National Guard faces $23B deficit

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WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The U.S. National Guard is $23 billion in the hole after five years of war and national disasters, its top general said Tuesday.

It will take $21 billion to reset the Army National Guard force and equip it commensurate with its responsibilities, and $2 billion to re-equip aviation in the Air National Guard, said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, the chief of the National Guard Bureau.

About a third of the $21 billion is to replace equipment consumed by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and peacekeeping assignments. The remainder is money that`s needed to close the gap from years of intentional underfunding, Blum said. 'I am not talking about the icing on the cake. That`s the cake,' he said.

The National Guard is not the only U.S. military service in the hole: the active U.S. Army needs about $17 billion, and the Marine Corps between $12 and $15 billion, according to service officials. But the Guard is in worse shape, said Blum. 'The equipment situation is more dire, more exaggerated. We started off in a deeper deficit than they did,' he said.

The Army leadership has committed to funding the Guard`s $21 billion deficit over the next five years, Blum said.

The active Army has reported that two-thirds of its units are not currently ready for battle, Blum said. The National Guard is in at least as much trouble, he said. The soldiers and airmen are experienced, healthy and young, but their equipment is in bad repair or non-existent. Much has been left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for fresh troops to fall in on. This saves time and the cost of moving new equipment, but it also means units return home without resources to train on or with which to respond to a national emergency.

The staggering price tag for restoring readiness come on top of the money already spent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Operation Noble Eagle, the stepped up military patrols in the United States. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service estimate the cost of those efforts since 2001 at between $430 and $440 billion.

The National Security Advisory Group, a Democratic policy organization headed by former Defense Secretary William Perry, said in a report issued Tuesday 'the bottom line is that our Army currently has no ready, strategic reserve. Not since the Vietnam era and its aftermath has the Army`s readiness been so degraded.'

The National Guard was created to be that strategic reserve: in the event of a major war, it would backfill and supplement the active-duty military. Because it was conceived as a force on the backburner, when resources have been scarce, it would often get the short end of the stick.

'It`s a bigger problem in the Guard because it was under resourced deliberately. That was the national strategy. The strategy never changed,' Blum said. 'We both have the same symptoms, but (the Guard) has a higher fever.'

The policies, regulations and practices that govern the National Guard is out of whack with how it has actually been used.

'My organization was set up under a 1947 construct and it hasn`t been adjusted since then,' Blum said.

The National Guard matches almost man for man the number of active duty soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan at any one time, essentially doubling the size of the active military for full-time duty abroad and in the United States.

Five years ago, critics questioned whether the National Guard was relevant anymore, given the demise of the Soviet Union and other traditional threats. That has changed, Blum said.

'The worst thing they can call us is `essential; and overused,`' he said. 'In the last six years we have transformed from a strategic reserve to a no-kidding operational force... If we didn`t have an army or air national guard we would have to invent one. The Guard today is doing every single mission that can possibly be done.'

'My frustration is that policy and regulations and resourcing models were built largely for a strategic reserve. That is inconsistent with what we are doing and what we re being asked to do,' he said.

Blum said he saw a growing niche for the Guard in high-technology, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles as surveillance and combat platforms and in information warfare, attacking enemy networks and protecting U.S. networks.

But he said he was resisting efforts to reduce the size of the Guard to pay for equipment resetting. The Air National Guard was encouraged to cut personnel by about 15 percent to free up money for weapons -- the approach the active duty Air Force is taking -- but Blum declined, citing the need for surge capabilities and emerging missions, like UAVS.

'I didn`t think that was the best way to do that because we don`t know what the capabilities are (going to need to be in the future). Once you take people out, it`s very hard to make adjustments in the near term,' he said. 'With the Air National Guard there will be not dramatic reduction in manpower in the near term. There may be some adjustments in the skill sets we deliver.'

The Army National Guard faces other issues. The Army Department has vowed to fund as many Guardsman as the National Guard can recruit -- it`s now at 340,000 and will be at 350,000 by September. But Army budget documents only finance 324,000 over the next five years. The difference in cost of those payrolls is $788 million a year, according to Mark Allen, a spokesman for the National Guard. How that funding gap will be closed is unclear.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International