The Pentagon will ask Congress next month to reduce the authorized strength of the Guard from 350,000 soldiers to 333,000, to transform six Guard combat brigades into support units and to decrease the planned number of active-duty Army and Guard combat brigades from 77 to 70.
Some members of Congress oppose the changes, but honestly, I can't take them seriously. I was in the Guard. I like the Guard. But the Guard is politically connected and local concerns can trump national security here:
Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a letter last week that he was concerned about any reduction of combat force, "especially during time of war."
"We will oppose ... cuts to the National Guard in order to ensure the Guard maintains a robust capability needed to respond to crises at home [and] fight and win the war on terror abroad," Sens. Christopher S. Bond, a Missouri Republican, and Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, wrote in a separate letter to Rumsfeld. Bond and Leahy are co-chairmen of the Senate's National Guard Caucus.
The National Governors Association also opposes the Army plan because of fears that reductions in Guard strength would imperil national security and hamper the ability of states to respond to natural disasters. Governors control Guard units in their states unless the units are called to federal duty by the president.
The Guard is needed to augment the active forces so I have little sympathy for the desire to keep the Guard tied to home. If state governors are so concerned about local needs they can fund state defense forces and the federal government won't stop them. These are citizen-soldiers, remember.
The idea to change Guard combat brigades to support units actually predates 9-11, so is nothing new. There are some misconceptions about whether the Guard is being cut or increased. This Army press conference provides some explanation. But it needs explaining itself.
The information on the Guard brigades changes:
Now in regards to the Guard specifically, if you look at the current baseline plan -- let's take the baseline plan of 2005. The baseline plan for 2005 called for a total of 106 brigades for the National Guard, a mixture of brigade combat teams which do the war fighting and complemented by a number of multifunctional and functional support brigades. The number in the baseline plan was 106. The number today is 106. There is no change in the number of National Guard brigades.
Now what we did was in both as a result of the QDR and the continuing thinking about the challenges of the 21st century, we decided that we would rebalance the mix of those brigades so that in keeping in mind that the Guard's mission is twofold. They have an overseas operational mission, which, by the way, they performed extremely well in 2005, and they have the homeland defense mission. So they need a capability that's somewhat different than the active component, which is more fighting either conventional or nonconventional, nontraditional, irregular warfare. So we decided that it's appropriate to adjust the number of brigade combat teams. The baseline plan had 34. We decided that we would make that 28, which, by the way, is an increase from the number of enhanced brigades they had in the Guard, which was 15, and we would increase the number of so-called combat support brigades, and these are brigades that have MPs, engineers, chemical, air defense, civil affairs, very appropriate for homeland defense missions.
So we increased those number -- kept the number the same, at 106. So there's no cut in force structure of the Guard at all.
Let's be clear here. One, we are converting six Guard combat brigades to other units like MPs and engineers for example. So we will have 28 combat brigades instead of 34 in the Guard. The 34 number is already a reduction from the 42 that we had not too long ago. Those units were also converted to support units. So this is a long-standing trend following the Cold War.
Second, in the recent past, only the 15 enhanced separate brigades were considered as a source of combat units. The remainder weren't really even part of our war plans. They were a deep bench as a strategic reserve. Now, all 28 Guard brigades will be at the "enhanced" status and made ready for rapid mobilization.
So in a way our Guard brigade strength is going up when you consider the units we can realistically expect to be ready for war in short order is going from 15 to 28.
But our overall combat strength is going down from 42 total combat brigades not long ago, to 34 today, to 28 in the near future.
Plus, our total Army brigades will be at 70 (42 active and 28 Guard), which is largely unchanged from the 33 active and 42 reserve (75 total) we used to have not many years ago. While a slight decrease overall, we are going from 33 active and 15 Guard brigades quickly deployable (48) to 42 active and 28 Guard brigades quickly deployable (70).
And since total strength will stay roughly the same, the governors will still have the same number of troops on hand for disaster mobilization.
So is the Guard combat capability shrinking or expanding? I guess it all depends on what you want to emphasize. But these citizen-soldiers will be more closely intertwined with the active component as real team members.
