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| Guard Would Give Bonuses to Bolster Ranks |
| 2005-01-26 |
| WASHINGTON (AP) - Looking for new ways to bolster its thinning ranks, the Army National Guard is seeking legal authority to offer $15,000 bonuses to active-duty soldiers willing to join the Guard - up from $50 now. Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters Tuesday that the Guard is 15,000 soldiers below its normal strength of 350,000, and he expects further short-term declines despite recent gains from tripling re-enlistment bonuses for Guardsmen deployed abroad. If the Guard fails to return to its normal troop level of 350,000 by the end of the budget year on Sept. 30, it will be the first time that has happened since 1989, the three-star general said. He added that he believes he has a formula for restoring the Guard's strength. Heavily stressed by longer-than-anticpated combat and support duties in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Guard recently increased first-time enlistment bonuses and added 1,400 recruiters. In explaining his interest in getting congressional approval for $15,000 bonuses to entice active-duty military members to join the Guard, Blum said he believes he could get 8,000 new Guardsmen this way. He said the existing $50 bonus carries little weight in today's economy. ``That incentive may have been a big deal 50 years ago, but it doesn't buy much today,'' he said. Blum offered two main reasons the Guard has found it harder to get active-duty soldiers to switch to the Guard. Many are prevented from leaving the active Army even after their contracts are up or their retirement dates have arrived because the Army invoked a special authority known as ``stop loss'' that freezes soldiers in place for months at a time. Also, those who can leave active duty are sometimes less interested in joining the Guard if they believe that their prospective Guard unit is in line for a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Blum also said that while he believes the National Guard will be asked to contribute a relatively smaller proportion of the combat force in Iraq starting in mid-2005, it will remain strapped. Currently, 44 percent of the Army combat forces in Iraq are Guard troops, he said, and he believes that will drop to the low 20s later this year. Offsetting that, however, is an expectation that the Guard will be required to contribute a larger proportion of the support troops. According to a chart provided by Blum, 71 of the Guard's 75 infantry battalions have been committed for duty in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere since President Bush authorized Guard and Reserve mobilizations for the war on terror on Sept. 14, 2001. A battalion is considered ``committed'' if at least 35 percent of its troops are mobilized for active-duty service. Similarly, 33 of the Guard's 36 armor battalions have been committed in that same time period. Blum said the Guard has not run out of combat power but it needs a break. ``I've pretty well given at the office,'' he said, ``and it's time for the (active-duty Army) to pick it up.'' Among the Guard combat forces that have been put on active duty since September 2001 are 11 infantry battalions and six armor battalions that provided security at airports and other locations in the United States in the weeks following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Blum's chart showed. In hindsight, he said he wishes he had used non-combat troops for that work. ``I did not envision being in Iraq in 2005 with 44 percent of the (total Army) combat forces,'' he said. ``That was not in my wildest scenario on the crystal ball that I was looking at.'' Blum also said that he has kept his promise to state governors - who control National Guard units during peacetime - that he will not have more than 50 percent of their Guard troops mobilized at any given time. In most states the percent that are mobilized is well below 50. The only states currently at 50 percent are Washington and Hawaii, he said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |