Report: National Guard short on gear to handle domestic crises

Mike SheehanPublished: Tuesday January 30, 2007

The National Guard may lack the gear necessary to handle crises within the United States, National Journal's CongressDailyAM reports.

"Congressional investigators have found that the Defense Department does not adequately track National Guard equipment needs for domestic missions," writes Megan Scully, "raising questions about whether the state-run units have adequate supplies to respond to disasters and emergencies on U.S. soil."

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent investigative branch of Congress, released a report which concluded "that defense officials have recognized the need to track the National Guard's stateside stocks of vehicles and other gear available to respond to domestic disasters, but those efforts have not yet yielded reliable information on the equipment units have at their disposal."

The report continues, "Until DOD reaches agreement on a specific approach for measuring readiness for domestic missions and requirements are defined, it will remain unclear whether the Guard is equipped to respond effectively to the consequences of a large-scale terrorist attack or natural disaster."

Scully writes that "over the last several months, many state Guard leaders have complained that their units took their best equipment with them when they deployed to Iraq, leaving the personnel at home short of trucks, radios and other equipment needed for domestic missions."

Excerpts from the subscription-only CongressDailyAM article follow...

The Army already has pledged $21 billion through 2011 to modernize Guard units. But GAO indicated in its report that Army leaders have not specified how much of that equipment will stay in the United States.

"In the absence of a specific plan that outlines how Army National Guard equipment will be allocated among non-deployed units, state National Guards may be hampered in their ability to plan for responding to large-scale domestic events," the GAO report said.

In its written response to the report, the Defense Department said it partially agreed with a GAO recommendation to report to Congress on the National Guard's ability to respond to natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
"Readiness reporting and tracking is critical to ensuring the execution of the [Defense] Department's Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," wrote Thomas Hall, assistant secretary of Defense for reserve affairs. "This includes the readiness to perform domestic missions by all ten military components, not just the Army and Air National Guard."

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