I am the Commanding General for the 3D Medical Command, U.S. Army Reserves, and on March 24th, 2020, Army Reserve Headquarters, Ft. Bragg, tasked my organization to mobilize, as rapidly as possible, four Field Hospitals in support of COVID-19 operations. Within 72 hours, the requirement changed to creating a new force design called the Urban Augmentation Medical Task Force (UAMTF). Building from existing force structures, this command, along with its sister divisions, built 17 total UAMTFs (6 from the 3d Division) aggregated, trained and deployed 15 of them in less than 9 days. These units deployed into the Northeast portion of the United States including New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Michigan where they provided much needed medical capacity for overburdened and overwhelmed health care systems. This new force generation has proven the concept of Reserve Ready Force units and provides a new capacity and capability to the U.S. government for war time and disaster response.
MG Joe D. Robinson
Distance Class of 2011
Commanding General
3d Medical Command (Deployment Support)
