NEWSWEEK: What’s the problem with the National Guard? Arnold Punaro: The Guard and Reserve forces were organized to be a strategic reserve, meaning to be used in the event of an all-out war with the Soviet Union. But now the Defense Department has declared the Guard and Reserve are “operational,” which means that though it’s a part-time force, some of it is in use at all times and the rest has to be ready to go at any time. Yet Defense hasn’t changed any of the laws, rules, regulations—or any of the equipping and manning priorities. The current course we are on is not sustainable. And the ability of the Guard and Reserve to do their missions continues to deteriorate.
What are the signs of that? Look at recruiting and retention. It’s fraying at the edges. The support of employers is weakening as they see their skilled personnel called up repeatedly. Family support is weakening. The number of prior-service personnel—that is, people already highly trained in the active force—going into the reserves is significantly decreasing. So the warning signs are on the horizon.
How did this come about? The cumulative effect of several things. After the first Gulf War in 1991, we were downsizing our active-duty military quite substantially. But the threats in the world not only didn’t go away; in many ways they got worse and more complex. So that required an ever-increasing use of the Guard and Reserve. Then came 9/11. Since then, over 550,000 Guard and Reserve have been mobilized. You have units deployed not once but twice overseas. The equipping and manning and training haven’t kept up.
How has this been affected by the Iraq war? Look at two things: the equipment shortfall and the practice called “cross-leveling.” That’s where we have to make up a deploying unit by borrowing people and equipment from other units that are going to go in the future. Equipment readiness has been going ever downward. And the amount of cross-leveling—the percentage that it takes to make up a current deployed unit—is ever increasing. That’s why we say it’s just not sustainable. We’re in a downward spiral.
How extensive has cross-leveling become? It’s quite significant. We give in our report an example of a transportation company that had to go to 45 different locations to get the equipment they needed. We visited a Guard brigade that was training up at Fort Hood: the personnel making up that brigade came from over 40 states. That’s just unheard of. We found a Marine infantry battalion—a rather small maneuver unit—where it took Marines from 21 cities to make up that one battalion. And the battalion commander who testified called cross-leveling “evil.” Because, as he said, it is just so contrary to how we operate in the military. We train as we fight; and we deploy and fight as units.
It sounds like Vietnam, where soldiers were sent as individual replacements into units they’d never served with before. Correct. Pickup teams belong on a sandlot. They don’t belong on a battlefield. That’s why we found the commanders were so upset about cross-leveling. When you are talking about units where one fire team—a sniper team—never saw the other fire team or trained with them before they arrived in theater, that’s just not a good situation.
Have there been casualties as a result? You would get a lot of debate over that. We had one general officer [who’s] commanding tell us that he could trace a specific casualty to cross-leveling. That really got our attention. The officer is somebody that I’ve served with for years and years and I trust implicitly. He went through what happened, and it was one of these situations where you had fire teams and squads that hadn’t known each other and trained together. The casualty wasn’t friendly fire. It was not understanding tactics and procedures. And he basically said cross-leveling was the root cause of it.
Does the change in Defense secretary mean this might change? Yes. The military had been trying for two years to get cross-leveling ended. But they had been beating their heads against the brick wall of the office of the secretary of Defense [Donald Rumsfeld]. But then Secretary [Robert] Gates came in. He’s a very decisive guy—frankly, a real breath of fresh air on these issues. He changed this cross-leveling policy within a very short time after he got there. But it’s going to take a while to dig ourselves out from the hole we have gotten ourselves in. And remedying the deeper problems we’ve identified at the Guard and Reserve are going to need a lot more of his time and authority.
