LittleBitty
LittleBitty wrote:So what kind of shape are we in with our military? Does anyone know? BBB, I ask so as to join your topic.
Reserves, National Guard feel strain of prolonged deployment
By Dave Montgomery and Drew Brown
McClatchy Newspapers
12/15/06
The nation's National Guard and Reserve forces are displaying signs of strain after five years of deployments in what has become the biggest active duty mobilization since the Korean War.
More than 500,000 Guard and Reserve troops have served in active duty since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and they've made up nearly half of the force fighting against terrorists and in combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Military leaders, pointing to an upswing in recruiting and retention, describe the nation's reserve force as the most professional and combat seasoned in history, bonded by a keen sense of patriotism.
But at the same time, many Guard units are struggling with chronic equipment shortages and funding problems that threaten their ability to respond to disaster and other emergencies in their home states. Thousands of reservists are serving in patchwork units cobbled together in piecemeal fashion from other units, often with little or no sense of cohesion.
"I think you're seeing the leading edge indicators of strain and fraying the edges," said Arnold L. Punaro, a retired Marine Corps general who chairs a commission looking into a possible overhaul of the Guard and Reserve. "And, yes, they are doing a good job of recruiting and retention, but at what cost and how long can they sustain it?"
The widening concerns over the reserve component come at a time when U.S. military leaders are pressing for even more reinforcements from Guard and Reserves to help ease the pressure on active-duty forces.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's top general, warned Punaro's commission on Thursday that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "will break" the active duty force unless the Pentagon changes its mobilization policy to allow more involuntary call-ups from the Guard and Reserve. Schoomaker also wants to add thousands of active-duty forces.
Lt. Gen. David Poythress, the state adjutant general for the Georgia National Guard, said he agreed with Schoomaker that there need to be changes in the Army's structure since it's configured to fight high-intensity, short-duration wars, not the grinding guerrilla conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he expressed concern that the National Guard may be carrying too much of the load.
"You need readily available manpower on both the active and the reserve side," Poythress said. "There is a danger of breaking the Army, but there is an equivalent danger of breaking the Guard. Guardsmen don't sign up to be full-time soldiers. If that's what they wanted, they'd join the active Army."
Reserve advocates are noticing indications that some 30-something junior officers and non-commissioned officers are thinking about pulling the plug on their reserve status in order keep from falling behind on the civilian career ladder.
"They're at a point in their civilian career where they're making their mark," said Lt. Gen. Charles G. Rodriguez of Austin, adjutant general for the Texas National Guard. "Now is the time for them to punch their tickets and do all the hard things in their civilian jobs. If they're not there, they can't punch those tickets."
Rodriguez said recruitment in the Texas Guard is in line with the robust national trend and retention is "better than it's ever been." But some may be asking "can I afford to go a third time" if they're called upon to leave home again, he said.
"Most Guard families understand now that the possibility is very real for not only one deployment but for more than one," he said. "Some families are having difficulties because that's not what they signed up for."
The Sept. 11 era has completed the evolution of the nation's Guard and Reserves from their status as second-tier "weekend warriors" into an operational force capable of standing alongside and integrating into active-duty ranks.
During the Vietnam era, Reserve and Guard units - fairly or unfairly - gained a reputation as havens to escape the draft. A national change in how these units are viewed began with the deployment of 265,300 guardsmen and reservists during the 1991 Gulf War.
Only 37,463 reservists and Guard were called up from 1965 through 1973 during the Vietnam War. By contrast, more than 13 times that number have been dispatched to active duty since September 2001, a force drawn from cities and towns in every state.
Of the 88,500 currently mobilized, California has the largest contingent (4,559), followed by Texas (3,935), Pennsylvania (3,578) and Minnesota (3,079).
The Army National Guard and Army Reserve represent the biggest share of deployments but all of the other services also have sent thousands of their reservists into active duty service. More than 4,000 personnel have been deployed from Naval Air Station Fort Worth, the nation's largest joint reserve base that serves as home to more than 20 major units attached to the Air Force, Army, Marines and Texas Air National Guard.
Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, commander of the Army Reserve who's also a 25-year employee of Proctor and Gamble in Orlando, Fla., said the men and women in today's Reserve and Guard are vastly different from the Reserve unit he joined in 1979. The unit commander, he said, opened the annual two-week active tour by asking who'd buy the beer for the end-of-tour party.
"These kids are the next Greatest Generation," Stultz said, referring to a name commonly given to America's World War II generation. "We've got a different caliber of soldier than we did in 1979."
Thousands joined up in the patriotic surge after the terrorist attacks. Members of the Guard have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and also have served in anti-terrorism missions in Africa, peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, disaster responses such as Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and, more recently, in units supporting federal agents along the U.S.-Mexican border.
But repeated missions have taken a toll, prompting the nation's governors to complain to Punaro's commission about equipment shortages, inadequate training and insufficient federal funding. Units returning from combat were forced to leave much of their equipment with active-duty forces or replacements, leaving them ill equipped to confront disasters at home.
Schoomaker said the Army entered the war on terror "flat-footed," with a shortfall of about $100 billion in the funds it needed, including $56 billion in equipment shortages. The National Guard and Army Reserve, he said, suffered the brunt of that shortfall, often relying on outdated tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters, cast off from the active-duty forces, some of it dating back to the Vietnam War.
The situation worsened, as many units deploying to Iraq had to leave their best equipment behind. Schoomaker said the Army has designated more than $21 billion to buy new ground equipment and $1.9 billion for new aviation equipment.
Punaro and others also have criticized the Pentagon's mobilization polices, which they say have virtually wrecked unit cohesion in the National Guard and Reserves and left many units scrambling for volunteers to fill the ranks when the time came for them to deploy.
National Guard and Reserve forces can be called to active duty for up to two consecutive years under a partial mobilization, which is what President Bush declared after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The practice has been to mobilize part-time troops for no more than 24 cumulative months. National Guard and Reserve troops called for service in Iraq usually spend about six months training, then a year in Iraq, leaving them only six months of eligibility to serve in other active-duty roles.
Officials also have promised to call up part-time units no more than once every five years, but now with the Army short of manpower, they say the policies need to change.
Punaro said that only about 10 percent of the 522,000 soldiers in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve were available for deployment because of the Pentagon's mobilization policies.
Because of shortages across the Army National Guard and Army Reserves, many units had to bring in volunteers from other units and states, Punaro said. During the last two rotations, roughly 62 percent of Army Reserve units had to rely on volunteers from other units and states in order to deploy.
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McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Kevin G. Hall contributed to this article.
