TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061091/0610100.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10KB | 208 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 18

LESSONS OF DESERT STORM

Phantom Army


For the most part the National Guard fought well in the gulf. But
some outfits, plagued by no-shows and poor training, never got to
the front.

By ALEX PRUD'HOMME -- Reported by Kristina Rebelo and Bruce van
Voorst/Washington


    Few institutions are as quintessentially American as the
National Guard. Founded by the colonists in 1607, blooded in the
Revolution as the Minutemen, the Guard has served in every major
U.S. conflict, and acts as a first line of defense when natural
disasters strike. The 574,000 Guard members enrolled in 4,000
units are the military's link to civilian society: part-time
soldiers who are supposed to devote a minimum of 12 weekends and
one two-week period each year to prepare themselves for battle.

    Since 1973, when the Pentagon abandoned the draft and
installed the all-volunteer armed forces, the Guard, along with
the armed forces reserves, has assumed a more central role in
military planning. The Defense Department's Total Force policy
is designed to have units of the Air National Guard and reserves
and Army Guard support troops available for quick deployment;
in the event of a war lasting more than a few weeks,
heavy-combat Guard and reserve units would be called up to round
out divisions of the regular Army. Based on the military's
commitment to Total Force, Congress has poured more than $100
billion into training the Guard and equipping its troops during
the past decade.

    The strategy got its first real test in Op eration Desert
Storm, when 228,500 Guard members and reservists were called up
for active duty in the biggest mobilization since the Korean
War. More than 100,000 of these part-time soldiers were sent to
the Persian Gulf, while the remainder filled in Stateside for
the departing regular forces.

    The gulf deployment showed the best, and the worst, of the
weekend warriors. Air National Guard fighters and attack planes
knocked out Iraqi tanks, and the Air Reserve conducted a huge
airlift of troops and materiel. A force composed of the Marine
Reserve blasted through Saddam Hussein's defenses and led the
way to Kuwait City.

    At the same time, though, the Army encountered major
difficulties in deploying its National Guard troops. Several
thousand Guard members on the rosters could not be sent to the
gulf because they had not attended basic training. Some were too
old, others overweight and out of shape. A full 5% suffered from
dental problems that needed treatment.

    Far more alarming was the attempted mobilization of three
so-called round-out brigades, each of which had been scheduled
to augment a regular Army division. Although the Pentagon had
given all the units a C-2 rating, its second highest standard
of battle readiness, the three brigades -- totaling 15,000,
one-fourth of the Army Guard members summoned to active duty --
were declared unfit for combat by regular Army commanders and
could not be sent to the gulf.

    Those failures have ignited an angry debate between the
Pentagon, which wants to reduce the number of standby soldiers,
and the weekend warriors' supporters in Congress. The dispute
has become acrimonious because the Guard, the reserves and the
regular armed forces are all fighting for a share of a defense
budget that will shrink 20% during the next four years. The
Guard's defenders accuse the Department of Defense of having
kept the Guard and reserves out of the fray so that regular
units could get more than a fair share of future appropriations.
"The Pentagon took the position that they simply weren't going
to use combat reserves," says Mississippi Democrat G.V.
("Sonny") Montgomery, the reserves' leading champion in the
House. "That's not the Total Force concept Congress had in
mind."

    Military leaders retort that rushing unprepared troops
into action would have been irresponsible. Says Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney: "I feel very strongly we would have run
the risk of getting a lot of people killed unnecessarily if we
sent units ((to the gulf)) before they were ready." Cheney
argues that a balanced reduction in the overall strength of the
armed services will require cutbacks in the Guard and reserves:
"If we're going to cut active-duty personnel, and we are -- the
Army's going from 18 active to 12 active divisions -- I don't
need as many reservists and Guardsmen to back them up." Some of
the duties the Guard now performs could be transferred to
regular units, a prospect that raised alarms on Capitol Hill.
Over Cheney's objections, the House voted two weeks ago to add
$650 million to the $18 billion the Pentagon had requested for
the Guard and reserves in 1992. It also voted to trim a planned
cutback in Guard and reserve strength from 108,000 to 37,500.

    However the argument over funding is resolved, Desert
Storm illuminated shortcomings, especially in the Army National
Guard, that must be corrected if the weekend warriors are to
play an effective role in the nation's defense. The problems
fall into three overlapping categories:



    Lack of Readiness. Over the past three years, the
government's General Accounting Office has issued several
reports about slipshod training and severe shortages of
equipment in Guard units around the country. Among the items
listed in the GAO's February 1991 study: during a training
exercise, one unit had only 40% of the chemical-warfare
equipment it needed; a helicopter battalion was unable to
practice because it was given only two usable antitank missiles
for live-fire exercises; and an infantry battalion received only
19 of the 60 TOW missiles it had requested. All too often, the
GAO reported, Guard units have failed to acquire combat skills
because their training exercises are so unrealistic. Most
disheartening, the agency concluded, few improvements have been
made since similar problems were detected in 1989.



    Absenteeism. Critics of the Guard have long charged that
the ranks of some units have been artificially swollen with
"ghosts" -- phantom soldiers who remain on the payroll even
though they have missed more than the nine drills allowed by
Pentagon regulations. "The Guard has people who show up for two
or three drills, and they're never taken off the books," says
John Womack, who retired as adjutant general of the Montana
National Guard in 1980. "They're kept on the records as long as
they can be, so when their strength figures go to Washington,
they're still on the books."



    Sagging Morale. The Desert Storm call-up confronted many
in the Guard with an obligation they thought they would never
have to fulfill: abruptly leaving their jobs and families to
march off to war. Untold numbers of recent recruits had enlisted
mainly for the pay and never expected to face combat. Moreover,
since many Guard units are assigned to logistical and other
support duties needed to transport the massive amounts of
military supplies sent to the gulf back to the U.S., they were
forced to remain in the war zone long after virtually all the
regular troops were sent home. Not until two weeks ago did the
Defense Department announce specific departure dates for the
remaining units. Over the years the Defense Department has tried
to alleviate these problems, and in fact considerable progress
has been made. Some Guard units received the latest tanks and
infantry fighting vehicles before comparable regular soldiers
did.

    But often these attempts at reform run into a hard
political reality: unlike the reserves, which are controlled
directly by the Pentagon, National Guard units are
constitutionally protected creatures of the states and
territories where they maintain their headquarters. Unless the
President calls them up, Guard units are at the command of
Governors, who also choose their senior officers. It is almost
impossible for an officer to become a state adjutant general
without being a master of politics.

    All that tends to create a climate in which cronyism and
favoritism can flourish. In addition, the Guards are a potent
force in local and congressional elections; the lawmakers who
support hefty budgets for units filled with their constituents
don't like to be told by critics that the money is not being
well spent. On top of that, some Guard officers fear that a
determined drive to raise attendance and training standards
could lead to massive disgruntlement in the ranks and a wave of
resignations. Says Colonel Patrick Garvey, commander of Camp
Smith, a Guard facility in Peekskill, N.Y.: "In reality, it's
an all-volunteer force based in the home community. If ((the
troops)) are not happy, if they don't like the game, they'll go
home."

    Balanced against those negatives is a fact of enormous
importance in an era of federal austerity: on average, it costs
only one-fourth as much to train an Army Guard member as it does
to train a full-time soldier. That point was forcefully made
last month in a letter to Cheney signed by 54 Senators from both
parties. They charged that the Defense chief's plans to downsize
the Guard "fail to recognize ((its)) cost-effectiveness . . .
and, in effect, discards the Total Force policy at the precise
time it has proven successful."

    The real question is what mix of regular and backup forces
the U.S. needs for the challenges of the post-cold war era.
Most foreign policy experts predict that future wars will be
like the one in the gulf: intensely violent regional flare-ups
that will play out in a matter of months at most. In those
circumstances, it makes little sense to rely on large numbers
of part-time soldiers, especially ground troops, who cannot be
readied for combat before the fighting is over. But if the
experts are wrong and the nation finds itself bogged down in a
protracted struggle, it cannot afford to be without deep
reserves. Whatever its numbers, the Guard must be better
prepared than it is today to carry out its mission.