. It’s a starting point in order to provide basic resources now while we work on even more useful, cool things in the future. As typical of my projects, TheReserveForce.com is an open source, static website built with Hugo, tested and deployed via CircleCI. The source code can be found here on GitHub.

Summary

The first version of The Reserve Force is here. We plan to iterate on the website to increase the quality and quantity of resources that we provide for U.S. Military Reservists. You can keep track of The Reserve Force on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn or just signup for the newsletter at the website.

Stay tuned.