Ready or Not
The Army National Guard on the Brink of Readiness Disaster
Readiness. It’s a word that gets tossed out with great frequency these days. And well it should, as the word encompasses training, equipping, and manning the force. All things that are in jeopardy with continued budget cuts and force reductions. Units are in turmoil across the Army, in all components. The Army Chief of Staff General Odierno sounded alarm bells this past week, stating, “further reductions will put us into a place we simply cannot go.” Some might call this alarmist. They would be wrong. Odierno was being conservative.
The Army is right now facing its lowest troop levels since before World War II, in a world that has not given any indications of being less volatile. Brigade combat teams (the “teeth” in the phrase “tooth to tail ratio”) have been reduced. This not only lessens the number that are available for deployments but also means that units are offline, so to speak, as force structure changes are made. The Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model where units rotated in and out of their deployment years is being scrapped in favor of the Sustainable Readiness Model (SRM). This heralds a return to tiered readiness, where all units sustain a certain level of readiness to deploy. This is exhausting to Soldiers and units alike, adding stress to an already fractured system of deployments and redeployments.
These cuts are the products of several different factors. One, when 9/11 struck the U.S., the military was trying to recover from the devastating 23% cuts of Operation Quicksilver in the 1990's. It had driven deep into the Army, causing a gigantic rift between the Active and Reserve Components. The incidents of 9/11 and subsequent military actions most probably saved the Department of Defense from further cuts that were forecast (for perspective, the current cuts take the Army’s numbers below even their Quicksilver numbers). Two, after fourteen years of war that spanned an economic recession, the Department of Defense has a target on its back as the agency that could withstand budget cuts the most. The logic being that the budget expanded for wartime and can now contract since the wars are over. Hint: the wars are far from over.
These changes are the beginning of what could be one of the most disastrous post-war drawdowns in Army history. While it is true that at the end of every war the Army proceeds to shed units, personnel, and lessons learned, they are now doing it in the middle of a critical time of transition. The Army is trying to come to grips with its post-Global War on Terror identity and what type of force it will be in the world. That same enemy, global terrorism, is still very much a defining presence, and the president has made it clear in his National Security Strategy that fighting global terrorism will remain a priority. At the same time, threats are appearing all over the place, as they usually do, meaning that the U.S. will have to prioritize targets and make the standards for military intervention that much higher.
It also means that the Army will have to rely even more on its “operational reserve,” the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. From where I sit, in the National Guard, I can look at fourteen years of unprecedented readiness (training, manning, and equipping) in National Guard history. Save for anti-aircraft units in the 1950s and the Selected Reserve Force units of the 1960s, National Guard units have never been able to fill to their 100% authorized strength for such a long period of time. From equipping and training perspectives, our force is within 91% of its on-hand equipment readiness (versus 77% in just 2011) and National Guard Soldiers attend the same school and training organizations as their Active component counterparts (although this also includes the same distance learning courses that we all curse).
This is all about to change. The same cuts that are hitting the Active side are coming to the National Guard. Current force authorization for the National Guard is 350,000; the first round of cuts (being debated by Congressional Commission) would reduce the Guard to 335,000. Further cuts might be in the offing. Budgets have already been slashed to the point where critical decisions have to be made about training and what the focus will be. At the same time, increasing training requirements and the SRM are also being imposed on the National Guard. The Guard is sitting at the tipping point of falling into the same readiness quagmire as their Active component, except that the Guard has further to fall. Financing for manning, training, and equipping the force has the potential to fall back to the levels of the 1970s, prior to the Total Force Concept that brought the Guard into balance with the Active component (great article here from fellow Military Writers Guild member Charlie Sherpa on the TFC).
Were this to happen, the nation would not only be at risk of being unprepared during the opening salvos of a conflict, but also in the second phase when the Guard and Reserve would be traditionally deployed. We have the tendency to enter conflicts ill-prepared and unready, at the cost of American lives and dollars. I would hope that we have reached a point where that is no longer acceptable and that those in Congress would recognize the “Era of Persistant Conflict” in which we live and stop the cutting.
