Hollow Reserves

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have put enormous strains on all of the men and women of the United States military. The last seven years have been especially hard on those serving in the National Guard and other reserve forces, who too often have had to shortchange their families, finances and careers to accommodate lengthy, repeated and unexpected tours of active duty overseas. Many are tired and demoralized.

American communities that depend on the National Guard to provide the first line of domestic defense are also being shortchanged. The years of prolonged overseas deployments have stretched Guard units dangerously thin and left the Guard with barely 60 percent of the equipment it needs to carry out its basic missions. That raises serious doubts about the Guard’s readiness to respond to either a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.

These problems arose because the Bush administration badly underestimated the number of ground troops needed to simultaneously wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has had to rely far too heavily on the National Guard and the Reserves to make up the differences.

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More than 450,000 men and women serve in the Army and Air National Guard, and somewhat less than 400,000 in the Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force Reserves. Roughly half a million of these part-time soldiers have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan — many for more than one tour. At one point in 2005, nearly half the United States front-line fighting forces in Iraq, and more than half in Afghanistan, came from the Guard and the Reserves.

Those percentages have come down since Robert Gates took charge of the Pentagon and began addressing the problem, in part by beginning a needed expansion — long opposed by the Bush White House — of the active-duty Army and Marine forces. But over 20 percent of American forces in Afghanistan and over 10 percent in Iraq still come from the Guard and the Reserves.

Reserve units are meant to be sent overseas, although only for limited periods in national emergencies or as part of full-scale wartime mobilizations. Most reservists, like Guard members, have civilian jobs and family economic responsibilities. Their units are generally the last in line for getting new equipment and maintaining combat readiness.

Guard units sent overseas experience similar problems. And their overuse abroad creates a dangerous void in their home states. Governors throughout history have depended on locally available, properly equipped National Guard units to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies — a mission that has become even more urgent since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Regular Army troops and military Reserve units are legally barred from domestic law enforcement duties. National Guard troops are not.

These prolonged deployments have dealt another blow to communities. In civilian life, many Guard and Reserve members serve as police officers, firefighters and emergency medics. When they are mobilized to help out the overstretched active-duty Army, they are not available to respond to emergencies at home.

Much of the Guard’s best gear has followed these soldiers overseas and stayed there. Earlier this year, the Pentagon reported that just for the Army National Guard, equipment shortfalls amounted to nearly $50 billion. Among the equipment that must be restocked are helicopters, cargo trucks, chemical decontamination gear, night vision goggles, radios and satellite communications kits. These items are essential for dealing with domestic emergencies.

In response to Congressional pressure, the most recent defense budgets have included substantially increased spending for resupplying Guard units at home and abroad. But at present rates, the Guard will still be more than 20 percent short of its equipment needs when the current resupply program ends in 2013.

The men and women who join the Guard and the Reserves understand that they are not just signing up to be weekend warriors. But there can be no excuse for the way the Pentagon has overtaxed these units over the last seven years. And there is no letup in sight.

The 21st century has already shown that America’s need for active-duty ground forces will be considerably greater than once expected, not just for war-fighting, but also for training foreign forces, peacekeeping and other missions. It has also shown that assuring the security of America’s homeland has again become an essential requirement of overall defense planning.

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The National Guard is ideally designed to reinforce homeland security. The Reserves are meant to provide America with rapidly expandable armed forces in times of unexpected, and temporary, crisis. Neither can perform these essential functions properly the way they are being used today.

Defense Secretary Gates set the right standard almost two years ago when he declared that ideally, reservists should not be mobilized for active duty more frequently than one year out of every six.

We urge President-elect Barack Obama to continue the expansion of active-duty forces. Relieving the stress on the Guard and the Reserves — allowing them to fulfill their primary missions — is one more reason why Mr. Obama must live up to his commitment for an early, orderly drawdown of troops in Iraq. The administration and Congress must also provide the National Guard with more money to accelerate its resupply efforts.

No one can predict the timing or the nature of the next domestic emergency. The country cannot afford to be caught unprepared.
NYT