US Guard, Reserve Leaders Seek Funding for Growing Role

[buglerbilly]

(Source: U.S Army; issued May 3, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- The military's National Guard and reserve units need more funding to reflect the operational readiness they have proven in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than the ready-reserve model for which their current funding provides, reserve-component leaders told Congress yesterday.

Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, told the House Armed Services Committee's readiness subcommittee that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks forever changed the way the reserves support regular forces.

"Operational demands for Army Reserve support have been heavy and enduring," Stultz said in prepared testimony. "The reality is current operations are consuming Army Reserve readiness as fast as we can build it."

As those demands increased, he said, "it became ever apparent we could no longer function as a part-time strategic reserve."

An operational Army Reserve is a good return on investment, Stultz said. The Army Reserve's $8.2 billion appropriation last year represented only four percent of the total Army budget, yet the it supplied seven to eight brigade-sized elements each year, and 29,000 reservists have deployed since 9/11, he said.

"We can continue providing that positive return on investment to the nation when the Army Reserve is given the proper resources to succeed," the general said. He asked that Congress continue to provide appropriations for reservists to train on the latest combat equipment before they deploy to a war zone.

Maj. Gen. Raymond W. Carpenter, acting director of the Army National Guard, also spoke of the Guard as an operational force greatly changed in the past decade. With nearly 53,000 Guardsmen serving in harm's way, he said, "the Army National Guard is accessible and has met every request for forces to date."

Even with the high operational tempo, Carpenter said, the Army Guard has a 116 percent re-enlistment rate, proving that Guardsmen want to be part of an operational force.

"As long as our Soldiers are doing meaningful missions and provided resources such as equipment and training facilities to accomplish those missions, Army National Guard Soldiers continue to be an operational part of the national defense solution," he said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, director of the Air National Guard, said that since 9/11, the Air Guard has "increasingly and dramatically" become more of an operational force. Of more than 146,000 airmen the Guard has deployed overseas since the terrorist attacks, 75 percent volunteered for those missions and 60 percent are on their second or third combat deployment, he said.

The Air National Guard provides one-third of the regular Air Force capabilities for less than seven percent of the total service budget, Wyatt said. If the Air Guard force were full-time active duty, he said, its personnel budget would be $7.62 billion instead of its current $4.77 billion.

Air Guardsmen train to the same standards as regular airmen, but have not been allocated enough training slots, resulting in hundreds of shortfalls, Wyatt said. The reason for the shortfalls, he said, include increased Air Force manning, growth in emerging mission areas, and increasing Air Force basic training from six to eight and a half weeks.

Also, Wyatt said, the Air Guard needs more funding for special pay and bonuses. He cited an Air Guardsman who recently returned from his fifth deployment to Afghanistan, where he was a tactical air control party journeyman who directed close-air support in Kunar province, as an example to illustrate his point. With his skills, Wyatt said, the Guard could offer that airman a $15,000 bonus to re-enlist for six years, while the regular Air Force could offer him a $90,000 bonus to re-enlist for three years.

The Air Guard also lags behind the active duty in aircraft and equipment, Wyatt said.

"If the Air National Guard maintains its pace as an operational force," he said, "we will need to increase our investment in this critical area."

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[Weasel]

Here that? That is the sound of slow clapping. Finally.

The lack of funding, the work load, the mission requirements. It goes on and on and on and it is only a matter of time before you see degradation in performance at a cubic rate.

It is simply astonishing what has been achieved to date with the poor equipment and lack of funding. Can't thank them enough.

cheers

w

[buglerbilly]

Casey: National Guard's Future Not In Strategic Reserve

(Source: US Department of Defense; issued Aug. 3, 2010)

NEW ORLEANS --- Putting the National Guard back on the Cold War-era strategic reserve shelf is not the answer when defense leaders discuss the future, the Army's chief of staff said today.

"No one wants to go back to the Guard being just a strategic reserve," Gen. George Casey said during a visit to the 2010 National Guard Family Program Volunteer Workshop. "We have come way too far. Half of the Guard are combat veterans. That's a fundamentally different force and, as a result, it's a fundamentally different Army."

Casey said the Army is actively working through a study that will answer this question: "What should the role of the Guard and Reserve be in an era where we're likely to have to rely on them continuously for a long period of time?"

Casey said he anticipates a significant operational tempo for the next decade which follows nine years of war in which the National Guard has already played a crucial role.

"We - the United States Army - could not have done what we have done the last nine years at war without the Guard," Casey said. "It's Minutemen and women that are holding this force together. Thank you for what you have done to support this Army and this country."

The general and his wife, Sheila, spent about two hours talking with volunteers who support National Guard families. An event scheduled in the same room was cancelled as the couple lingered an hour beyond their planned visit to address questions from a standing-room-only audience of Guard family members.

"It's not just the Guard families," Casey said. "It's the entire volunteer force. We realized back in 2007 that we had to significantly increase what we were doing for all Army families, because of what we were asking of them. We were asking of them far more than what our programs were delivering."

Spending on family programs doubled. An Army covenant recommitted leadership to supporting Active, Guard and Reserve families.

"There's always more work to do, but I think it's been very well-received," Casey said.

The Caseys have a noncommissioned officer son on active duty with the Army Reserve, making Sheila Casey both a Soldier's wife and a Soldier's mother. Meeting with volunteers who she can relate to not just through empathy but by first-hand experience, she emphasized self-care.

"Part of the problem that caregivers have is that they don't take care of themselves," she said. "Everybody else comes first. What I end up seeing is people who after extended deployments ... are burnt out and they're tired. What I ask them to do is to change that and to start putting themselves first, on top of the pile. If they do that, then they will have the strength and the wherewithal to take care of their families."

Sheila Casey tells military spouses to find one thing that they love to do and make time for it.

Her husband briefed Guard family program volunteers on the Guard's transformed role since Sept. 11, 2001, and Defense Department leaders' goals for a future of more predictable deployments and longer dwell times.

Standing in front of a chronological chart displaying the Guard's contributions in the more than 60 years since World War II, Casey explained how lessons learned from the Vietnam War transformed the Guard.

"The general conventional wisdom coming out of that period was the fact that we had to rely on the draft and could not rely on the Guard and Reserve broke the active Army," Casey said. "That's too simplistic ... but ... that led [to] the total force policy and they said, 'We will never again go to war without the Guard and Reserve.'"

The Guard's role increased following Operation Desert Storm, notably shifted in the days after the 9/11 attacks, and it has not diminished since.

"Since Sept. 11th, we have relied on the Guard and Reserve for a duration and a scope that really has been unprecedented in the last 60 years."

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[buglerbilly]

Officials Ponder Reserve Components' Future

(Source: U.S Air Force; issued September 24, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- Defense Department officials said a report released earlier this week will help them implement recommendations made by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserve two years ago.

"There is a very strong commitment to implement most of recommendations of (the commission)," said Dennis M. McCarthy, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, at a roundtable discussion held here Sept. 23. "This (report) is going to help us sustain and maintain the momentum of that process."

The Center for a New American Security report (see below—Ed.), which argues for a number of actions that will strengthen the Guard and Reserves, combined with the 12 other studies being conducted by the DOD will also help to inform defense leaders as they plan for the future of the reserve components, said Gen. Craig R. McKinley, the chief of the National Guard Bureau.

"This century obviously has been hugely challenging for all of us," he said. "We are emerging into the second decade of this century and trying to figure out what are the proper sweet spots for the reserve components."

General McKinley said Sept. 24 about 64,000 National Guard men and women are serving overseas in support of the Army and Air Force, but equally important is their around-the-clock support to the governors.

"Because we don't know when the next crisis will hit, that requirement to be ready all the time ... is very important for us to understand," he said. "At any moment, we can be challenged with a disaster of natural or manmade proportions ... (and) we have to be ready to meet those challenges."

General McKinley credited the Army and Air Force for "position(ing) our force for the time that we live in."

General McCarthy said the Guard and its DOD partners have made "tremendous" progress in its support to civil authorities.

"We are definitely, in my opinion, moving in the right direction," he said adding that the Guard's weapons of mass destruction and civil-support teams didn't exist a few years ago.

The CNAS report states the Army and Air Guard, and other reserve branches, lack about 25 percent of their required equipment.

"I simply don't think that we ought to knee-jerk into the idea that every company and every battalion needs to have 100 percent of its table of equipment parked out on the back lot," General McCarthy said. "If that is the standard we use for measure, I think we are never going to get there. Or we we're going to get there with old and outmoded equipment.

He said new approaches are needed, including the use of simulation.

"We need to get beyond that and do some things that are perhaps a little more creative and a little more useful," General McCarthy said. "Making the Reserve component an integral and indispensible part of the operational force will take a whole range of actions that ... the department is committed to take." (ends)

An Indispensable Force: Investing in America’s National Guard and Reserves

(Source: The Center for a New American Security; published Sept. 20, 2010)

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the National Guard and Reserves – which comprise nearly half of total U.S. military manpower – have served repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan while simultaneously protecting the homeland against threats ranging from natural disasters to terrorism. Yet America’s need for operational service by its cost-effective Guard and Reserves will last beyond the current conflicts.

In An Indispensable Force: Investing in America's National Guard and Reserves, report authors John Nagl and Travis Sharp argue that although policymakers have taken great strides in recent years to support the Guard and Reserves, the U.S. government still is not investing sufficiently in the policies, laws, and budgets required for the Guard and Reserves to fulfill their current and future role in U.S. national security.

Nagl and Sharp recommend that the Pentagon take advantage of this opportune moment, when the wartime experience of the Guard and Reserves make them more capable than ever before, to make further improvements in roles and missions, readiness, cost, education and the “continuum of service” concept of flexible 21st century personnel management.

Download An Indispensable Force here. (44 pages in PDF format)

http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_AnIndispensableForce_NaglSharp.pdf

"It is time for the U.S. government to accelerate the transformation of the Guard and Reserves into the type of ready, capable and available operational force that will prove essential to protecting the United States at home and abroad throughout the 21st century," write the authors.

The report, which has been endorsed by the 12 former members of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, will be launched at an event this Thursday, September 23, 2010, from 1:30-3:00 p.m. in the Willard Intercontinental Hotel’s Crystal Ballroom.

The event will feature a panel of leading experts including: CNAS President Dr. John Nagl; Former Chairman of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves Arnold Punaro; Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs Dennis M. McCarthy; Chief of the National Guard Bureau General Craig R. McKinley, USAF; and Senior Fellow and Director of the CSIS New Defense Approaches Project Dr. Maren Leed.

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