Pentagon Drops Plan to Cut National Guard Strength

In the face of bipartisan opposition at the state and national levels, the Pentagon backed away Thursday from a plan to reduce the overall size of the Army National Guard.

The Army said the Guard would remain at 350,000 troops, instead of being reduced to 333,000 as part of a Defense Department budget-cutting plan.

The National Governors Assn., a number of individual governors and 77 U.S. senators had protested the initial plan for Guard cuts.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s top officer, brushed aside critics of the plan, who had warned that it was ill-advised at a time of war and with the need to respond to natural disasters such as the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast last summer.

“We have no intention of cutting the number of Guard or Reserve brigades, reducing the number of Guard or Reserve soldiers, or cutting the level of Guard and Reserve funding,” Schoomaker said at a Pentagon briefing.

Schoomaker said the Army still planned to reduce the number of National Guard combat brigades to 28, down from the 34 under last year’s plan.

However, Schoomaker also said the Guard would continue to have a total of 106 brigades nationwide, which would mean no overall reduction in the authorized size of the force. A brigade has between 3,500 and 4,000 soldiers.

Initially, the Army had planned to replace six combat brigades with smaller support units -- such as a brigade headquarters element -- that would have resulted in the loss of thousands of troops in units around the country, according to the Adjutants General Assn. of the United States, the organization of top Guard officers in each state.

Under the revised plan, the Army will replace combat brigades with support brigades, though some could be slightly smaller, said Air Force Maj. Gen. Roger Lempke, the association’s president.

“I’m happy, but we still have questions,” said Lempke, who added that the questions involved the size of the new Guard units and how much equipment and funding they would receive.

Schoomaker said that six combat brigades would be changed into support units, such as those involved with engineering, military policing or other civil affairs. Those units would be better-suited than combat units to respond to domestic security emergencies or natural disasters.

By law, the Guard is commanded by the governors in each of the 50 states, unless units are called to federal duty by the president.

Schoomaker told reporters that the Pentagon’s plan would actually strengthen the Guard’s combat readiness and that many of the Guard’s current combat units had “low readiness levels.” Only 15 of the 34 combat brigades are “enhanced” with higher numbers of soldiers, more training and the best equipment, he said.

“What we are doing is building from the 15 enhanced brigades to 28 fully manned, resourced, trained brigades, equipped brigades, just like they are in the active force,” he said. Schoomaker said the Army would spend $21 billion on the Guard through 2011, a fourfold increase in equipment modernization from the 1999 period.

But some Pentagon officials noted that this would be about $60 billion below the Guard’s projected equipment needs.