WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- U.S. President Bush's decision to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border will cost around $756 million.
That estimate does not include the funding already programmed in to pay the training and personnel costs for the more than 100,000 soldiers likely to fulfill that duty, a top Pentagon official said Thursday.
The Pentagon is seeking to take that money out of $1.9 billion that the U.S. Senate set aside in the Fiscal Year 2006 emergency supplemental appropriation for U.S. border enforcement.
That number remains in flux, however. The duties that need to be done, and which of them are outside the scope of normal training activities are still being defined, said Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense.
A number of active duty military personnel may also be required. McHale said the active duty U.S. military had capabilities that the Guard did not, including detectors for weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed if necessary.
Another area that may need active duty involvement is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor the border.
McHale said the Department of defense would be seeking reimbursement for all those costs not associated with the guard training missions.
President George W. Bush's plan, announced Monday night in a nationally televised address, calls for 6,000 troops to fill supporting missions along the border for the next 12 months, starting in early June. The vast majority will be deployed on three-week missions that will substitute for the Guard's annual training.
The intention is for soldiers to perform duties that exercise their professional skills -- combat engineers will build walls, fences and roads, and communications specialists will set up and operate networks.
The temporary nature of the rotations means that during the course of the year, more than 100,000 National Guard soldiers will take on border missions, nearly a quarter of the entire U.S. Guard.
States that need guard soldiers for hurricane relief will not be asked to spare soldiers for the duty, said Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, the director of the U.S. Army National Guard. Neither will Guard units scheduled to go to Iraq or Afghanistan be tapped. They will receive the very specific training -- like convoy operations, improvised explosive device identification and procedures, and live fire exercises -- that they would need to serve in a war zone.
At the same time, state governors may opt out of sending troops for the border mission, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate committee Wednesday.
With all of those limitations, the Guard will still have enough troops for the mission, Vaughn said Thursday at a Pentagon press conference.
"It's hard to tell ... but right now it's very encouraging the number of states who have volunteered," Vaughn said.
The Pentagon and the border states where troops will be deployed are still working on rules of engagement that will govern how and when National Guard soldiers may use lethal force.
"We don't expect a large force of armed soldiers will be in proximity to the border," Vaughn said. "But as we head down this line you have to remember Army soldiers carry personal Army weapons."
McHale said the U.S. military did not want to be involved in the apprehension or detention of illegal aliens. "Very few will likely be in position to face physical risk," he said.
However, restricting Guard troops to support missions may not be a guarantee they will not fire a weapon. A decade ago a small group of U.S. Marines who were observing the border believed they were under fire and shot and killed an 18-year-old who was herding goats in Texas. The Marine who fired the shot was cleared of wrong-doing, but the incident caused the military to scale back the level of its involvement in counter-narcotics missions.
Guard troops will begin deploying in small numbers to affected states in early June, but will not arrive in large numbers until their missions are clearly defined, matched to soldier's individual specialties, and the necessary equipment is put in place.
"We don't want soldiers sitting on their packs," said McHale.
McHale said the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security were still trying to quantify what a successful deployment will be, but the ways of measuring it are inherently vague.
He dismissed counting the number of illegal migrants apprehended and comparing that with previous years as a reasonable measure of success. "I think that's really tortured logic," he said.
McHale said he believed that much of the benefit of the Guard deployment would be in deterring people from even attempting to cross the border. "I'm not sure how we measure deterrence," he said.
He also expected a number of migrants' lives to be saved by the increased presence of troops and border patrol agents. People perish in the dangerous desert crossing every year from lack of food, water or medical care.
