By Eric Evans
Weekend Warriors no more. Today’s Hybrid Warriors are deployed, mobilized, and woven into global U.S. military operations year-round, all while attempting to hold civilian jobs, raise families, and manage income swings and other challenges that most Americans never have to think about. Hybrid service members comprise close to 40% of the US military, and our national security depends on them far more than most people realize.
When a reservist gets orders, civilian pay often stops, and military pay rarely makes up the difference. Household bills keep coming, and often increase while they are gone. Layered on top of the physical and emotional weight of service, those financial pressures are real and recurring. Most employers genuinely want to support their people through it, but what has been missing is a practical, honest roadmap for how actually to do that well.
That is exactly the gap Friendly Forces was built to close. Founded and led by actively serving reservists and combat veterans, this is not another organization of retired brass writing policy papers from a comfortable distance. It is a small, driven team of people still in uniform who started Friendly Forces because they lived the problem firsthand: the struggle to find employers who genuinely accommodate military service, a corporate culture largely unprepared for what hybrid service actually demands, the near-total absence of resources for dual-career service members, and a credentialing landscape cluttered with largely meaningless military and veteran friendliness labels.
Where most military support organizations show up after a service member has already hit a wall, Friendly Forces gets to work before that wall gets built. The focus is upstream: working directly with companies to build practical, durable support structures grounded in what reservists and their families actually need to serve. In doing so, Friendly Forces ties it all together, connecting the strongest talent the Reserve Component has to offer with employers who are genuinely prepared to support them. For companies, that partnership is not just the right thing to do, but a competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining an exceptionally skilled, connected, and disciplined workforce.
Friendly Forces is a grassroots 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that makes an immediate, tangible impact for a critical, but often overlooked audience. It is the charge for a new standard of civil-military partnership, driven by personal experience, genuine passion, and the conviction that getting this right matters for service members, their families, and our national security.
