National Guard

GAO reviewed the training and preparedness of the three Army National Guard roundout brigades that were activated during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, focusing on whether: (1) they had been adequately trained during peacetime to perform their wartime duties; (2) the Army's experience with the three brigades revealed any significant weaknesses in the National Guard's peacetime administrative strategy; (3) the Army's peacetime screening of reservists had adequately assessed the medical condition of the personnel in those brigades; and (4) peacetime training evaluations were useful in developing post-mobilization training plans.

GAO found that: (1) the Army has not adequately prepared its National Guard roundout brigades to deploy quickly; (2) many soldiers were not completely trained to do their jobs and many noncommissioned officers were not adequately trained in leadership skills; (3) the Army's peacetime medical screening program for the National Guard failed to identify dental and other medical ailments that would have adversely affected the ability of many Guard members to deploy early, and only upon mobilization did the Army find that over 4,000 of the Guard members had physical conditions that caused them to be undeployable; (4) in peacetime, the National Guard uses administrative systems that are not compatible with active Army systems to manage personnel and supply operations which, upon mobilization, downgraded the brigades' ability to mobilize efficiently and to train effectively; (5) peacetime training lacked challenging, realistic training missions, failed to integrate combat arms, combat-support, and combat service-support elements, was sometimes cancelled because of inadequate support by host installations, and was often conducted with shortages of authorized equipment; and (6) since the post-mobilization training plans developed by each of the three brigades during peacetime were based on unreliable proficiency and combat readiness ratings, Army trainers had to develop ad hoc post-mobilization training plans that called for far more training days than envisioned by brigade commanders and required the support of almost 9,000 active Army trainers and other personnel.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: