Lessons of Desert Storm Phantom Army

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 Operation 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.