Fort Bliss Monitor

Top brass visit Bliss
Senior Guard/Reserve officials address NRC graduating class

DAVE CROZIER
USASMA Public Affairs

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs Thomas F. Hall took time during his tour of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy to talk to Soldiers from the 116th Armored Cavalry, Idaho National Guard. He later addressed the students of Class 01-04 of the academy’s Nonresident Course during their graduation dinner on Thursday.

With the graduation of more than 500 students attending the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy Nonresident Course at Fort Bliss on Friday, two senior officials representing the Army National Guard and Army Reserve took the opportunity to address the class and discuss issues.

The first to arrive on post was the Honorable Thomas F. Hall, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs.

Hall received a quick tour through the academy and met some Soldiers from the 116th Armored Cavalry of the Idaho National Guard who are training prior to deploying to Iraq. The Secretary spent about 15 minutes with the Soldiers fielding questions and talking about how the Army Reserve is transforming along with the active Army. After talking to the Soldiers, the Secretary remarked how the interchange with the Soldiers “really made my day.” Following the tour and prior to speaking to the NRC students’ graduation dinner, the Secretary took time to discuss some of the challenges facing the Reserve Components and lessons learned since Sept. 11, 2001.

“This has been the largest mobilization of the Guard and Reserve since WWII and the brunt of it right now is on the Army National Guard and Army Reserves because this is a land war in both Afghanistan and Iraq,” Hall said. “So the Army has the majority of the forces involved.”

Hall explained one of the main issues he sees for today’s military is to obtain a rebalance of military occupational specialties and proper requirements for the high-density use units, and the restructuring of both the active Army and the Reserve Components so that they can sustain the war on terrorism into the future.
“We need to find a balance so we don’t overtax our Guard and Reserve and provide more predictability,” Hall said. “General Schoomaker wants to make the Army more mobile, more agile. He wants to create more firepower brigades and within the Guard and Reserve is a lot of the combat support forces for that. So I look upon this as an overall Army strategy and what is going to be needed in the ways of brigades to win America’s wars while providing combat support services, homeland security and homeland requirements and achieve an overall balance.”

One of the biggest lessons learned with the call up of forces since Sept. 11, 2001, Hall explained, was that the system is not very agile and the call up of Reserve Component forces is tied to what the Army used to be like.
“We used to have a long time to call people up, train them and then get ready. The real lessons learned and the answers are, you are not going to have that much time in the international war on terrorism,” Hall said. “We are going to have to have a mobilization system that is designed not for the ’80s or ’90s, but for now.”

Hall said the way to shorten mobilization time is to change the paradigm from mobilize, train and deploy; to train, mobilize and deploy and do as much of the training prior to mobilization to lessen the time getting into theater.

On Friday Lt. Gen H. Steven Blum, Chief of the National Guard Bureau visited Fort Bliss to speak to the NRC Class 01-04 graduates. Prior to his address, the general also took time to discuss issues facing the Army National Guard, particularly in the areas of recruiting, homeland defense and lengths of deployments.

Recent statistics show the Army Guard is not meeting its recruiting goals for the current year. Blum explained this by stating it’s partly his fault.

“We are not having a real tough time, but let me explain what is happening here. We set a goal that was pretty high not anticipating that we would enjoy a good retention rate or good reenlisted rate [in the active Army],” Blum said. “So we set our recruiting ramp up to try and offset that and I refused to adjust the goal once it was set. You can always adjust a goal and be right on target, but I’d rather not. I would rather see what we can really sustain in terms of a volunteer force that’s under the stress of the crucible of war.”

Blum said even though the goal is not being met, the Army Guard is doing quite well and are only 2 percent off of making the goal.

“Are we making goal? No. Are we having a little difficulty meeting our end strength? Yeah, we really are. Would I call it a bad time or a terrible time or anything significant? No. I think it’s too early to say that,” Blum said.

“Our reenlistment rates are higher than they ever have been and our non-prior accessions are doing really well. Where we are falling short is about half of the Guard enlistments normally come out of prior service Soldiers.

So, if you look at the utilization rate of the Army National Guard and you are just coming off of active duty, your likelihood of going back on a world-wide deployment is pretty good so you might as well stay where you are.”
Blum said that Stop Loss is also impacting those who he believes might join the Guard rather than stay on active duty. Another area of interest for Blum is the National Guard’s dual-hatted role as that of national defense and homeland defense and balancing the two.

“It is a question that is on the minds of every governor of every state and territory. They are all concerned and they all understand the need to train Air Force and Army Soldiers to go overseas and fight, but they also want to be able to protect their states and territories and deal with homeland security,” Blum said. “So what we are doing is we are balancing very closely to reach a force strength of about 50 percent of the Army and Air National Guard combined in every state and territory, while at the same time committing forces to the combatant commander overseas.”

Blum said he believes that if the balance is done properly the military can put some predictability into deployments for all components. Another area Blum said needs attention.

“The one year boots on the ground policy that the Army has right now for Iraq and Afghanistan means for the active force one year away from Fort Bragg, Fort Sill, Fort Bliss or Fort Whatever for one year. But for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve it means being away from their homes, jobs and employers, not for just the year, but for the period it took to train up, mobilize and bring them on active duty and then the time in country, bring them back and demobilize them from active duty,” Blum said. “That time could be anywhere from 18 to 24 months. So when you are talking about a year with boots on the ground, it’s more like a year and half or two years of mobilization [for them].”

Blum believes that with Army Transformation, something the Guard and Reserve are keeping lock step with in terms of training, equipping and becoming more modular, that it will allow the Army to become more interchangeable and interoperable and will also allow for more predictability.

In the area of reintegration, both Hall and Blum agree that it is a challenge, but that everything must be done to ensure the move back to their civilian lives and jobs is done properly.

“We want to demobilize people as quickly as we can once they get back, we don’t want to delay people, but we don’t want to do it too quickly before they get a full medical out processing,” Hall said. “We want to get them home, back on their jobs as quickly as possible, but we also want to do the proper out processing and get them the medical help they need as they integrate back into the system.”

Blum added that he believes the reintegration is going very well.

“I think we are having good success in re-assimilating [Soldiers back into their communities]. It has been almost a quarter of a million Soldiers that we have deployed, redeployed, mobilized and brought back off of active duty since Sept. 11, 2001,” Blum said. “Sure there have been a few problems, but they are a few and not systemic.”

Both Hall and Blum said the future of the active Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard will be one of interoperability and interchangeability.

As Blum explained, “they will be plug and play [components] like Lego blocks. It won’t matter whether the Lego is an active duty Army block, or an Army Reserve or Army National Guard block. They will all be interchangeable and interoperable. That will allow the Chief of Staff to leverage his entire human resources in the Army.”



www.bliss.army.mil	Published for the Fort Bliss/El Paso, Texas Community	August 5, 2004

<map name="boxmap-b4"> <area shape="rect" coords="0, 589, 120, 600" href="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" > <area coords="0,0,10000,10000" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=&creative=92501&camp=8117&link_code=dl1&path=subst/misc/amazon-cobrand-cc/v3/marketing-from-associates-step1.html/ref%3Db1_assoc_29" > </map>	Top brass visit Bliss Senior Guard/Reserve officials address NRC graduating class DAVE CROZIER USASMA Public Affairs Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs Thomas F. Hall took time during his tour of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy to talk to Soldiers from the 116th Armored Cavalry, Idaho National Guard. He later addressed the students of Class 01-04 of the academy’s Nonresident Course during their graduation dinner on Thursday. With the graduation of more than 500 students attending the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy Nonresident Course at Fort Bliss on Friday, two senior officials representing the Army National Guard and Army Reserve took the opportunity to address the class and discuss issues. The first to arrive on post was the Honorable Thomas F. Hall, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. Hall received a quick tour through the academy and met some Soldiers from the 116th Armored Cavalry of the Idaho National Guard who are training prior to deploying to Iraq. The Secretary spent about 15 minutes with the Soldiers fielding questions and talking about how the Army Reserve is transforming along with the active Army. After talking to the Soldiers, the Secretary remarked how the interchange with the Soldiers “really made my day.” Following the tour and prior to speaking to the NRC students’ graduation dinner, the Secretary took time to discuss some of the challenges facing the Reserve Components and lessons learned since Sept. 11, 2001. “This has been the largest mobilization of the Guard and Reserve since WWII and the brunt of it right now is on the Army National Guard and Army Reserves because this is a land war in both Afghanistan and Iraq,” Hall said. “So the Army has the majority of the forces involved.” Hall explained one of the main issues he sees for today’s military is to obtain a rebalance of military occupational specialties and proper requirements for the high-density use units, and the restructuring of both the active Army and the Reserve Components so that they can sustain the war on terrorism into the future. “We need to find a balance so we don’t overtax our Guard and Reserve and provide more predictability,” Hall said. “General Schoomaker wants to make the Army more mobile, more agile. He wants to create more firepower brigades and within the Guard and Reserve is a lot of the combat support forces for that. So I look upon this as an overall Army strategy and what is going to be needed in the ways of brigades to win America’s wars while providing combat support services, homeland security and homeland requirements and achieve an overall balance.” One of the biggest lessons learned with the call up of forces since Sept. 11, 2001, Hall explained, was that the system is not very agile and the call up of Reserve Component forces is tied to what the Army used to be like. “We used to have a long time to call people up, train them and then get ready. The real lessons learned and the answers are, you are not going to have that much time in the international war on terrorism,” Hall said. “We are going to have to have a mobilization system that is designed not for the ’80s or ’90s, but for now.” Hall said the way to shorten mobilization time is to change the paradigm from mobilize, train and deploy; to train, mobilize and deploy and do as much of the training prior to mobilization to lessen the time getting into theater. On Friday Lt. Gen H. Steven Blum, Chief of the National Guard Bureau visited Fort Bliss to speak to the NRC Class 01-04 graduates. Prior to his address, the general also took time to discuss issues facing the Army National Guard, particularly in the areas of recruiting, homeland defense and lengths of deployments. Recent statistics show the Army Guard is not meeting its recruiting goals for the current year. Blum explained this by stating it’s partly his fault. “We are not having a real tough time, but let me explain what is happening here. We set a goal that was pretty high not anticipating that we would enjoy a good retention rate or good reenlisted rate [in the active Army],” Blum said. “So we set our recruiting ramp up to try and offset that and I refused to adjust the goal once it was set. You can always adjust a goal and be right on target, but I’d rather not. I would rather see what we can really sustain in terms of a volunteer force that’s under the stress of the crucible of war.” Blum said even though the goal is not being met, the Army Guard is doing quite well and are only 2 percent off of making the goal. “Are we making goal? No. Are we having a little difficulty meeting our end strength? Yeah, we really are. Would I call it a bad time or a terrible time or anything significant? No. I think it’s too early to say that,” Blum said. “Our reenlistment rates are higher than they ever have been and our non-prior accessions are doing really well. Where we are falling short is about half of the Guard enlistments normally come out of prior service Soldiers. So, if you look at the utilization rate of the Army National Guard and you are just coming off of active duty, your likelihood of going back on a world-wide deployment is pretty good so you might as well stay where you are.” Blum said that Stop Loss is also impacting those who he believes might join the Guard rather than stay on active duty. Another area of interest for Blum is the National Guard’s dual-hatted role as that of national defense and homeland defense and balancing the two. “It is a question that is on the minds of every governor of every state and territory. They are all concerned and they all understand the need to train Air Force and Army Soldiers to go overseas and fight, but they also want to be able to protect their states and territories and deal with homeland security,” Blum said. “So what we are doing is we are balancing very closely to reach a force strength of about 50 percent of the Army and Air National Guard combined in every state and territory, while at the same time committing forces to the combatant commander overseas.” Blum said he believes that if the balance is done properly the military can put some predictability into deployments for all components. Another area Blum said needs attention. “The one year boots on the ground policy that the Army has right now for Iraq and Afghanistan means for the active force one year away from Fort Bragg, Fort Sill, Fort Bliss or Fort Whatever for one year. But for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve it means being away from their homes, jobs and employers, not for just the year, but for the period it took to train up, mobilize and bring them on active duty and then the time in country, bring them back and demobilize them from active duty,” Blum said. “That time could be anywhere from 18 to 24 months. So when you are talking about a year with boots on the ground, it’s more like a year and half or two years of mobilization [for them].” Blum believes that with Army Transformation, something the Guard and Reserve are keeping lock step with in terms of training, equipping and becoming more modular, that it will allow the Army to become more interchangeable and interoperable and will also allow for more predictability. In the area of reintegration, both Hall and Blum agree that it is a challenge, but that everything must be done to ensure the move back to their civilian lives and jobs is done properly. “We want to demobilize people as quickly as we can once they get back, we don’t want to delay people, but we don’t want to do it too quickly before they get a full medical out processing,” Hall said. “We want to get them home, back on their jobs as quickly as possible, but we also want to do the proper out processing and get them the medical help they need as they integrate back into the system.” Blum added that he believes the reintegration is going very well. “I think we are having good success in re-assimilating [Soldiers back into their communities]. It has been almost a quarter of a million Soldiers that we have deployed, redeployed, mobilized and brought back off of active duty since Sept. 11, 2001,” Blum said. “Sure there have been a few problems, but they are a few and not systemic.” Both Hall and Blum said the future of the active Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard will be one of interoperability and interchangeability. As Blum explained, “they will be plug and play [components] like Lego blocks. It won’t matter whether the Lego is an active duty Army block, or an Army Reserve or Army National Guard block. They will all be interchangeable and interoperable. That will allow the Chief of Staff to leverage his entire human resources in the Army.”