Weary Guard Seeks to Rebuild

The Army National Guard is tripling retention bonuses to counter lagging recruitment and is asking for $20 billion to replace equipment destroyed in combat as it struggles under the continuing burden of the Iraq war, the Guard’s top commander said Thursday.

After missing its recruitment goals over the last two months, the National Guard plans to boost bonuses to $15,000 from $5,000 for members who sign up for another six-year stint. Bonuses for first-time recruits will jump to $10,000 from $6,000 -- tax-free for those abroad, Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, head of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters at the Pentagon.

The Guard also is boosting the number of recruiters from 2,700 to 4,100 and adjusting its advertising campaigns and slogans away from so-called weekend warriors to appeal to potential recruits who will more readily accept deployment abroad.

The war has collided with the expectations of those who thought that joining the Guard meant serving short periods close to home, near their families and civilian jobs.

The changes announced Thursday underscored the strain the Guard is facing from a protracted war that has required a fourth of its 340,000 members to serve in combat in Iraq. More than 140 Guard troops have been killed in Iraq.

Blum said the extra $20 billion is needed over three years to repair and replace vehicles, radios and other equipment destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan as the service seeks first to replenish and then equip its forces.

“Otherwise, the Guard will be broken and not ready the next time it’s needed, either here at home or for war,” Blum said.

More than 100,000 Guard members are now deployed abroad, and many complain that they face enemy fire with equipment inferior to that of their regular Army colleagues. The equipment problems only compound growing recruitment and retention weaknesses, commanders said.

“There’s no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard’s participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult,” Blum said.

The National Guard has faced recruitment and retention problems since last summer. It fell 7,000 short of its target of 350,000 members in September and has struggled since then. The Guard’s recruiting problem compounds those of the Army Reserve, which also has failed to meet its goals for the last two months. Together, the two branches of the Army make up 40% of the 140,000 American troops now serving in Iraq.

Blum said some of the Guard’s recruiting themes being changed.

“We’re not talking about one weekend a month and two weeks a year and college tuition,” he said, referring to the time that members traditionally spent on active duty and an educational benefit. “We’re talking about service to the nation.”

U.S. military officials have expressed concern that the extensive deployments of part-time troops could drive some out of the force and deter others from joining, making it hard to fill the ranks in the future.

Meanwhile, many state officials complain that because the Guard is so heavily deployed in Iraq, its members are unavailable to help with domestic security or natural disasters.

The Guard’s ranks have been hit hardest by a drop in the number of former full-time soldiers who exit active duty from the Army and enlist in the Guard. About half of active-duty soldiers traditionally have gone into the Guard after being discharged; the number has recently dropped to about 35%, Blum said.

“Clearly, a good flow of active forces into the Guard and Reserve is something that will benefit the Army, the Guard and Reserve over the long haul,” Gen. George W. Casey, commander of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon. “It’s something I think we need to pay attention to and continue to encourage and maybe incentivize active forces to continue to move into the Guard and Reserve.”

Critics expressed doubt Thursday that the added incentives would solve the problem, which they said was more the result of prolonged deployments.

“When people get out now, they don’t necessarily go into the Reserves because they know they’ll likely go back out to Iraq, where they might have just come back from,” said retired Army Capt. Michael McPhearson of the group Military Families Speak Out, an organization of service members and their families critical of U.S. policy in Iraq. “People know that. And they don’t want to go.”

The extra $20 billion will have to win approval in Congress.

In seeking the extra money, the National Guard’s request would go far beyond the $7 billion in equipment it plans to request in an emergency spending bill to cover the costs of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Blum said.

Members of Congress have served as fierce advocates for National Guard units in their districts. Even when the Pentagon seeks little money to reequip Guard units, lawmakers go to bat for federal funding for local units. Equipment problems in the National Guard put Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the defensive when he visited troops in Kuwait on Dec. 8.

Tennessee National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson said members of his unit were forced to rummage through scrap yards for material to armor their Humvees. The Army since has moved to increase production of armored vehicles.

The question of equipment is particularly of concern to National Guard and Reserve troops because they often work with older equipment, although they represent a significant portion of the U.S. military force in Iraq.

“The Army’s equipment is old, but the Guard’s is oldest and it’s wearing out,” said Loren Thompson, defense analyst for the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., public policy group.

The equipment woes have provoked concern in Congress, with Republicans as well as Democrats criticizing Rumsfeld. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who chairs the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday in a letter to Rumsfeld that she found the issue troubling.

“Given that so many American soldiers have died or been seriously injured in Iraq as a result of improvised explosive devices or in ambushes from rocket-propelled grenades, the urgent requirement for armor protection remains,” she said.