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US Military Unprepared for Attack on Country?
By Charlie
So sayeth a “report,” which I will discuss and dissect:
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job, according to a report.
Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday.
OK, let me give you some reality here: when a Guard unit becomes “combat ready” it gets sent to combat. Units are either preparing to leave, deployed, or resetting from deployment –that’s it. So unless a unit is preparing to leave, it isn’t going to be classified as combat ready. I get the “88%” that is quoted here, assuming 1/3 of the operational force is prepping to mob, 1/3 is overseas, and 1/3 is just returning and resetting –allowing for headquarters units and other rear-D elements, the 88% makes sense to me. Moving on:
Punaro, a retired Marine Corps major general, had sharp criticism for Northern Command, saying that commanders there have made little progress developing detailed response plans for attacks against the homeland."NorthCom has got to get religion in this area," said Punaro. He said the military needs to avoid "pickup game" type responses, such as the much-criticized federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina, and put in place the kind of detailed plans that exist for virtually any international crisis.
Whoa! Throw on the breaks. I was in the Katrina relief operation, and although the federal reaction to the disaster was “much-criticized”, the Guard’s response was nothing short of brilliant. At the end of the deployment, the TAG of Mississippi had to turn away the troops there to help. At the end of the mission, we had enough boots on the ground to successfully execute a follow-on mission to invade Mexico. “Pick-up” game responses are how situations are solved in the real world, because you can’t have a plan to react to every conceivable contingency, it just isn’t possible.
Do we actually want contingency plans for a F-5 Tornado strike on Kansas City followed by an outbreak of Swine Flu with a crowd and riot control element to be specifically codified? How would it even work? We’ve got an F-5 Tornado and a Swine Flu plus rioters in Kansas City –its OPPLAN 31 Bravo 5! Execute! Just like we planned!
No, in reality, the introduction of the Incident Command System is a much more realistic way to handle disasters – a simple, very flexible structure that is universal to civilian and military command structures, and one that can be used in a wide range of disasters or terrorist attacks. Let’s continue with this article:
He also underscored the commission's main finding: the Pentagon must move toward making the National Guard and Reserves an integral part of the U.S. military.The panel, in its No. 1 recommendation, said the Defense Department must use the nation's citizen soldiers to create an operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation, respond to crises and supplement the active duty troops in combat.
Wow, that’s a leap. How is that in any way different to what the Guard is doing now? It has been my experience that the National Guard and Reserves ARE an integral part of the U.S. military. Studies like these continue to confuse me, because they tend to latch on to meta-narratives (Katrina was a disaster) and ignore the current problems that the Guard actually has (lower levels of training, high OPTEMPO, bad work/life balance for civilian careers).
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Comments
It sounds more like this general is thinking too much like a bureaucratic staff officer. He's forgetting the old maxim "if you defend everything, you defend nothing". And just because Katrina relief was "much criticized" doesn't mean it was right or wrong. It just means that armchair quarterbacks bitched about it. Let's remember that 9/11 (and to lesser extent, Katrina) was the worst case scenario we'd face. Can't plan for everything, folks. We can, however, react to it in a positive manner- like the emergency and military services did after the initial attacks on that September day.
Also, keep in mind that alot of people in the public don't know the logistics of the military; they assume it's already fully deployed and intact, in one piece. They also assume that the military can wave a magic wand and cure everything upon deploying. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I blame the media culture for expecting microwave instant security coziness.
The Hurricane Katrina relief effort by the U.S. Military was the most successful relief effort in U.S. history.
Not that anyone even knows that, since the media mantra has always been "Katrina disaster".
This report is an excellent example of trying to expand the fiefdom and the budget. Remember that the Guard belongs to the states unless it is in Title 10 status.
Making the Guard "all Federal all the time" and tied closer to the Active Army will be reeeeaaal popular with the TAGs and the Governors, and arguable make them less able to do emergency relief work - combat skills are not often the first thing needed in an emergency.
After finsihing the new book about the 69th New York and its unflinching look at their experiences in the years before 9/11 and thir service at Ground Zero, Iraq and Katrina, I am more than satisfied that there are enough capable dedicated O6's and below -- especially the ribrock senior NCOs to make the NG effective when called upon.
By the way -- it is also a pretty goofd read!
Bob
Then we'll do away with that irksome posse comitatus restriction and jump start the war on drugs...
It seems to me that the Guard has fufilled its mission. They are as ready as they need to be. If we need a bigger, full time military, we ought to fund one.
"National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday."
Okay. What "fight" are we talking about?
On one hand is prolonged combat ops half way around the world, while on the other hand we are talking invasion across our national borders. Prepared to fight takes on a whole new meaning considering the circumstance.
What I liked about the report were the recommendations (none original) to have portable retirement; and changing the promotion system; and getting rid of up-or-out.
What I serious with large doses of salt: National Guard and Reserve reports. The folks reporting these items are very political - as Guard, they owe allegiance to the TAG and to the Governor (except when Federalized) and there's been a push these last few years to depict the Guard as underfunded, undermanned, trained, and equipped (there's some truth in all of these assertions).
The Army Reserve has too many issues to even start a list here, but yes - they're hurting. Maybe if they got rid of the dead wood, say - all of those in the rank above LTC, things would start to work. The Reserves are too tied to the Regulars and their nasty habit of sugar-coating everything.
My two cents...
I don't know if I read the same report the other commenters did. My impression was they were trying to improve the treatment of the Guard and Reserve by the active forces as well as DoD. We all know the Guard and Reserve have been overtasked and underfunded for many years. The report makes recommendations to give the Guard and Reserve the resources they need to train with modern equipment, maintain it, and be ready for a variety of missions. It also attempts to redress the inequities in pay and benefits, although I don't agree with doing it by taking away from the active duty.
DaveO,
Up or Out is necessary to avoid stagnation and more dead wood, honestly.
>>>
JV,
One of the broken aspects of activating National Guard are silly rules like if you are on federal duty for less than 180 days (or whatever time frame) you do not recieve get full benefits. (Benefits to reserve forces are improving, slowly.)
We also need to enforce the rules regarding people returning to work after activation. Individually, National Guard and Reserve people rarely are paid enough in civilian+military status to maintain any kind of livelihood when faced with extended duty rotations. I'm not whining about this, well maybe I am, simply pointing out that this seriously limits the people who can properly participate.
You also hit on units being over tasked. The over-tasking primarily impacts things like keeping good people while they try to maintain primary civilian employment.
They only way I know to address this is to have more fulltime National Guard members where we would normally have M-day folks. But this is expensive. And if we could afford more fulltime reserves, would we not be better of increasing the fulltime active forces?
The best NG training I received was in real training with active duty forces. But we had some great unit level training also. The thing you hit on is resource to train properly. And there just isn't enough money in the world to do that the way we would want.
Here are a few other things going on right now that are applicable to the argument. The guard is going through transformation in a lot of states right now, so in a lot of units MTOE equipment is far from being fully deployed. This exacerbates the effect of wear on gear and stuff being left in theater on the National Guard's readiness, but will probably decline as a driver of adverse material readiness in the next few years.
From a people stand point, the guard has more combat experience floating around in the NCO abd junior officer channels since about any time other than Valley Forge (maybe hight of WWII as well). Retention has been fair, but is maybe a little worrisome on the officer side.
The current optempo sucks, but then again, I'd rather sweat in training.
As mentioned, covering all the NorthCom contingencies is impossible, especially since almost all have a political element that will almost always ensure things are really FUBAR before the RC or AD actually get involved at the operational level. One of my big gripes about being in the national guard is that so often we are called out just to make a political statement, with no real mission envisioned. To me its like, "hey, our constitee_ents (pronounce like in Oh Brother Where Art Though) are illed, let's call out the guard." "What should we have them do boss?" "I don't know, make something up and let's see that press release ASAP." We're all about mobilization, but politics seriously hampers any realistic employment of our capabilities in support of cintigencies at home.
Just my $.02
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Punaro is a fat piece of crap who was promoted to general in the reserves because he had congressional connections. Who cares what he thinks? The National Guard is busy kicking ass and taking names in Iraq and AF. If the blue ribbon panels want more homeland defense and first res[ponder capability, give the boy scouts and red cross more money and a bigger mission.