Word: combatting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...assumed a more central role in military planning. The Defense Department's Total Force policy is designed to have units of the Air National Guard and reserves and Army Guard support troops available for quick deployment; in the event of a war lasting more than a few weeks, heavy-combat Guard and reserve units would be called up to round out divisions of the regular Army. Based on the military's commitment to Total Force, Congress has poured more than $100 billion into training the Guard and equipping its troops during the past decade...
...been scheduled to augment a regular Army division. Although the Pentagon had given all the units a C-2 rating, its second highest standard of battle readiness, the three brigades -- totaling 15,000, one-fourth of the Army Guard members summoned to active duty -- were declared unfit for combat by regular Army commanders and could not be sent to the gulf...
...four years. The Guard's defenders accuse the Department of Defense of having kept the Guard and reserves out of the fray so that regular units could get more than a fair share of future appropriations. "The Pentagon took the position that they simply weren't going to use combat reserves," says Mississippi Democrat G.V. ("Sonny") Montgomery, the reserves' leading champion in the House. "That's not the Total Force concept Congress had in mind...
...needed; a helicopter battalion was unable to practice because it was given only two usable antitank missiles for live-fire exercises; and an infantry battalion received only 19 of the 60 TOW missiles it had requested. All too often, the GAO reported, Guard units have failed to acquire combat skills because their training exercises are so unrealistic. Most disheartening, the agency concluded, few improvements have been made since similar problems were detected...
...Morale. The Desert Storm call-up confronted many in the Guard with an obligation they thought they would never have to fulfill: abruptly leaving their jobs and families to march off to war. Untold numbers of recent recruits had enlisted mainly for the pay and never expected to face combat. Moreover, since many Guard units are assigned to logistical and other support duties needed to transport the massive amounts of military supplies sent to the gulf back to the U.S., they were forced to remain in the war zone long after virtually all the regular troops were sent home...