27Dec03-Philip Dine-Army admits it has deliberately shortchanged Guard on gear
By PHILIP DINE
Post-Dispatch
12/27/2003
WASHINGTON - The deployment to Iraq of a combined Illinois-Iowa National Guard Chinook unit without required anti-missile defenses did not reflect an oversight or lack of coordination between the Guard and the Army.
Rather, it was the consequence of decisions made years ago by the Army to buy only a portion of the Guard's air defense equipment, senior Guard leaders say.
To save money, and assuming that Guard units were unlikely to be deployed in great numbers or face hostile action, Army officials ordered just 50 percent of the ALQ-156 flare-launching systems actually needed for the Guard's fleet of Chinooks.
"A conscious decision was made not to buy as many as we need," said Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, director of the Army National Guard. "It's a decision that has some level of risk with it."
Concerns about the equipping of Guard units have been heightened since one of the Illinois-Iowa unit's helicopters was shot down Nov. 2, killing 16 soldiers. That helicopter did not have newer defensive equipment effective against the shoulder-fired missiles believed to have brought the aircraft down.
In separate interviews, Army officials acknowleged the Guard's assertions and said senior Army leaders have made it an "imperative" to address the equipment shortfall for Guard units as soon as possible.
The Army had no choice but to deliberately "only field so much" for the Guard in past years, given competing demands by active-duty forces, an Army official at the Pentagon, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late last week.
"You have all these war plans on the shelf, and based on these plans, you ask, 'Who do you think is going to deploy?' They'll likely get more resources than a Reserve component somewhere. That decision has to be made, because there is only so much stuff to go around," the Army official said.
The fact that the Illinois-Iowa unit was mobilized with just two of its 14 Chinook helicopters fully outfitted with aircraft survivability equipment didn't surprise the Guard leadership, said Maj. Gen. Walter Pudlowski, acting deputy director of the Army National Guard.
"There are shortages. We flat know that," Pudlowski said. "Somebody, someday, someplace said: 'We're going to accept some risk. We'll authorize the planes but not the equipment.'"
Monthly status reports from Guard units before the war with Iraq made it clear that some lacked Chinook defensive gear or other essential equipment, Schultz said.
Schultz and Pudlowski spoke during a 90-minute interview earlier this month at the National Guard Bureau Readiness Center in Arlington, Va. They were accompanied by officials who handle logistics, aircraft and related matters.
Bob Godwin, deputy director of aviation for the Army National Guard, said the Illinois-Iowa unit's hasty mobilization, done in a couple of days, led to a frenetic search for the anti-missile systems up to the time of deployment. "All of our units are short the gear," he said.
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee "has dictated that that problem get rectified as quickly as possible," a second Army official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity. He defended the procurement decisions, which he said extended to other areas of Guard equipment, as the best allocation of resources at the time.
"Resources aren't infinite," the Army official said. "Based on looking into the crystal ball, that's what you have to do."
Guard's altered role
What Army planners could not foresee was the dramatic change in use of the Guard, as a result of increased U.S. interventions or peacekeeping missions around the world, and particularly since the war on terrorism began two years ago.
Until then, Guard deployments were relatively infrequent and short, and with enough notice so equipment could be transferred among units to fill shortfalls. Also, Guard missions were often well behind the front lines, where active-duty units fought and thus needed the best equipment.
"It made sense then," Schultz said, "when we could say we may call you, but we're not going to call you early, or if we call you, you'll have time to get ready."
But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the tempo, duration and dangers of deployment, first in Afghanistan then in Iraq, have sharply risen - outpacing the military's ability to adjust the equipping of the Guard.
"We tipped the world upside down," Schultz said. "The system has not caught up with reality. We're a little out of sequence. Readiness across the Guard is not something I'm happy with. The last couple of years, we've called the Guard up in ways some of us never anticipated. We called some units on very short notice, packed them out for the ports in a couple of days."
The result: Soldiers with the Illinois-Iowa unit being pressed into service for months without gear so vital that Army policy - though not always practice - rates its absence an "automatic mission-abort criteria." More broadly, a growing chorus of complaints has arisen about inadequate - and unequal - Guard equipment, whether body armor or night vision goggles.
The combination of rapid deployments and equipment shortfalls means that some Guard units arriving in a war zone have had to try to wrangle equipment from departing units - as happened with the Illinois-Iowa Chinook unit, which got several anti-missile systems from a California helicopter unit leaving Iraq. But that doesn't always produce the best fit of equipment.
In addition, not only can't the homebound unit properly train for the next mission, key equipment is degraded faster by being used around the clock and improperly maintained.
"The recapitalization of this equipment is a hidden cost of the war in Iraq," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., an Army veteran who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The hours these helicopters are being flown, the miles the vehicles are being driven - these are huge costs that are being incurred there and that are not being fully recognized by anybody, frankly.
"We no longer have the luxury of saying the Guard units are going to have six months to train, or that we have excess equipment in their inventory because they're not going to be deployed right away. We have changed in a dramatic way the use of the Guard," Reed said.
The issue of equipping the National Guard is likely to intensify. Guard members will, by spring, assume a larger share of the U.S. presence in Iraq under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's troop rotation plan. And the war on terrorism has no end in sight.
"This is a major problem," said Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., a senior defense appropriator and co-chairman of the Senate National Guard and Reserve Caucus. "It goes not only to the safety of our soldiers in theater now, but also to their retention rate. If you can't support our troops when they're in combat, they're not going to want to re-enlist when it comes time.
"I don't care too much whose fault it is. We need to solve it darn fast."
Yet, doing so will be a challenge because it requires tackling two distinct but related elements:
The practical issue of funding and, given the post-Cold War consolidation of the defense industry, of ramping up production.
The philosophical matter of the evolving nature of war and threats to the United States, and the Guard's appropriate role in that context.
Tom Donnelly, military expert at the American Enterprise Institute and former policy director for the House Armed Services Committee, said: "This is a budget-driven deal. These guys are farther down the food chain."
But no sensible changes in budgets or equipment can be made without addressing how the Guard fits into the new environment, including Rumsfeld's transformation to a lighter, more agile military, Donnelly added.
"It should all be revisited if you're going to continue to rely on the National Guard to play an expanded role in the Middle East and places like that. As soon as possible - and it's already overdue - there has to be a serious rethinking. This should have happened after Sept. 11, and it certainly should happen now."
Question of support
Maj. Gen. Gus L. Hargett, commander of the Tennessee National Guard, is chairman of the National Guard Association of the United States, which represents Guard members. He also advises the secretary of the Army on Reserve policy.
Hargett spoke recently with two members of the Guard's 1175th Transportation Company from Tennessee, who carry soldiers between Kuwait and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
He related: "One of them told me: 'In Desert Storm, I was an active guy. I never knew until now that the Guard and Reserves got treated so differently. We have been promised and promised and promised body armor, and nothing's happened. Meanwhile, we're hauling active-duty guys just arriving in country - with body armor.'"
Insufficient radar equipment or other major gear for Guard units is bad enough, Hargett said, but he can't accept the failure to meet "the basic needs of soldiers" - such as proper uniforms, boots, cold weather gear.
"We sent people over without the desert camouflage. We were told they would get them when they got over there. Some did, some didn't," Hargett said.
John Goheen, chief spokesman for the National Guard Association, said "the perception of many of the units over there is, they're not as important as their active-duty counterparts."
"A soldier needs to believe in his heart that his chain of command is taking care of him, doing all they can so he can complete his mission, and survive."
New kind of warfare
Conventional distinctions between front-line and rear-echelon troops have been blurred in the war on terrorism. Shadowy foes hiding among the population often seem to be targeting forces deemed less battle-ready and more vulnerable.
That heightens the concern over inequities of protective equipment.
"In all likelihood," Goheen said, "the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was the last time in our lifetimes that you'll see another force take on U.S. forces in symmetrical fighting, mechanized force vs. mechanized force. Our advantages in training, technology and communications really make that impossible. Our foes in Iraq realize that you don't want to tangle with our combat troops, with the infantry. You want to tangle with the supply lines, with the convoys.
"So everybody goes over as a combatant, and everybody has to be able to protect himself," Goheen said.
Maj. Gen. William Nash, first commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, said equipment gaps were manageable as recently as in Bosnia but not in terrorist environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
And manpower requirements for the campaign against terrorism, including postwar stabilization, raise questions about the shift away from a traditional, heavy force, said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., of the House Armed Services Committee.
"What is very clear is that the war on terrorism is intensely labor-intensive. We know that we are completely burning through the Guard and Reserves," she said. "How do we find a way to level the playing field when it comes to armaments, munitions, tactical equipment, communications equipment?"
Reporter Philip Dine
E-mail: pdine@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 202-298-6880
stltoday.com |
