Chapter 5 - Department of the Army Historical Summary FY 1999

5.

Reserve Forces

Force Structure

The armed services have increasingly called on their reserve components to support both contingencies and routine military operations in recent years as a result of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin’s 1993 Bottom-Up Review process. Reforms initiated in the wake of the Bottom-Up Review reduced the size of the armed services and increased the role of the reserve components within them even as the end of the international stability imposed by the Cold War expanded the demand for U.S. peacekeeping, peace enforcement, training, and routine support deployments. The remaining active-component forces cannot sustain the resulting tempo of operations without augmentation and support. Reserve-component forces provide that support, binding the service components together and sharing the institutional and personal burdens of deployment. Across the Department of Defense (DOD), reserve-component forces provided 12.5 million man-days of service in FY 1999, roughly double the amount of such support provided only five years earlier. Clearly, the reserve components are an increasingly vital element of the U.S. armed services.

When required, the Army National Guard (ARNG) and Army Reserve (USAR) supply proficient units and skilled individual soldiers to support the operations of the active Army. Guard and Reserve formations ensure that the Army retains capabilities not ordinarily needed in time of peace while reducing the cost of maintaining those capabilities in the active Army. Restructuring efforts in the mid-1990s struck a new balance among the Guard, Reserve, and active Army to ensure that the entire force remains cohesive and interoperable.

Contingency planning now anticipates the involvement of Reserve-component units from the beginning of operations, an aspect of the National Military Strategy intended to continue into the objective force—the Army After Next. High-priority Guard and Reserve units furnish needed capabilities to Army forces responding early in a contingency mission. As an operation matures, a growing proportion of the forces involved come

from the reserve components, replacing deployed active-Army units, providing support, and furnishing vital skills. This enables the active Army to avoid exhaustion and preserve its ability to respond to other crises.

The Reserve Forces Policy Board guarantees that members of the National Guard and the Army Reserve receive adequate training and equipment to play those roles and smoothly integrate with active-force units. Operating at the DOD level, the board champions the interests of reservists in all branches of military service. In FY 1999, the board’s top priorities were fairness of pay and benefits, equipment appropriations, opening to reservists the personnel reliability program (which screens personnel for positions with access to nuclear materials), recruiting and retention, tax incentives for employers, and elevating the directors and chiefs of reserve components from two- to three-star rank.

Under terms of an agreement announced by Secretary Aspin in 1993, the Army Reserve is oriented toward combat service support functions, some of which are also found in the National Guard. In FY 1999, the Army Reserve provided 45 percent of the Army’s combat service support units and 26 percent of its combat support units. These organizations included all of the Army’s individual and collective training support divisions and railway units, 97 percent of its civil affairs units, 84 percent of its psychological operations units, 70 percent of its medical units, and 62 percent of its chemical and biological defense capability.

Under the same agreement, the Army National Guard provides the combat reserve of the U.S. Army while executing its traditional functions of disaster relief and emergency preparedness at the state level. Much of that combat reserve resides in the fifteen enhanced separate brigades of the Army National Guard. Defined as brigades with increased priority for personnel, equipment, and funding, those formations are capable of operating independently or as part of active-Army divisions. The Guard also provides one armored, two mechanized, one light infantry, and four infantry divisions to the Army’s total capability, in addition to other combat, combat support, and combat service support units.

Soldiers in the Army Reserve and Army National Guard are assigned to one of three manpower management categories: the Ready Reserve, the Standby Reserve, and the Retired Reserve. The Ready Reserve, the largest of the three categories, is further subdivided. Most members of the Ready Reserve form the federally recognized units of the Selected Reserve, a subcategory that also includes individual personnel serving in the active-duty Guard and Reserve. In the Army Reserve, the Selected Reserve also includes individual mobilization augmentees, skilled soldiers ready to join and support active-Army units when needed. Subject to involuntary recall as part of the Ready Reserve are former active-duty or Selected Reserve personnel remaining in the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR).

An additional component of the Ready Reserve, the inactive National Guard, consists of personnel attached to a specific reserve unit who are not required to train regularly but remain subject to mobilization, similar to members of the IRR. The second major personnel category, the Standby Reserve, is not present in the ARNG. It consists of Army reservists designated as key civilian employees or reservists who have a temporary disability or hardship. They may be ordered to active duty in time of war or national emergency if the Ready Reserve lacks sufficient personnel to meet requirements. The Retired Reserve, the last of the three major personnel categories in the reserve structure, comprises individuals who are receiving retirement pay as a result of active duty and reserve service or who have qualified for such pay but have not reached age 60. All retirees with twenty or more years of service remain subject to a call to active duty by the secretary of the Army.

The FY98 National Defense Authorization Act created a new subcategory within the IRR. Early in the deployment cycle, under the president’s selected reserve call-up authority, the secretary of defense may activate as many as thirty thousand IRR personnel in crucial military occupational specialties that have known shortfalls. Early use of reservists in such skill areas avoids widespread transfers from active Army units scheduled for later deployment. By recognizing members of the IRR in high-demand skill areas as a special subset of the Ready Reserve and granting the secretary of defense the authority to use them as such, the new legislation improved the Army’s ability to support operations and sustain readiness.

In FY 1999, personnel in all manpower management categories totaled 391,049 in the Army Reserve and 362,059 in the Army National Guard. Those figures exceed the official FY99 end strengths of 206,836 USAR personnel and 357,469 ARNG personnel because they include the Retired Reserve. Many reserve-component personnel were assigned to the organized units of their components. The number of such units that the reserve components provided to the Army at the end of FY 1999 is listed in Table 16, identified by category and as a percentage of that type in the total Army.

Army National Guard units report to one of the fifty-four adjutants general of the states—a designation that includes Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia—until mobilized into direct federal service. Those officers are appointed by the various governors or equivalent officials, subject to a federal approval process, and they exercise operational control over Guard units performing their state missions. Organized and structured to support mobilization for major conflicts, the Guard attempts to balance its responsibilities for peacetime support, crisis response, emerging missions, and wartime mobilization.

TABLE 16—ARMY NATIONAL GUARD AND ARMY RESERVE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ARMY : 30 SEPTEMBER 1999

Type of Unit	ARNG/USAR (Percent of type in total Army)	Type of Unit	ARNG/USAR (Percent of type in total Army)
Divisions (institutional training)	0/7 (100)	Armored cavalry regiments	1/0 (33)
Chemical brigades	0/3 (100)	Air defense brigades	1/0 (25)
Water supply battalions	9/2 (100)	Engineer battalions (topographical)	1/0 (25)
Enemy POW brigades	0/1 (100)	Training brigades	0/2 (25)
Judge advocate general units	0/18 (100)	Theater army area commands	0/2 (25)
Public affairs units	28/29 (82)	Air traffic battalions	2/0 (40)
Exercise divisions	0/5 (100)	Field artillery brigades	17/0 (94)
Enhanced separate brigades	15/0 (100)	Infantry scout groups	1/0 (100)
Civil affairs units	0/36 (97)	Aviation groups	5/0 (71)
Petroleum supply battalions	20/12 (92)	Air traffic groups	2/0 (50)
Medical brigades	0/6 (85)	Military intelligence battalions	14/5 (39)
Chemical battalions	0/8 (75)	Infantry divisions (mechanized)	2/0 (40)
Transportation composite groups	1/4 (80)	Army signal brigades	3/1 (20)
Motor battalions	2/12 (78)	Signal battalions	26/5 (36)
Maintenance battalions	13/5 (71)	Armor divisions	1/0 (33)
Engineer battalions (combat heavy)	14/14 (73)	Ordnance battalions	2/2 (29)
Psychological operations units	0/3 (81)	Special forces groups	2/0 (29)
Hospitals	0/3 (77)	Aviation brigades	9/1 (24)
Medical groups	0/8 (73)	Attack helicopter battalions	13/2 (45)
Engineer battalions (combat)	46/25 (70)	Area support groups	8/21 (44)
Petroleum groups	0/1 (50)	Light infantry divisions	1/0 (20)
Corps support groups	4/10 (75)	Corps support commands	1/1 (50)
Field artillery battalions	100/0 (58)	Infantry divisions	4/0 (80)

Table 16— continued on next page

TABLE 16—Continued

Type of Unit	ARNG/USAR (Percent of type in total Army)	Type of Unit	ARNG/USAR (Percent of type in total Army)
Air defense battalions	19/0 (48)	Medium helicopter battalions	3/1 (66)
Terminal battalions	0/4 (50)	Military police brigades	2/2 (43)
Military police battalions	12/19 (60)	Garrison support units	0/17 (100)
Regional support commands	0/11 (100)	HQ support elements	0/10 (100)
Eighth Army augmentation unit	0/1 (100)	USAR Small Arms Training Team	0/1 (100)
USARF school	0/1 (100)	USAR Information Processing Center	0/1 (100)

Note: ARNG = Army National Guard, HQ = headquarters, POW = prisoner of war, USAR = U.S. Army Reserve, USARF = U.S. Army Reserve Forces.

In FY 1999, the major changes in the ARNG force structure involved field artillery, air defense artillery, and homeland defense units. The Guard reorganized its self-propelled 155-mm field artillery units to better meet emerging needs. A wide-ranging air defense initiative redistributed resources from divisional batteries to higher priority enhanced separate brigade batteries. Acting in concert with the Air National Guard, the ARNG activated the first Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams. These teams, with 80 percent of their personnel gathered from the Army Guard and 20 percent from the Air Guard, respond to chemical, biological, and radiological incidents to facilitate the cooperation of local and federal responders.

The ARNG also pursued reforms intended to enhance its integration with the active component. Redesigning of Guard divisions continued the conversion of the ARNG combat force structure to a higher percentage of the combat support and combat service support forces that the Army requires to meet the demands of the National Military Strategy. The integrated division program placed six ARNG combat brigades under the oversight of two active Army divisions to facilitate the brigades’ integration and deployability. Teaming four ARNG divisions with their active Army counterparts for training purposes produced similar results. Creating multicomponent units with elements from the active component, the ARNG, the USAR, and sister services provides theater commanders with ready, integrated, and organized support. These efforts at integrating the Guard and the active component were assisted by assigning several active Army officers to command ARNG units, thereby improving understanding in both components.

Despite efforts to integrate and elevate the reserve components to coequal status with the active Army within the total force, the Army did not consistently maintain that focus during the fiscal year. Thus the ARNG’s FY99 digitization programs were not directly linked to the broader Force XXI reforms. Digitization of the Guard began in FY 1997 with the deployment of improved command-and-control, communications, computer, and intelligence systems. But formal integration of those technologies and their host units into the Force XXI structure awaited the conversion of the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) to Division XXI design and the development of the first digitized corps, III Corps, in FY 2004.

That delay was partially offset in FY 1999 by the activation of the first multicomponent unit in the U.S. Army. The 32d Air and Missile Defense Command, activated during the first quarter of the fiscal year, consists of seventy-seven active-component and 104 National Guard personnel. The active element of the 32d is based at Fort Bliss, Texas, although its reserve personnel are members of the Florida National Guard. This multicomponent unit initiative is intended to enhance total force integration, improve the resource and readiness posture of Army units, and more efficiently draw on the unique capabilities of each component.

Strength and Personnel Management

The Army Reserve’s year-end strength actually increased in comparison with that of FY 1998, climbing from 204,968 to 206,836 personnel. This represented a change from 98.5 percent to 99.4 percent of the static authorized strength of 208,000. The ARNG remained slightly over its authorized end strength, declining from 100.3 percent in FY 1998 to 100.1 percent in FY 1999. That FY99 percentage represents 357,469 personnel in a pool authorized at 357,223.

To achieve such a close correspondence between authorized and actual end strength, the National Guard closely monitored personnel trends and, when it became obvious that non–prior-service enlistments would fall short of the target, made rapid adjustments in its efforts to recruit prior-service personnel. Along the way, the Guard improved the overall quality of its non–prior-service accessions, as measured by high school graduation and performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT; itself a composite of scores from tests included in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). Potential recruits are placed into one of five categories, depending on their percentile rank among all those taking the AFQT. The categories are identified in Table 17, including the routine subdivision of category III.

Although the Guard still failed to meet the Army’s quality goals, FY99 efforts brought recruit quality substantially closer to the targets.

TABLE 17 - ARMED FORCES QUALIFICATION TEST CATEGORIES

Percentile	Category
99-93	I
92-65	II
64-50	IIIA
49-31	IIIB
30-10	IV
9-1	V

Non–prior-service recruits with high school diplomas increased by 2.0 percent over FY 1998, to 86.9 percent of the total. The improvement almost halved the difference between FY98 figures and the Army’s goal of 90 percent. All remaining new accessions obtained high school degrees through general equivalency diploma (GED) testing and similar programs. ARNG accessions from categories I to IIIA of the AFQT attained a level of 60.2 percent in FY 1999, which slightly exceeded the DOD goal of 60 percent. This fell short of the 67 percent goal set by the Department of the Army, but the Guard did finish below the 2 percent ceiling on those scoring in category IV. Only 1.7 percent of new recruits scored in that lowest acceptable category.

Reductions in the number of junior officers during the force drawdown of the mid-1990s and competition from private industry produced a continuing shortage in company-grade officers. To partially offset the shortage, a congressionally mandated Combat Officer Reform Initiative, begun in 1997, authorizes the annual release of 150 lieutenants from their final twenty-four to thirty-six months of active-component service to fulfill the rest of their service commitments in an ARNG unit. Despite this successful program, the Guard continues to suffer a shortage of officers. A number of pilot programs have been launched in the Reserve Officer Training Corps and in Officer Candidate School to increase the production of lieutenants in the ARNG, but no conclusions about their effectiveness were reached in FY 1999.

Warrant officer strength in the ARNG was even more problematic. In FY 1999, the Guard possessed only 74.3 percent of its required technical warrant strength. Even warrant officer aviator strength dipped below required levels, if only to 99.4 percent. This looming shortage in the ranks of the Guard’s technical experts is a source of concern for an increasingly sophisticated force.

In addition to warrant officers and senior noncommissioned officers, the reserve components draw heavily on the expertise and experience of

full-time support personnel. Uniformed members of the Active Guard and Reserves (AGR) join military technicians (full-time civilian employees of the reserve components subject to mobilization as uniformed members of those components as a condition of their employment) to maintain the equipment, staff the offices, and perform the many tasks necessary to maintain the readiness and deployability of the reserve components. But the full-time support levels that both the ARNG and USAR are authorized to maintain are far below their validated needs. The shortage of full-time support personnel was a major concern for leaders of the National Guard Bureau and Army Reserve during FY 1999.

Training and Readiness

Members of the active component and the civil service join AGR personnel and military technicians to meet the reserve components’ needs for full-time support. As a group, they organize, administer, recruit, train, and maintain reserve units. In FY 1999, the USAR full-time support personnel authorization fell12,895 positions (37.9 percent) short of the number required. ARNG authorizations left 18,027 required positions unfilled (27.5 percent of those needed).

Such shortages threaten force readiness. The increased operational tempo of reserve units and the growing complexity of their equipment demand high levels of maintenance and administrative support. The Guard received some measure of relief from the situation during FY 1999 in the form of an increase in AGR authorizations for colonels and sergeants major. The need for representation of full-time support personnel throughout all levels of command provided a key argument in expanding those senior-grade positions. The expansion also offered needed promotional opportunities for AGR personnel whose careers were stalled by the lack of adequate grade authorizations.

Reserve force readiness is an issue of growing concern. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the operational tempo of reserve units is adversely affecting recruiting and retention at the same time that it strains resources and maintenance capabilities. Within the Army Reserve, the recruitment and retention of health care professionals emerged as a force readiness issue even though the FY99 National Defense Authorization Act approved significant increases in the health profession loan repayment program. Despite that authorization, no funds were actually appropriated to ensure the continued financial appeal of USAR service to health care professionals.

Depot maintenance protects the health of the Army’s heavy equipment, just as hospitals protect personnel. When routine maintenance no longer suffices, heavy equipment may be sent to a depot for a more thorough overhaul. Reserve forces lack a maintenance float, or pool of ready

replacement equipment, which can temporarily replace items sent to maintenance depots. Units sending heavy elements into depots must, therefore, do without the pieces in question until they passed through a backlog of maintenance tasks. Insufficient funding, including the shortage of full-time support personnel, over previous years left both the USAR and the ARNG with substantial maintenance backlogs in FY 1999. Funding levels began to increase in FY 1998 and continued to do so in 1999, enabling depot personnel to begin reducing the accumulated backlogs. Although still problematic, depot maintenance proved less of a barrier to force readiness in FY 1999 than in the recent past.

In FY 1997, the Guard introduced the Objective Supply Capability Adaptive Redesign (OSCAR) software. By automating the National Guard Bureau’s management of major items and providing an interface with the Standard Army Retail Supply System, OSCAR allows the Guard to identify excess stocks and maximize their availability in all fifty-four states and territories. By the end of FY 1999, OSCAR had significantly improved the equipment readiness of National Guard units, and had identified more than $3.4 billion in excess stocks.

Similar programs include the European Excess Equipment Project Operation (EEEPO), launched in FY 1993. Under EEEPO, a team of National Guard warrant officers continues to locate serviceable and economically repairable equipment and parts in Army installations in Europe. In 1999, the EEEPO team was co-located with the Army’s Equipment Maintenance Center-Europe in Kaiserslautern, Germany. From that location the team can efficiently employ ARNG personnel on overseas deployment training status to repair equipment. When available, such personnel cost $67 less per hour than do Army Materiel Command- Europe contractors. Equipment that those personnel salvage is returned to the United States using space available on National Guard cargo aircraft and is processed in one of five readiness sustainment maintenance sites. Located at Fort Riley (Kansas), Camp Shelby (Mississippi), Limestone (Maine), Saginaw (Texas), and Clackamas (Oregon), these sites complete repairs and distribute the equipment to the Guard. As of the end of the fiscal year, the program had salvaged equipment worth more than $200 million, at a cost of only $8 million.

By providing ARNG units with a source of affordable replacement equipment, the EEEPO helps to ensure force readiness in the equipment and supplies on hand category of DOD’s Global Status of Resources and Training Systems (GOSORTS) unit readiness scale. The equipment and supplies on hand category is one of four readiness categories used in the GOSORTS scale. The others are personnel, equipment condition, and training. Each measure is identified by a letter: equipment and supplies on hand status level (S), personnel status level (P), equipment condition status level (R), and

training status level (T). In combination these measures produce an overall unit resource and training level (C) status rating. The C-level ratings, which represent total capability at mobilization, are defined in Table 18.

TABLE 18—UNIT READINESS LEVEL AT MOBILIZATION

C-Level Rating	Definition
C-1	Can perform full wartime mission
C-2	Can perform most of wartime mission
C-3	Can perform some of wartime mission

In January 1999, the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned Congress that readiness was deteriorating in all branches of the armed services. Despite such warnings and supporting anecdotal evidence, ratings on the GOSORTS scale remained high in FY 1999. Critics of the scale, which was developed during the Cold War, contend that it is not sensitive enough to document the strain imposed by numerous peacekeeping missions and other deployments in the post–Cold War era. The 1999 National Defense Authorization Act directed the DOD to improve readiness reporting and make the system more sensitive to the impact of current operations.

Training is a key element of force readiness. When called to perform their missions, reserve-component forces are expected to perform at or near the level of their active Army counterparts. The relative lack of training time in the reserve components makes high-quality training programs vital to the USAR and the ARNG. Annual personnel loss rates of nearly one fifth for the National Guard and one third for the Army Reserve complicate training demands. The departure of skilled and experienced personnel causes shortages in specific military occupational specialties and thus places further demands on the training system.

To meet the need for ongoing training and maximize the yield of an average of only thirty-nine training days each year, the reserve components have steadily increased their use of new training technologies, such as advanced distributed learning. Accessible wherever required and capable of being tailored to meet individual needs, such computer-based instruction is ideally suited to the needs of widely dispersed Guard and Reserve personnel. Technological advances in weapons systems training aids and battle simulators also make realistic training more available to reserve-component forces, while they save the costs, transportation time, and environmental impact of more frequent field training.

The National Guard stresses realistic, sustained, multi-echelon, and totally integrated training at all levels. A basic four-year strategy guides

unit training, with enhanced separate brigades joining two iterations of the strategy into an eight-year cycle that culminates in a Combat Training Center (CTC) rotation. In FY 1999, Tiger XXI, the SIMITAR training program, was introduced to improve the performance of Guard units participating in CTC rotations. Combining live, virtual, and instructional training, the program focuses on training at the battalion staff, company, and platoon levels.

In the field, exercises help ensure that the reserve components and the active Army train to equal standards. The ARNG and the USAR participated with the active component in virtually every joint exercise held in FY 1999, thereby promoting the seamless integration of the total Army force called for in the National Military Strategy. Direct interactions with the other services were not overlooked. The Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, exposed all fifty-two company-size Reserve-component units training there during FY 1999 to the demands of joint operations.

Overseas training provides reserve component units an opportunity to very closely simulate operational deployment and to participate in combined and joint exercises. In fact, there is often little distinction between training and operational deployments. USAR units have steadily increased their participation in such opportunities in recent years, undertaking nation-building missions and peace support operations and supporting deployed commands. More than thirty-three thousand National Guard members participated in twenty-one overseas exercises in FY 1999. Like their Reserve colleagues, Guard members obtained firsthand experience in support and stability operations, national assistance, and operational support missions under a unified commander. Overseas training deployments provide an opportunity to practice mobilization, one of the reserve components’ most important contributions to force readiness. The primary focus of reserve-component training is to meet post-mobilization training requirements. When a unit is being mobilized, deployment schedules consider its personnel, equipment, and training readiness. Required predeployment training times vary according to the size and type of unit and its readiness. Initial readiness processing, final maintenance, recovery, and preparation for loading consume approximately twenty-six days for an enhanced separate brigade. Depending on theater-specific requirements and its place in the eight-year training cycle, a brigade could require as many as sixty-four days of training prior to departure. That figure is significantly less for units at the peak of the training cycle, and all enhanced separate brigades are deployable within ninety days of mobilization. For a full division, that ceiling extends to 150 days. Combat service support units are generally capable of deploying within just ten days.

Mobilization

Those deployment timetables were tested in FY 1999, as they have been with increasing regularity throughout the 1990s. The Army’s reserve components now find themselves mobilized for various purposes more often than ever before. As a result of the Bottom-Up Review and Force XXI reforms, the active Army has become dependent on reserve formations to conduct operations of any significant scale or duration.

Mobilization—the act of bringing reserve component units or individuals to active-duty status—may be accomplished by several means. Under a Presidential Selected Reserve Call-up, prescribed in Title 10, United States Code, the commander in chief may order as many as two hundred thousand members of the reserve components to active duty for as long as 270 days. In April 1999, President Clinton used this power to dispatch 5,727 members of the various service reserve components to Kosovo.

For more limited contingencies, volunteers are sought before ordering involuntary mobilization. The service secretaries have the authority to summon members of the Ready Reserve to fifteen days or less of active duty under Title 10, United States Code, Section 12301(b). State governors have the authority under state law to summon the National Guard to state service. Governors may also request that the president federalize the National Guard during domestic emergencies, such as natural disasters, civil disturbances, or terrorist incidents. The Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 permitted presidential mobilization of reserve components for emergencies involving weapons of mass destruction.

Authority for calling the reserves into extended involuntary active duty rests with the president. On the recommendation of the secretary of defense, the president may consult with Congress and issue an executive order authorizing an involuntary call-up of reserve-component forces. The secretary of defense then identifies specific requirements and the units necessary to meet them. When the orders are issued, Army Reserve and Army National Guard units move to one of twenty-seven mobilization sites. There they complete necessary personnel administration procedures, receive theater-specific training required by the gaining command, and prepare for deployment. After validation for deployment, units move to a port of embarkation for air or sea transit to the theater of operations.

Reserve formations mobilized for participation in Operations JOINT FORGE (Bosnia), JOINT GUARDIAN (Kosovo), and SOUTHERN WATCH (Kuwait/Saudi Arabia) during FY 1999. The first ARNG military police units arrived in Bosnia and Hungary during the fiscal year. A total of 865 Guard personnel participated in Operation JOINT FORGE before the year ended, supporting peacekeeping efforts in the region. Further to the south,

fifty-three ARNG members from eleven states provided medical, legal, religious, and security support for the Operation JOINT GUARDIAN base camp, Camp Able Sentry, in Skopje, Macedonia. A Presidential Selected Reserve Call-up summoned more than two hundred USAR members to Germany as replacements for active-Army personnel deployed to Kosovo. Their mission was typical of the reserve components’ role in emerging contingency operations: relieving active Army forces or personnel to share the strain of high operational tempos and to maintain overall readiness. Toward that end, the first rotations of infantry units from the enhanced separate brigades furnished security for Patriot missile batteries protecting SOUTHERN WATCH forces in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Two National Guard Aviation Task Forces—consisting of AH–64 attack helicopters, UH–60 assault helicopters, and air traffic control parties—provided additional support in Kuwait. Approximately five hundred individual reservists provided support elsewhere for operations of the European Command, the Central Command, and the Special Operations Command.

Members of the USAR deployed to the Middle East on 16 December 1998 to support Operation DESERT FOX, the destruction of sites in Iraq related to that nation’s efforts to create, procure, store, and maintain weapons of mass destruction. Approximately forty individual soldiers from the 310th Chemical Company, a biological warfare detection unit, and a liaison team from the 490th Chemical Battalion supported DESERT FOX by providing early warning of any potential biological threat.

Reserve-component forces honed their mobilization and operational skills by participating in a number of large-scale exercises during FY 1999. A total of 12,777 ARNG personnel took part in twenty different European Command exercises in FY 1999, including infantry and engineer rotations with the opposing force at the Combat Maneuver Training Center-Europe. Central Command deployments included support for and participation in exercises INTRINSIC ACTION, LUCKY SENTINEL, NATURAL FIRE, IRON COBRA, and BRIGHT STAR. Pacific Command employed 3,535 ARNG personnel during FY 1999 in support of exercises FOAL EAGLE, YAMA SAKURA, COBRA GOLD, ULCHI FOCUS LENS, and the Eighth Army’s Reception, Staging Onward Movement, and Integration command post exercise. ARNG special forces units participated in many of these exercises and joined others under the aegis of Special Operations Command and of Joint Forces Command. A total of 941 ARNG Special Forces personnel deployed during FY 1999.

The civil–military Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) program developed from President Clinton’s call to “rebuild America” and subsequent legislation. The IRT programs provide the Army, particularly the reserve components, with an opportunity to combine combat service support training, operational deployment, and civil support into one mission within the United States. During FY 1999, Army Reserve dental

teams deployed to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Rosebud, South Dakota, and the Crow/Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in the Crow Agency, Montana, as part of Operation WALKING SHIELD. Conceived by the WALKING SHIELD American Indian Society, the deployment provided soldiers with operational and mobilization training while they helped improve the quality of life among Native Americans on those reservations. This tiny operation, consisting of two teams totaling three dentists and two dental technicians, had tremendous impact on both local health and the teams’ experience levels. In two weeks, the teams completed approximately 100 oral surgeries, 60 pediatric dental procedures, 40 root canals, 150 extractions, 150 restorations, and more than 1,500 dental cleanings and exams.

Reserve-component personnel participated in two other IRT deployments during the fiscal year. Operation WHITE FANG dispatched an additional dental team of Army reservists to the Arctic Slope region of Alaska, where they performed a mission similar to that of WALKING SHIELD. The final IRT mission of the year, Operation ARTIC CARE ‘99, also provided combat service support training to reserve personnel and humanitarian assistance to Native Americans in Alaska, this time in the southwest region of the state. From 20 March through 3 April, the 109th Medical Detachment (Veterinary), 63d Regional Support Command, taught 460 children how to avoid dog bites, trained five local residents in emergency rabies vaccination procedures, and taught safe food-handling techniques. The unit vaccinated 773 dogs and cats against rabies and 559 dogs against distemper, and it dewormed 731 animals.

Reserve-component forces also formed the core of the Army’s response to a crisis that was at once training mission, operational deployment, and civil support operation. In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch followed hard on the heels of September’s Hurricane Georges. The two massive storms devastated much of the Caribbean and large areas of the U.S. Gulf Coast. The commander in chief, U.S. Southern Command, responded with overseas deployment training and a series of exercises authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Operation NEW HORIZONS, supported by the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1999, provided both disaster relief for the affected areas and practical training for U.S. personnel.

Support to Civil Authorities

Humanitarian missions are nothing new for the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. At the state level, the National Guard mission has always been to protect life and property while preserving peace, order, and public safety. At the federal level, the Army Reserve mission has always been to provide support, when requested, to local municipalities, cities, and states when their relief efforts have been overwhelmed or exhausted. Governors

of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida responded to Hurricanes Georges and Mitch by summoning Guard personnel to provide security, evacuation assistance, emergency relief, and support to recovery efforts. Keeping the public informed during major domestic disasters is also an important task. The Army Reserve provided more than five hundred man-days of public affairs support to assist in the Hurricane Mitch relief efforts.

But the damage the two storms inflicted on the United States paled in comparison with the havoc they wreaked throughout the Caribbean basin. Between January and August 1999, a total of 20,800 Army Reserve personnel deployed to Honduras and various storm-damaged islands, including Puerto Rico. There they distributed relief supplies and provided emergency support. Engineer units constructed medical facilities, repaired roads and bridges, and dug new wells. Through the Army Reserve, with Army National Guard, active Army, and other military personnel supporting their operations, the United States provided relief to millions of people in the affected region.

The ARNG responded to emergencies large and small at the direction of state governors during FY 1999. In addition to the 82,212 man-days of hurricane relief efforts, ARNG personnel provided a total of 109,778 man-days of support to local civil authorities. Any detailed recounting of such missions would amount to a catalog of the largest natural disasters and law enforcement challenges of the year. But their scale alone is telling.

Fires, floods, and other natural disasters pose threats in wilderness areas and developed regions alike. During FY 1999, fifteen states called on the National Guard for 13,637 man-days of firefighting and related support activities. Guard personnel also respond to other elemental threats. Flood control and relief activities in nine states required 6,176 man-days before the year expired, and drought-related missions consumed 3,409 man-days in ten states. The fact that some governors called on the Guard for both flood and drought relief indicates the variety of challenges confronting ARNG personnel and their flexibility in meeting them.

Tornadoes are a seasonal danger in much of the United States. In Oklahoma alone, the National Guard provided 10,728 man-days of tornado response time. The governors of eight other states called on Guard personnel for an additional 10,117 man-days of effort to combat the impact of the deadly storms. Other weather-related problems in fifteen states brought 4,293 man-days of ARNG labor to the aid of those affected.

The Army National Guard is also responsible for preserving peace, order, and public safety. In that capacity, Guard personnel render frequent assistance to law enforcement and other federal, state, and local agencies. Such agencies received 57,185 man-days of assistance from Guard personnel in FY 1999. Of that total, 28,669 days were devoted directly to assisting law enforcement agencies. The vast majority of the time that ARNG personnel

spent on law enforcement missions—27,523 of the 28,669 total man-days— was provided by the Puerto Rico Army National Guard.

That figure demonstrates the size of the National Guard’s commitment to antinarcotic efforts. In pursuit of the National Drug Control Strategy, governors assign Guard personnel to demand-reduction and drug interdiction activities. Guard missions in demand reduction may be broadly characterized as education and community outreach programs. In drug interdiction, the ARNG executes a number of missions, including cargo inspection assistance, aerial and ground reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, training, construction of border fences and roadways, and map production. More than two hundred Guard linguists assisted Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation drug investigations during the year. An additional five hundred personnel supported the U.S. Customs Service at critical points of entry. A total of 116 OH–58 helicopters, seventy-six outfitted with forward-looking infrared (FLIR) equipment, supported local, state, and federal marijuana eradication missions. USAR personnel also contributed to the Army’s counterdrug efforts, providing 565 personnel for 115 support missions in FY 1999. Those missions included four aviation deployments using FLIR equipment along the southwest border and the dispatch of 298 intelligence analysts who provided invaluable linguistic services to support ongoing drug investigations conducted by civilian authorities.

Equipment and Maintenance

The surveillance, reconnaissance, aerial support, and intelligence analysis that ARNG and USAR members contributed to counterdrug efforts bespeak the reserve components’ use of advanced technology. Force digitization and the ongoing procurement of numerous systems, from M16A2 rifles to the multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), continued to increase the sophistication of the reserve components’ equipment and expand their capabilities. In keeping with their integration into the total Army, the reserve components’ equipment is increasingly indistinguishable from that of the active Army.

But the Army still has some distance to go before units of the active and reserve components cannot be distinguished by the age and sophistication of their equipment. Between FY 1997 and the end of FY 1999, the ARNG received more than seventy thousand M16A2 rifles to replace the older M16A1 variant. It was expected that replacement of the older weapon, which uses different ammunition and requires different replacement parts, would not be complete until FY 2003. Guard units also began fielding the M240B medium machine gun. Receipt of the MK19 automatic grenade launcher and M249 squad automatic weapon continued during the year,

but, according to the schedule at the end of the fiscal year, the thirty thousand M249s weapons to be delivered by FY 2002 will still only meet 80 percent of the Guard’s requirements.

The difficulty in completely equipping National Guard units with current small arms is at least in part a result of the procedure for funding equipment procurement in the reserve components. Traditionally, the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Appropriation (NGREA) provided significant support to the reserve components’ ability to purchase sufficient equipment to meet mission requirements. But the NGREA is separate from the services’ individual appropriations, and as the DOD reemphasized its long-standing policy that parent services are solely responsible for funding the equipment needs of their reserve components, the apparent need for NGREA support disappeared. Since 1997, the NGREA has declined substantially as the Army has continued to experience difficulty in meeting the equipment needs of even the active component. The Army’s budget has not increased to offset the reduction in NGREA funding. Reserve-component forces therefore find it increasingly difficult to meet their needs for upgrades, modernization, and equipment training.

The response to this situation has been driven by the Army equipping policy. That policy, intended to produce modern, fully equipped forces, uses a two-step process to balance total Army readiness against the needs of early-deploying units. The priorities are simple. First and foremost, all units must have sufficient equipment to maintain minimum readiness standards. Second, equipment needs are met in the order of precedence set by the Department of the Army Master Priority List. In accordance with the priorities of that list, the “first-to-fight” principle applies. Units likely to be involved in combat first have higher priority and receive the most modern equipment.

Although the reserve components receive direct support through the Army’s formal budget process, the diminished NGREA funds continue as a significant resource. The ARNG spends its limited NGREA money on items that are unique to the Guard or that are not included in the standard Department of the Army budget process. Even in the austere budget environment fostered by decreased NGREA funding and the lack of a corresponding increase in Army appropriations, the National Guard and the Army Reserve continued to receive new equipment and needed upgrades, thereby significantly improving force readiness. The Guard reported that it possessed 92 percent of its required major equipment in FY 1999, up from 81 percent the prior year. The Army Reserve reported 84 percent of its major equipment needs as met, up from 75 percent in FY 1998. Although these figures lag behind those of other service reserve components and the DOD reserve-component average of 96 percent for FY 1999, the trend is positive.

The Army remains committed to equipping its reserve components to the same standards as the active force, but had not achieved that goal by the end of the fiscal year. In accordance with the Department of the Army Master Priority List, the Army Reserve received substantial equipment deliveries from active-Army units. These included 10 conveyors, 12 armored vehicle–launched bridges, 12 Volcano mine dispensers, 1,470 single-channel airborne radios, 11 generators, 24 smoke generators, 3,026 squad automatic weapons, 24,637 M40 protective masks, 630 M42 protective masks, 19 palletized load system trailers, 32 M41 Protective Assessment Test Systems for the M40 mask, 57 dump trucks, 31 wheel-mounted cranes, 288 modern burn units, and 11 shower units. The Army also provided substantial equipment for the National Guard during FY 1999. This included 17 UH–60A Black Hawk helicopters, 6 MLRS launchers, 153 heavy equipment transporters, 305 line haul tractor trucks, 70 bulk haul trucks, 50 high-mobility trailers, 96 demountable cargo beds, 48 palletized load system trucks, 5,000 single-channel airborne radios, 110 advanced field artillery tactical data systems, 126 artillery muzzle velocity systems, 264 light smoke vehicles, 394 generators, 394 floodlight sets, 13 twenty-ton dump trucks, 5 hydraulic excavators, 1,525 machine guns, 522 grenade launchers, and 2,047 tracked combat vehicle weapons.

Reserve-component forces met other needs through NGREA funds. For example, the National Guard purchased simulators and trainers for combat and combat support systems, including the Armor Fully Integrated System Trainer and the Engagement Skills Trainer. The ARNG also filled some equipment shortages in high-priority units such as the enhanced separate brigades and light and medium truck companies. The Army Reserve acquired conversion kits to modernize its new multi-role bridge companies and sixty-nine glider kits to update older truck tractors.

Both reserve components largely equip their lower priority units with older equipment transferred from modernizing elements of the active Army. That newly obtained equipment, and existing stocks, can be upgraded and repaired to provide valuable service. The Guard converted 350 M1037 HMMWV “Humvee” shelter-carriers to the standard M998 cargo/troop carrier version at its Texas tactical wheeled vehicle sustainment repair site, and a twin facility in Maine converted 120 M996 mini-ambulance HMMWVs to the M998 variant. Lack of funds at the ARNG’s equipment depots delayed similar overhaul programs for M9 armored combat earthmovers and the M60 armored vehicle–launched bridge.

The Army Reserve undertook a number of similar projects. During fiscal 1999, its facilities converted 30 five-ton cargo trucks to dropside trucks, 139 gasoline-powered generators to diesel, 60 M915 line haul tractors to the updated M915A4 configuration, 295 gasoline-powered compressors to diesel, 27 heavy expanded mobility tactical trucks to

common bridge transports, 43 M967A1 fuel tankers to the multifunctional fuel tanker configuration of the same designation, 9 M101A1 trailers to the M101A2 model, 9 M101A2 models to M101A3s, and 180 M1037 HMMWV shelter-carriers to the standard M998. The Reserve also refurbished forty-one bath and shower units and completed twelve MLC 70 armored vehicle–launched bridge upgrades. A planned upgrade to the M109 shop van was delayed.

The National Guard currently fields two variants of the Abrams main battle tank. Enhanced separate brigades are equipped with the M1A1, mounting a 120-mm main gun. Other units continue to operate the older M1, with a lighter and shorter-range 105-mm main gun. The Army maintained its efforts to upgrade the M1s to M1A1 models, with their greater firepower and survivability, in FY 1999. Congress included $70.2 million in its FY99 appropriation to procure M2A2ODS Bradley infantry fighting vehicles for the ARNG. Delivery of the first vehicles was set for FY 2001.

Maintaining such a wide variety of complex equipment is no easy task. It has benefited from the nearly complete adoption of Velocity Management (VM), a Total Army process used by all but one of the ARNG’s 54 state or territorial establishments in FY 1999. Under VM, the tradition of stockpiled commodities is replaced by an automated process similar to that used by private industry that relies on automation, speed, and transportation to get commodities quickly from the factory to the soldier. Receipt processing for repair parts has benefited tremendously from VM.

Commercial models have also been adopted in the actual maintenance and repair of reserve-component vehicles. The Army’s Integrated Sustainment Maintenance (ISM) program has been in place since FY 1993. Under its provisions, general support maintenance activities in Army Forces Command, Training and Doctrine Command, the Army Reserve, and the ARNG combined support maintenance shops and maneuver area training equipment sites compete for repair work. Figures from the ARNG demonstrate the effectiveness of the ISM program in FY 1999. Guard units in thirty-seven states participated as customers during the course of the year, shipping 6,059 general support/repair exchange components to other ARNG, Army Reserve, and active Army facilities for repair. Those facilities returned 5,304 of those repaired components for customer use, saving ARNG units $17.9 million through the competitive process. This dramatic increase from the $8.2 million saved in FY 1998 explains the Guard’s decision to expand the types of equipment it is repairing under the program from seventy-one at the beginning of FY 1999 to 119 at year’s end.

Such cost-saving measures have great potential in an undertaking as large as maintaining the National Guard. The fifty states, the District of

Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands host 779 ARNG surface maintenance facilities that support more than six thousand units. The facilities include 645 organizational maintenance shops, 68 combined support maintenance shops, 39 unit training equipment sites, and 24 maneuver area training equipment sites. Combined, they employed a workforce of 9,979 federal technicians in FY 1999. That personnel level was also a source of concern for the reserve components. Maintenance facilities are largely staffed by full-time support personnel. Both the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard had validated requirements for such personnel well in excess of their authorized FY99 strength. Depot maintenance as a whole remained underfunded at a time when high operational tempo and aging equipment continued to place increased demands on all Army maintenance facilities.

The director of the Army National Guard and the chief, Army Reserve, listed an increase in full-time support personnel as major goals in their Program Objective Memoranda for FYs 2001–05, submitted on 11 February 1999. Expanding that labor pool would help alleviate backlogs at service depots and better equip the reserve components for the maintenance challenges presented by high operational tempos. Those two results would also improve the combat readiness of the total Army. Despite the successes of the European Excess Equipment Project Operation and of Integrated Sustainment Maintenance, and slight decreases in depot maintenance backlogs, the ARNG reported an overall decline of 1 percent in its combat readiness for FY 1999. The decline may be explained by high operational tempos and the Army’s increasing integration of the reserve and active components that took a toll on the personnel and equipment of the National Guard and the Army Reserve during the year.

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