WASHINGTON, March 23 (UPI) -- The chairman of the U.S. Commission on the National Guard and Reserves said Friday reserve readiness was worse than realized.
The commission reported three weeks ago that 88 percent of the Army National Guard units in the United States were not ready for their missions, lacking equipment, personnel, training or some combination.
"And I can tell you today the Guard is less ready than the 88 percent. It's gotten worse in the three weeks since we issued our report, not better," said commission chairman retired Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee.
"We don't see the trend going up. We see the trend going down," he said.
The Guard has been heavily tapped for warfighting missions in Iraq. Historically under-resourced because the Guard was assumed to be an operational reserve -- that is, the last to go -- Guard units have shouldered a large part of the burden. In 2004 they made up more than half the Army units that were in Iraq.
According to Punaro, three of the Guard units that deployed to Iraq in 2004 are still missing critical equipment, even though two years have passed to restore their arsenals. Guard combat forces will not be restored until 2015.
Punaro said the Department of Homeland Security has failed to generate the requirement for Guard civil support missions, meaning the Defense Department has cause to give the Guard the necessary equipment or training for homeland defense missions.
"We have to basically ensure that the people responsible for generating these requirements do so, and then the Department of Defense needs to take them and validate them, and those that are validated need to be prioritized and funded," Punaro said.
