I wanted to mention one more thing in reference to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean’s appearance on ABC’s This Week yesterday. Dr. Dean mentioned that in withdrawing troops from Iraq priority would be given to bringing National Guard units home. Is this possible or practical?
My understanding is that starting in the mid-1970’s and accelerating in the 1990’s many U. S. military capabilities were deliberately moved from the regular army to the National Guard. These include specialties essential to any sort of ongoing mission in Iraq of whatever size. That means that removing National Guard units from the mix would have the potential of crippling the total force.
Perhaps some reader who’s more knowledgeable in this than I might comment.
It used to be that most active divisions had a “roundout” brigade in the Guard, so that they had two active-duty brigades and one reserve. The theory was that this kept the infrastructure for a larger military in place without having to pay for all those active units. When the balloon went up, the active units would go over immediately and be joined by the reserve unit as soon as possible.
The problem with that theory, as they discovered during the first Gulf War, is that the Guard units simply were not combat ready, even after months of intensive full-time training.
So what’s happened since then is that the combat power in active divisions is almost exclusively active duty troops, but a lot of support functions have been transferred to the Army Reserve. Many of those functions are important to the proper operating of the division, but don’t require quite as intense field training as combat troops.
Meanwhile, state National Guards are organized into their own units, including combat units.
So withdrawing Guard units would hamper things only to the extent that you’re withdrawing some combat power. Withdrawing Reserve units would have more of a direct effect on the active-duty combat units.
FWIW, the Army is moving toward a Brigade Combat Team organization that somewhat dilutes the importance of divisional designations. Brigades get deployed, not divisions, and each Brigade is supposed to be a self-sufficient fighting force — though divisional staff would provide high-level coordination and support. I’m not entirely sure how reserve units will play into it. I *think* Guard units will be organized into Guard BCTs, and Reserve units will continue to provide support functions for the active-duty BCTs.
Scroll down this link:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/usar.htm
to the chart that shows the USAR core competencies and what percentage of them belong to the reserve. Actually, the whole thing is worth reading as it gives a good overview of structural changes in the Army Reserve.
Thanks, Andy. OOddly, I had scanned through Global Security in preparing this post but somehow missed this particular info. It’s exactly what I was looking for.
Given my limited understanding it appears that the competencies in the Guard are exactly those most needed for a continuing presence in Iraq. We won’t be staging set-piece battles there.
Dave, I think you’re mixing up the Guard and the Reserve. Andy’s link deals with the Reserve, which as I mentioned does indeed provide many crucial support functions.
Thanks, Sean, you’re right. I was half-asleep when I wrote that comment. I worked on the election for 15 hours yesterday and wrote that comment on five hours of sleep.