Poor oversight hampers National Guard readiness

Published 31 January 2007

DoD lacks a system to track movement of equipment from stateside depots to overseas combat; disaster readiness a major concern; planners worry that a $21 billion Guard modernization program will be swallowed up by the war in Iraq

This is not the place to debate President Bush’s Iraq strategy (or, as some prefer, “strategy”), but there can be little doubt that the campaign has severely stretched America’s military forces, the National Guard among them. On the international front, this means that Bush has much less leverage when dealing with crises with Iran and North Korea. On the domestic front, it means that the states have fewer resources to handle their own security needs. Bad enough, but according to a new report by the Government Accounting Office, not even the Defense Department has any idea how bad conditions are stateside. Investigators have found that DoD does not adequately track its equipment needs for domestic missions, leaving grave doubt as to whether the Guard is ready for the next Hurricane Katrina or 9-11.

With so much pressure to deploy critical resources to Iraq, DoD realizes that it must keep track of whether certain vehicles and equipment are abroad or in a local depot. It just does not do so. With two-thirds of National Guard units “not combat-ready,” this is even more serious than it sounds. The DoD has announced plans to spend $21 billion over the next five years to moernize Guard units. Yet with no method in place to adequately control the distribution of equipment, much of those funds are likely to be swallowed up in Iraq, with local emergency response efforts feeling the brunt. “In the absence of a specific plan that outlines how Army National Guard equipment will be allocated among non-deployed units, state National Guards may be hampered in their ability to plan for responding to large-scale domestic events,” the GAO report said.

-read more in Megan Scully’s CongressDaily report