Army National Guard

During the last 25 years, the military has come to rely increasingly on the Army National Guard and other reserve forces, which provide combat troops as well as a large percentage of the Army's requirements in such support areas as civil affairs, public affairs, quartermaster, transportation, chemical, ordnance, and engineering. The enhanced brigades were introduced in 1993 to provide a flexible backup to Army units during wartime. GAO reported in 1995 that the brigades were unable to meet readiness goals under a new training strategy. (See GAO/NSIAD-95-91.) The National Guard brigades continue to have difficulty meeting training and personnel readiness goals, despite improvements in some areas. Officials attribute these problems in meeting readiness goals to personnel shortages and too much to do in the time available, although many problems also influence readiness. In addition, the Army lacks an effective system for assessing brigade readiness.

GAO noted that: (1) the brigades continue to have difficulty meeting training and personnel readiness goals; (2) only 3 of the 15 brigades reported that their platoons met training goals for certain mission-essential maneuver tasks and only 10 of the 24 mechanized battalions met gunnery standards; (3) on a more positive note, individual training has improved significantly; (4) since 1993-1994, completion rates for job training for all soldiers, and required and recommended leadership courses for officers and sergeants have improved by between 10-15 percentage points; (5) the key reasons for the brigades' continuing difficulties in meeting the readiness goals are: (a) personnel shortages; and (b) too much to do in the time available; (6) authorizations for full time support personnel, who help prepare training exercises and operate the brigades between weekend drills, have been cut from 90-100 percent in the early 1990s to 55-64 percent; (7) officials told GAO that the brigades continue to have difficulty recruiting and retaining enough personnel to meet staffing goals due to the strong economy, less desire to join the military, high personnel attrition, and other problems; (8) at the same time, war plans and training guidance do little to focus or prioritize the broad and growing range of missions the brigades must be ready to perform; (9) consequently, the brigades find it difficult to narrow training to a predictable and realistic set of skills for the time available; (10) the Army does not have an effective system for assessing brigade readiness; (11) the current system relies primarily on the subjective view of commanders and does not require the use of objective criteria or established training goals in reporting unit readiness; (12) as a result, brigade estimates--that they would need 42 days or less of training to be ready for war once called to active duty--are unrealistically low; (13) experiences during the Gulf War and a 1996 study by the RAND Corporation indicate that 70-80 days would be needed to prepare the brigades for deployment; (14) some brigade officials told GAO that they feel pressured to report they can be ready with 42 or less days of training to avoid low readiness ratings; (15) accurate assessments of readiness are further confused by inconsistencies between training guidance and actual war plans; (16) training guidance calls for the brigades to be trained and ready to deploy 90 days after they are called to active duty; and (17) however, war plans give some brigades considerably more time to be trained and moved to the war zones.

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.

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