The National Guard Where We’ve Been i r t i n a l a S d i v a D

. t g S S / e c r o F r i A

. S . U And Where We Want to Go

By LTG William E. Ingram Jr. he past 11 years of war have done a great deal to re - mind America that it has no more capable, reliable Tand successful resource than its citizen soldiers. For those who were wearing the uniform on that fateful September morning in 2001, the change in the Army Na - tional Guard (ARNG) and (AR) over the last decade has been dramatic. Training, staffing and equipping levels are at or near all-time peaks in efficiency. The derisive term “weekend warrior” has disappeared from the nation’s vocabulary. Members of the Guard and Reserve have be - come accustomed to hearing their brethren say,

August 2012 I ARMY 25 During a trip to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, Director LTG William E. Ingram Jr. presents a National Guard coin of excellence to SGT Ferrell Reynolds of the North Carolina Army National Guard’s 1452nd Transportation Company (Heavy Equipment Transport).

“You can’t tell the Guardsmen from the regulars” when deployed over - seas. Indeed, observers increasingly recognize that the civilian skills citizen soldiers bring to peacekeeping and na - tion-building missions make them even more capable at these tasks than a regular, full-time soldier can be. h t

For those having trouble remember - o o B

ing what the Guard and Reserve o k i M looked like back in the 1980s and T G

1990s, it is impossible to appreciate S / y

how far they have come or why their m r A

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leaders today are so committed to S . making sure there is no return to the U “good old days,” which weren’t really very good at all. or even a year to mobilize and train ARNG combat brigades and divisions. They were an afterthought—a strategic re - The Not-So-Distant Past serve that many thought would be called only in the event The Army’s senior-most leaders are the only ones now left of an all-out war with the . in uniform who can still recall the “hollow Army” of the In retrospect, the flaws of organizing the reserve compo - 1970s. Yet even as the active Army was restored with infu - nents in this manner are apparent. The Army chose quantity sions of new Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and over quality. It chose large numbers of undermanned forma - Apache helicopters in the 1980s, most ARNG and AR forma - tions with dated equipment and limited training, knowing tions were second- and third-tier units with obsolete equip - that most of these units would not be available quickly if ment that had cascaded down to them from the Regular they were needed. To make up for the lack of an operational Army. Many ARNG units had different modification tables reserve that could be mobilized quickly, the Army compen - of organization and equipment from active component units, sated with more active forces than it needed for peacetime making it unlikely that they would ever be employed by an operations. organization that didn’t understand them. The Guard was large—more than 450,000 personnel—but Operational Missions: The Beginning of Change units were capped with an authorized level of organization Despite doubts about the Guard’s ability to mobilize in a that was well short of wartime strength. Fillers would have timely manner, some 63,000 Army Guardsmen were called to be integrated into units upon . Training dol - up and 37,000 deployed overseas for Operation Desert lars were limited, and commanders often had to choose be - Storm. Most served in support units, but two field artillery tween sending soldiers to school and having them attend brigades did see combat. Surprising the critics, more than annual training with their unit. The Army’s premiere train - two-thirds of the units that deployed did so within 45 days ing events were generally unavailable: Participating in a of mobilization. Once overseas, they were successful in every Reforger exercise or a rotation to the National Training Cen - mission assigned. Desert Storm set the stage for greater re - ter was a once-in-a-career event for a lucky few. If a war liance on the Army’s reserve components in the decade to broke out, the Army’s mobilization plans called for months come, particularly as Congress reduced the size of the mili - tary as part of the “peace dividend” that followed the end of LTG William E. Ingram Jr. is Director, U.S. Army National the Cold War. Guard. He has commanded U.S., U.N. and NATO forces in In the 1990s, the ARNG shrank by 100,000 soldiers, and Croatia, Macedonia and Kosovo and has taken leading roles in the active Army lost about 300,000. There were tensions and homeland security and disaster response in the United States. mistrust between the two as each component competed for As the adjutant general of North Carolina from 2001 through resources in what many assumed was a zero-sum budget ex - 2010, he commanded more than 12,000 Army and Air National ercise. Pentagon strategists questioned the utility of ARNG Guard personnel and oversaw the largest state mobilization combat formations, particularly the divisions, given the long since World War II. train-up time it would take to send them to war.

26 ARMY I August 2012 Soldiers from the Oregon National Guard’s 1st Squadron, 82nd Cavalry Regiment, and Omani soldiers from the Royal Army of Oman move toward their objective during a squad-assault training exercise in Oman earlier this year.

tinue to supply trained and ready units for the warfight for as long as would be needed. The result was the Army Force Generation model, or AR - FORGEN, which provided—and continues to provide—a regular, rotational system for planning and resourcing mobi - lizations. For the Guard, ARFORGEN provides soldiers, n a their families and employers with the relative predictability g o r

G they need to plan their lives. They know what to train for y r o and when, and they know when they are subject to being C

C

P mobilized. In turn, the Army receives a regular supply of S / d trained units to fulfill its operational commitments. r a u

G With ARFORGEN, the ARNG provides up to 60,000 l a n troops a year for deployment worldwide, including five o i t a

N brigade combat teams (BCTs) and a division headquarters y m that have had ample time to train together before mobiliza - r A

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S tion, thereby minimizing the time spent “on the clock” in . U postmobilization training centers. Over the course of the past It was participation in real-world missions in the 1990s decade the Guard has mobilized half a million soldiers, in - that assuaged the mistrust and helped build readiness. In cluding 44 rotations of BCTs overseas. Most of these deploy - 1993, the Army directed the creation of a composite active- ments have benefitted from the advance notice, resources Guard-Reserve battalion for the Multi-National Force and and training ARFORGEN has afforded them. Observer mission in the Sinai. In the mid-1990s Guard and ARFORGEN has been an important component in trans - Reserve units participated in peacekeeping missions in forming the Army National Guard into an operational force Bosnia and Kosovo, and by 2000 an ARNG division head - that is more experienced, better equipped and more ready quarters was commanding active duty formations there. Af - than at any point in its 375-year history. Half of the Guard’s ter September 11, those peacekeeping missions were as - signed almost exclusively to them. The trust developed during operational deployments in the 1990s would prove to be essential after 2001.

A Model for an Operational Force When the ARNG began mobilizing in earnest following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it faced the consequences of earlier policies that had relegated it to a strategic reserve. Units lacked equipment, were not staffed at wartime levels and did not have the dollars for soldiers to be trained in their jobs. The mobilization process was haphazard at times, and some units were given little notice before their call-up. On average, two battalions had to be raided of soldiers and

equipment in order to mobilize a single battalion for war. g n i n

Unit cohesion suffered. Readiness for the units that remained n a F

at home dropped. l u a P The Guard did what it had to do to support a nation and C T L

an Army at war, but as the immediate crisis passed, its lead - / y m

ers were determined to replace the outdated system that had r A

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mobilized and deployed units in what seemed an ad hoc . manner. U CW2 Michelle Roxby (right), a pilot-in-command, and Responding to a DoD requirement to implement pre - 2LT Amy Bonilla, both of 3rd Battalion, 142nd Aviation dictable, rotational deployments for both active component (Assault Helicopter Battalion), conduct preflight checks and reserve component forces, the Army developed a system in a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter; 1,500 women serve to ensure that all three components of the force could con - in the New York National Guard force of 10,500.

August 2012 I ARMY 27 SPC Tye Beasenburg, 4th Battalion, 118th Infantry Regiment, South Carolina Army National Guard, moves off a landing zone after the air assault portion of an embassy defense and evacuation exercise near Camp Buehring, Kuwait, in late May. The 4th Battalion assumed security- force operations in n northern Kuwait i v r I in April. m i T

T P C / y m r A

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358,000 citizen soldiers are combat veterans; more than 80 month and two weeks in the summer are not what they percent have joined since 9/11. Thanks to the considerable signed up for. focus of Congress, the deficit in modern equipment has Over the last 10 years America has made a huge invest - largely been made up. Now, ARNG units have an average of ment in blood, sweat and treasure to elevate the National 88 percent of their authorized equipment; the numbers are Guard from a strategic reserve to an operational force. It is even higher for critical dual-use equipment that is most the premiere reserve force on the planet. Despite this needed for emergency response here at home. investment, both the Guard and Reserve still represent a re - markable value for America when compared to the costs of Use It or Lose It maintaining large standing forces—and this doesn’t even be - If the two decades since Operation Desert Storm have gin to calculate the benefit the ARNG provides to state and taught us anything, it is that an operational force requires local communities when disasters strike. On average, Na - real-world deployment experience. The more the Guard was tional Guard soldiers cost one-quarter to one-third of their used in the 1990s and 2000s, the more ready and integrated it active component counterparts. They serve on active duty became in America’s defense plans. Looking forward, the only when they are needed. It would be foolish to cast aside Army must ensure that, as forces withdraw from the billions we’ve spent and return to the strategic reserve of Afghanistan, it continues to find regular, predictable mis - the 1980s and early 1990s—a force that was undermanned, sions that the ARNG and AR can perform to maintain their underequipped and consequently underutilized. fine edge of readiness. We know that we have entered into a period of increasing But why deploy Guard and Reserve forces when the fiscal constraint. We know that the ARNG and AR are able to drawdown in Afghanistan will leave the active Army plenty contribute significantly to a more cost-effective Army. The of troops on hand to take up the slack? After all, as the argu - ARNG’s performance during the last decade of war should ment goes, those soldiers are being paid whether they are de - have removed any doubts critics may have about its ability ployed or not. to tackle any mission—for the time being. The Army must It is true that reserve component forces are cheapest when remain committed to maintaining an operational force, con - they are not being used, but the experience of deploying for tinue to provide its reserve component soldiers with a pre - real-world missions is priceless in ensuring lasting readi - dictable cycle of training and deployments, and employ them ness. Like anything else, we must practice it under the most in real operational missions—or risk forfeiting everything realistic conditions possible in order to be proficient at it. that the Army and the Guard have worked so hard to build. The mobilization lessons employed in creating the ARFOR - Preserving today’s Army National Guard and Army Re - GEN model took several years of trial and error to perfect. serve is far more cost-effective than trying to build them We may not have that much time to relearn how to deploy from the ground up the next time our nation is threatened. for the next emergency. Maintaining an operational reserve force further ensures the Our soldiers expect to be gainfully employed. Every one Army is approaching steady-state missions cost-effectively of them has either enlisted or reenlisted since 9/11, moti - and guarantees the availability of the reserve components for vated by a desire to serve their country. One weekend a no-notice contingency operations. (

28 ARMY I August 2012