Army National Guard

The end of the Cold War and budgetary constraints have increased the military's reliance on Army National Guard combat brigades. Shortcomings revealed during the combat brigades' mobilization for the Persian Gulf War raised questions about the training strategies used and the time required to be ready to deploy. GAO found that recruitment and training problems make it unlikely that these units could meet a goal of combat readiness within 90 days of mobilization. This report discusses whether (1) the Bold Shift training strategy has enabled combat brigades to meet peacetime training goals, (2) the advisers assigned to the brigades are working effectively to improve training readiness, and (3) prospects of having the brigades ready for war within 90 days are likely.

GAO found that: (1) in general, none of the 7 enhanced brigades achieved the training proficiency required during the first 3 years of the Bold Shift training strategy; (2) in 1993, combat platoons mastered only 14 percent of their mission-essential tasks and less than one-third of the battalions met their gunnery goals; (3) the brigades could not meet staffing and personnel goals, since many personnel were not sufficiently trained in their individual job and leadership skills; (4) the brigades' training problems are long-standing and will be difficult to improve; (5) although training strategy revisions are under way, the improvements will take years to be effective; (6) the Army advisers' efforts to improve the Guard's training readiness have been limited by an ambiguous definition of the advisers' role, poor communications between the Army, advisers, brigades, and other Guard officials, particularly regarding training goals, and difficult working relationships between the Army and the state-run Guard; (7) it is highly uncertain whether the brigades could be ready to deploy 90 days after mobilization, since the Guard's peacetime training is inadequate; (8) the postmobilization model estimated that the brigades would need 68 to 154 days of postmobilization training before deployment, while another model estimated that the best trained brigades would need 102 days to deploy; and (9) brigade proficiency reports have generally overstated brigade readiness levels.

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: