Course Correction?

First Quadrennial Defense Review sinca 9/11 could alter National Guard structure, missions

As the Quadrennial Defense Review reached its halfway point this summer, the National Guard chief was unexpectedly upbeat at how well the massive force planning exercise was shaping up for his troops.

"I'm very optimistic," Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum told National Guard last month. "It bodes well for the National Guard."

For almost five months, top Pentagon planners had been studying the U.S. military and how it should prepare to confront future threats.

The 2005 National Defense Strategy signed by Defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in March guides the QDR, which has four strategic objectives. They include: homeland defense; securing access and freedom of action for key regions and lines of communication; strengthening alliances; and establishing security conditions conducive to a favorable international order.

For the first time, the National Guard is an active participant in the almost yearlong process certain to reshape U.S. defense forces.

And for the first time, homeland defense is one of the "core problems" being examined by the QDR. "Everybody clearly sees the National Guard as the first military responders when it comes to homeland defense," General Blum said.

But it is also evident that the Guard will continue to be more than a homeland defense militia.

"The services clearly see the need to keep the National Guard as a full-spectrum-capable force," General Blum said, and added that the active components realize that the Guard must remain "capable of being a full participant in joint and expeditionary warfare overseas."

The QDR likely will identify some new Guard missions that may require establishing new unit types. More information operations, cyber attack and defense units, space operations, intelligence and unmanned aerial vehicle units are possible additions to the Guard, General Blum said.

The QDR also will probably recommend standing down Guard units with capabilities that are no longer relevant, he said.

General Blum cautioned that with five months worth of work remaining, little about the QDR is settled, and much can be expected to change. A finished report is not due to Congress until February. After that there is a question of how much of it lawmakers and Pentagon policymakers will embrace.

"It's too soon to tell exactly what it will mean" for the Guard. "But right now, the trends are favorable," he said.

That hasn't been true in prior QDRs. Since the process began in 1993 with the "Bottom-Up Review," the National Guard has been a minor player, when it played at all.

"In past, the reviews have always looked beyond our borders," says Maj. Gen. Roger E Lempke, Nebraska adjutant general and president of the Adjutants General Association of the United States.

In doing so, they concentrated on active-duty forces and played down the role of the National Guard.

In 1993, for example, the Bottom-up Review, striving to reorient U.S. forces after the Cold Wir, required the military be able to respond to two major regional wars nearly simultaneously.

That demand for "quick response to simultaneous emergencies tended to take the Guard out of some missions," General Lempke says.

The two-war approach remained the standard through the QDRs of 1997 and even 2001. (The 2001 review was released just 19 days after 9/11 and still reflected the pre-9/11 threat environment.)

But this QDR is expected to drop the two-war requirement. Planners are considering a concept that requires the U.S. military be able to fight one conventional war while at the same time defending the U.S. homeland against terrorist attacks.

"If the focus is more on counterterrorism, the Guard could pky a bigger role," General Lempke says.

The consequences of adopting such a strategy would reach far beyond the National Guard, of course. Dropping the requirement to fight two wars could substantially alter military's shape, its numbers and types of weapons it buys and the missions for which it trains its troops.

For example, the Air Force would probably need fewer stealth fighters and the Navy fewer aircraft carriers. But new counterterrorism requirements could increase the need for Special Forces trained for urban warfare and battling insurgencies.

Officials won't enter into such fundamental-and budget-altering-changes lightly. Shortly after QDR participants hinted at possible alterations to the two-war strategy, Gen. Richard Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman publicly urged caution.

"The core of the QDR is the question of what is the right balance," he said in a late-July address at the National Press Club.

"The QDR is looking at nontraditional missions-counter insurgency, homeland defense-and comparing that to the force at lame and sayine, 'Is it construtted appropriately?'" General Myers said.

"We know we have too much in'some areas," so there will be "rebalancing of skills and so forth," he said. Some heavy units need to be transformed into lighter, more agile ones, he said.

But he warned that the QDR must be careful not to stray too far in single direction. Just as the war in Iraq was different from the war in Afghanistan, "whatever is next will be different," he said. "We've got to make sure we don't fall victim" to focusing too much on current threats and ignoring potential future threats.

Asked specifically about the Pentagon's latest concern, rising Chinese military power, General Myers said U.S. forces must continue to equip and train to "deal with a wide variety of threats" and also provide for homeland security.

During his talk, he acknowledged the value of Guard and Reserve forces. "We have used our reserve component heavily since 9/11. It has made them stronger. Retention is high, readiness up; the reserve component is stronger than it has ever been," he said.

That's a theme General Blum echoes.

"We are substantially more ready now than we were at time of the last QDR" in 2001, he told a gathering at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

Over the past three years, more than 300,000 Guard members have been called to active duty and deployed globally.

"The Guard has become an essential force. Without the guard the U.S. military couldn't do what its doing around the world today," General Blum said.

"We're an active reserve, not a strategic reserve today," he said. That's a point Guard participants are stressing in the QDR.

To better accommodate the demands of an active reserve, General Blum would like to change the way the Guard is organized for mobilization.

"Right now we're sending people for a year of boots on ground," he said, adding that pre-mobilization can push the yearlong deployment to 18 months. "It's tough on families and tough on employers."

Pre-mobilization training "should not be more than 30 days, otherwise we're not doing a good job [preparing troops for mobilization] while they're at home," General Blum said.

A high readiness rate is essential, especially if the Guard is to be "the primary DoD first responders" for homeland defense, he said. "You have to have the National Guard ready to respond in minutes and hours, not days and weeks."

General Blum wants to put Guard troops on a cycle where about 25 percent would be deployed at any time and another 25 percent would be training and preparing to deploy. The other 50 percent of the Guard would be "stabilized at home for four to five years."

During that time they would undergo standard Guard training and be ready to respond for homeland defense missions and other emergencies.

He would also like to see other personnel changes addressed in the QDR.

"Clearly, everyone recognizes that we can't afford an active military of the size we would like or need," he said. "We are going to have to leverage the reserve."

More flexible personnel policies could cut personnel costs for the active-duty military, freeing money for increasingly costly weapons. General Blum endorses a "continuum of service" arrangement under which troops would shift back and forth easily between active-duty and reserve service.

How much of that is likely in the QDR? "We're still in the early stages," he said.

But the first QDR objective-homeland defense-"is the natural mission for the National Guard," General Lempke says. He and the other adjutants general are "watching very closely what the QDR says about homeland defense."

So fer, the adjutants general should like what they see, according to Peter Verga, the Pentagon's principal deputy assistant secretary for homeland defense.

"What we're looking at is the fundamental question of what are the proper roles and missions of the Department of Defense in the homeland security environment, and dien, perhaps, what portion of the Department of Defense forces ought to be organized, trained and equipped for that particular mission," he told the Defense Forum Foundation in June.

A major part of the answer is "a focused reliance on that National Guard," he said.

The National Guard is "the most logical forces to support the civil authorities and homeland defense missions." One reason is that Guard forces are already "stationed everywhere in the country." Another is that in their status as state forces (Primer, page 97). They are empowered to carry out law-enforcement duties, he said.

But as the QDR considers Guard roles and missions, there is concern about over committing it.

"One of the challenges with the National Guard is, in feet, balancing the availability offerees inside the United States should an emergency occur, and still having the forces necessary to meet our worldwide commitment," Mr. Verga said.

Having that kind of discussion as part of the QDR "certainly is encouraging from my point of view," General Blum said.

Whether the review will go so fer as to recommend more money, equipment or other resources for the National Guard remains uncertain, he said. It is reassuring, though, that the Guard is part of the discussion.

"We're at the table, and we never have been before," General Blum said. NGB representatives are included on each of the QDR's six "integrated process teams" that do the analytical work of the study. And Guard officials participate in the QDR's senior leadership reviews, he said.

"We don't control it or have undue influence on it, but we're not relegated to just sitting and observing, we actually are engaged in the process," General Blum said. "That will lead to a better outcome, a much more realistic QDR."

QDR-At a Glance

The 2005 National Defense Strategy signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in March guides the QDR, which has four strategic objectives:

* Securing the United States from direct attack

* Securing strategic access and freedom of action for key regions and lines of communication.

* Strengthening alliances and partnerships

* Establishing Security conditions conducive to a favorable international order

William Matthews is a Springfield, Va.-based fredance writer specializing in military matters.

Copyright National Guard Association of the United States Sep 2005
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