More than two-thirds of the Army National Guard's 34 brigades are not combat ready, mostly because of equipment shortages that will cost up to $21 billion to correct, the top National Guard general said Tuesday.
The active Army, too, has similar problems though every unit in Iraq or Afghanistan is good to go.
First, the Guard. Back when the Guard had 42 brigades, only the fifteen enhanced readiness brigades were trained or equipped well enough to be called ready for war. So percentage-wise, the situation is not much different. The goal for the future is that the Guard will always have 4 or 5 of 28 brigades ready for deployment with Guard combat brigades on a six year training cycle. So even with full funding, not all Guard brigades will be ready for combat. In part, this story is about leveraging money from Congress for the Guard. In part it is just a consequence of being at war. In part, it is a real problem. So address it but don't panic.
As for the Army, back in the late 1990s when not at war, there was serious discussion of establishing tiered readiness for our ten active divisions so that only a few would be rated as fully ready for combat. Others that wouldn't deploy for months in a crisis would have lower readiness. Even under the planned force generation model for the future, a third of the active Army would be standing down from war or availability for war and thus be unready as they discharge members, repair and replace equipment, and send troops to school. Another third would be getting ready to go (and could be accelerated in a crisis), and the last third would be in the field or on call. So again, having active units unready is natural as units are rotated out of war zones. Budget cycles call, in part, too.
I do think we are cutting it too close with equipment but this is a problem and not a crisis. Units coming home from Iraq wouldn't be ready for war even with 100% of their equipment sitting in the bases.
Address the issue. Don't panic over it.
