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April 2006

Guard Equipment Bill Surpasses $100 Billion

By Sandra I. Erwin

A commitment by the Army to pour $21 billion into the National Guard’s procurement accounts is a reassuring first step, Guard officials say, but it is still not enough to fill equipment shortages that amount to nearly $102 billion.

With the National Guard making up 40 percent of the deployed Army force in Iraq, service leaders have been outspoken about their intent to boost procurement funding — so Guard units can be equipped with the same gear that active-duty troops receive.

“Regarding modernization for the National Guard alone, we have budgeted approximately $21 billion from 2005 to 2011, which is about a four-fold increase over the level of funding for equipment modernization from the ‘99 period,” says Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.

Previously, the Army budgeted about $5 billion for Guard procurement over a six-year spending plan. The decision to jump up to $21 billion “begins to eat into the problem,” says Army Col. Rodney Dixon, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau.

“It’s a good start, trying to overcome past under-resourcing in the Guard,” Dixon tells National Defense.

“The problem goes back decades,” he says. Consistently low budgets resulted in Guard units outfitted with obsolete equipment, such as radios that don’t talk to the rest of the Army or trucks that are too dilapidated to drive at home, let alone take to war.

“What you see in the $21 billion is money to get caught up with shortages of tactical field radios, joint network nodes for satellite communications, handheld radios, a lot of money for tactical wheeled vehicles,” says Dixon. “We are in pretty good shape with Humvees but we are way short on 2.5-ton and 5-ton medium trucks.” The same goes with night-vision goggles and night sensors for vehicles and small arms.

“We need to be interoperable” with the rest of the Army, Dixon says.

The $21 billion also buys unmanned reconnaissance aircraft for combat brigades. The goal is to equip brigades with enough stuff so they can train at their home base before deployments, he adds. “We need to cut back on post-mobilization training, which the Army force generation model seeks to do.”

Other purchases will include carbines to replace old M16 rifles, and updated machine guns. The Guard also wants to furnish its Bradley infantry armored vehicles and tanks with digital command-and-control suites. “By and large, they are things we’ve taken risk on for years,” says Dixon.

The $21 billion does not cover the cost of replacing the Guard’s fleet of Sherpa cargo aircraft. That program has been held up by bureaucratic infighting between the Army and the Air Force over which service should be in charge of tactical airlift missions. The Army budgeted $104 million in 2007 to buy the first three aircraft.

“We are all waiting for that decision so we can all move on,” Dixon says.

“The Army has done a great job resourcing Guard units tagged for deployment,” he asserts. “But it’s the units that remain back here that don’t have that equipment. We leave a lot of equipment in theater … Back here, we don’t have enough of that stuff to be able to have them deploy with their organic equipment.”

State governors also want to be assured that the Guard has enough weapons and supplies to tackle homeland security and natural disaster response missions.

The Guard views the $21 billion investment as a down payment towards an estimated $102 billion price tag that would cover the needs of 34 Guard brigades currently in the force.

Portions of that $102 billion bill already are being paid, Dixon explains. There’s the $21 billion Army commitment, in addition to $63 billion worth of existing equipment that will be kept, and not replaced. That leaves about $39 billion worth of un-funded needs.

It still remains to be seen, however, whether the Guard will get to keep its 34 combat brigades. Army leaders announced earlier this year that they would reduce the force to 28 combat brigades, and only after intense political pushback did they agree to restore the six brigades, although only as support units.

Regardless of whether the brigades serve in combat or support roles, the equipment bill will not change by much, says Dixon. “Most of the systems we are buying are for all units.”

Any proposed restructuring of the Guard appears far from a done deal. “We are going to take about a year to work through what that really means,” says Dixon. “They want us to convert six of those brigade combat teams into another structure, but until we go through the total Army analysis process, we really don’t know what the Army is going to want us to invest in.”

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