Amid overseas deployments and responding to natural disasters in the U.S. and its territories, the readiness of the National Guard is where it needs to be, Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel said on Tuesday.
“We are right where we are supposed to be in terms of what we’re built to go do,” Lengyel, who is chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
Lengyel said guard and reserve forces don’t have to be ready at all times but they do need to be ready fast. And these forces are getting ready faster, in large part due to their integration into continuing operations, he said.
For the last 16 years the Army has been involved in combat operations and the Air Force has been supporting operations since 1991, all of it with the support of various guard forces, Lengyel said.
“This continuous operational use of us has made us a more ready force,” he said. “It’s made us be able to get ready faster and that is a cultural thing as much as anything and not all of it costs money. We’ve been able to have a disciplined approach to training, a focused approach on spending resources to make sure we’re spending those resources dedicated toward the readiness of the force. So, readiness is high on everybody’s priority.”
Currently there 20,000 guard forces deployed globally for military missions and another 15,000 involved in responding to the recent hurricanes in Florida and Texas and wildfires in the Western U.S. As an example of the readiness of the guard forces, Lengyel said that right in the middle of responding to Hurricane Harvey, which hit South Texas in late August, 800 National Guardsman from Texas mobilized as planned to Fort Bliss to deploy to the Horn of Africa in support of operational missions.
“They didn’t stop their Title 10 commitments to the war fight,” Lengyel said, referring to the section of U.S. code that outlines the role of the armed forces.
Lengyel said that readiness rates of the Air National Guard, including fighter and tanker squadrons and maintainers, are similar to those of the active forces. He said the Army’s commitment to the National Guard is robust, noting that there are 27 Brigade Combat Teams in the National Guard.
Army Chief of Staff. Gen. Mark Milley, and the Army, “has invested in our readiness,” Lengyel said.
Not all of the guard forces are at the highest readiness rate, Lengyel said, adding that doing so wouldn’t make sense because of costs.
“It would be silly for us to buy readiness to keep all of those at the most ready status,” he said. An important feature of the reserve forces is “that just in time readiness is what we bring. So, you don’t buy the readiness, you don’t pay for the readiness until you’re going to use it.”
Guard forces weren’t a part of the steady operational forces 20 years ago but now they are, Lengyel said. Going forward, this will be the case, he said.
“Whatever force we build as part of the future going forward is going to have a reserve component that is used operationally,” Lengyel said.
“If you continually use us, we’ll be better ready, we’ll be better equipped, we’ll be better integrated, and everything works better because of that,” Lengyel said. “But I believe very strongly in the continued operational use. They should never make us this strategic reserve that just sits over on the side and is only called up for the big war.”
Lengyel also said that that the better integrated the guard forces are with the active components then the more willing the military services are to invest in and “buy us new equipment [and] train our forces.”
Beginning in 2018, the Army plans to double to four the number of combat center training rotations that the guard forces conduct each year, Lengyel said, adding that this is a significant investment given that each rotation costs $50 million.