With two different reports due in February 2014 that could affect the role the National Guard plays post-Afghanistan, the National Guard Bureau is hard at work trying to develop metrics to support its case, bureau chief Gen. Frank Grass told reporters Tuesday morning.
The congressionally created National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force has a report due in February, and the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review will include recommendations on how to balance the active and reserve components of the military.
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| National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Frank Grass told reporters Tuesday that the Air Force was helping calculate exactly what its warfighting needs were and what balance of active and reserve forces might fill those needs. Photo: National Guard Bureau. |
Grass said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast that most of the QDR working groups have to touch on the issue of active/reserve component balance and are willing to try to tackle that issue head-on. To support that, an Air Force task force created a draft decision support tool “that starts to look at that in metrics” of balancing active and reserve forces.
“If you look at all the war plans and total up what you think you need to be able to do for the strategy of the nation, the defense of the nation, and then you start breaking that down and say, who can do that? And how much time do I need to get them there? And how much lift do I have available to move them and their equipment?” Grass said. “Now you actually begin to get some metrics to say, I’ve got to have this many on the ramp at all times, and I can put so many in the Guard and Reserve. So that discussion is something we hope to bring out during the QDR.”
During the process of determining a future balance, some states’ adjutants general have proposed increasing the size of the Guard, particularly the Army National Guard, Grass said. And despite his pitch for the value the Guard brings to both states and the federal government, “what I’ve told all the adjutants general is, in this fiscal environment–in realizing the Budget Control Act is the law, that every January a percentage of our appropriation goes away, so even if we grew the Guard, the Army Guard, we’re not getting any new money unless someone changes the law…it’s very difficult for me to support a plan that grows it, although for the nation it could be a good thing in the long-term.”
Grass said the Guard has tried to find cuts to make to help the Army and Air Force pay their sequestration bills without having to reduce the size of the Guard. But overall, he said, he thinks the financial situation lends itself to keeping the Guard at its current size.
“Compensation and entitlements are growing at such a rapid pace that eventually, over time, the amount of money we would have to train and acquire new equipment and do research and development would be a very small slice of the total budget, as compensation would eventually consume most of our defense budget,” he said. “We provide the nation a great opportunity to take a look at saving on compensation. We pay for guardsmen 39 days a year unless you’re using them full-time, so you can ramp down when you need to, ramp up when you go to war as we’ve done this war.”