CHAIRMAN CARL LEVIN:  Senator Akaka?

SENATOR DANIEL K. AKAKA:  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me add my welcome to all witnesses, and commend you for your
service to our country.  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness
and Management Support, I'm extremely concerned, as you are, about the
readiness of the Army and Marine Corps, and also their ability to
respond to the emerging threats not only of the war we're in, but of
the 21st century.

And the challenges that we're in are even more difficult, because
we are simultaneously increasing the size of the force, and having to
restructure our military posture to effectively deal with the threats,
and as you mentioned, counterinsurgency operations.  And there's no
question we must do all we can to provide the training and the
equipment and all that our troops need.

Regarding this, I have some questions to Dr. Krepinevich and
General Scales. During the early 1970s, talking about history, the
Army was reorganized so that the regular Army could not conduct an
extended campaign without mobilizing the Guard and the Reserves.  It's
not clear, however, that the Defense Department leadership at that
time anticipated the kind of protracted conflict we are facing today
with the Global War on Terror and an Army that is comprised of 55
percent National Guard and Reserves.

I believe Dr. Korb is right in that the all-volunteer force was
meant to be an initial defense against threats against our country.
Now, in a prolonged war, I believe that the all-volunteer force is
meant to be a bridge for dealing with threats until a full-time
wartime force is built.

Now, Dr. Krepinevich or General Scales, with the current Army
organization, is the Army too reliant on the National Guard to meet
its global commitments?  In other words, are we fighting as a
sustained war with a peacetime organization?  And since our Army force
structure consists, as I mentioned, of 55 percent National Guard and
Reserves to 45 percent active duty, how can the National Guard
maintain its capability to deal with security threats with natural
disasters at home while we expect it to be providing extensive support
to our national interests abroad?

Dr. Krepinevich?

ANDREW KREPINEVICH JR., PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS

KREPINEVICH:  As you noted, Senator, in the wake of the Vietnam
war, as we've mentioned here, General Abrams put a lot of the Army's
combat service support in the Reserves, with the idea that if you're
going to use the active Army in large numbers, you'd have to call up
the Guard forces, Reserve forces as well.  That has obviously begun to
change with the advent of the modular force.  Now we have these
brigades that can deploy on their own with much more regularity than
stripping out units from the division and so on.

But when you ask, is the current Army too reliant on the Guard
and Reserve, I think using the Army's own metrics, you have to say
yes.  The Army strives for a six-to-one rotation rate for Guard and
Reserve forces, which is to say for every six Guard brigades you have,
only one would be on deployment at any given time. And we've seen over
the last four or five years that the Army has fallen below that ratio.

So by the Army's own definition, just as the active force is
overstressed, the reserve force is overstressed as well.  And I think
when you look at the fact that the Army has concentrated a lot of its
support elements in the Reserve forces and in the National Guard, you
also -- if you believe as I do -- that a lot of the contingencies
we're going to see the most likely, as the chairman points out, are
irregular warfare, stability operations, counterinsurgency, then these
are the kinds of forces you're going to need more of.

Not only that, but when you do talk about things like homeland
security disaster relief, as General McCaffrey said, it's not a matter
of if, it's a matter of when we're going to get hit here at home.
You're going to need those kinds of forces, not only for these
external operations that deal with irregular warfare, but also here on
the home front as well.

So these forces are a lot more important.  We have to think about
them a lot differently than we did between the '70s and 9/11.  And
during that period, as you know, the Guard and Reserve was kind of
this bridge between the active force and mass mobilization of the
country on a scale like we saw in World War II.

Well, this is not the force for the occasional large war.  As the
Defense Department has said, the Guard and Reserve has really
transitioned from being a strategic reserve to being an operational
reserve, which means "We plan on using you folks a lot more," not only
now, but I think in the future as well.

SENATOR AKAKA:  General Scales?

MAJOR GENERAL ROBERT SCALES JR. (USA, RET.), PRESIDENT, COLGEN, INC.

SCALES:  Senator, that's a key question.

One of the things I find interesting about this war is that in
many ways, the National Guard is threatened by its own success.  I
remember in the '70s, the National Guard was always viewed as sort of
a follow-on force, as Andy says, or as an augmentation force.  But
what I think has amazed many of my regular Army colleagues is that
they have performed so incredibly well in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Several reasons for that:  number one is, they're mature, and we
know that oftentimes more mature soldiers are better decision-makers
in these types of crises.  The second is, National Guard units, the
brigades that I visited are very tightly bonded.  It simply is a
hometown unit, and so their ability to know each other and to work
with each other intuitively, I think, is truly exceptional than
oftentimes in many regular units.

But the result of that is that in many ways, perhaps the National
Guard is being killed with kindness, that the Abrams doctrine is no
longer valid any more. And in many ways, the National Guard has
bifurcated itself into two forces.

One is what I guess you could call a quasi-professional force, an
almost professional force.  I met a sergeant major from a Minnesota
National Guard brigade that's on its way back over to Iraq.  And he
told me, "My unit consists of two types of people:  those who've
already left because they have jobs, and those who are sticking around
because they essentially have committed themselves over a lifetime to
serve in the National Guard."

Is that good or bad?  I don't know.  But we're in a completely
different place now.

The Guard has now become absolutely essential to our future
military strategy, and frankly, I don't think -- and I agree with
General McCaffrey -- I don't think we have enough Guardsmen now to
perform both of those functions, the governor's militia as well as
this quasi-professional force.  And we certainly haven't given them
the equipment and the training and the education that they need, to my
mind, to perform either one of those.

By killing with kindness, the third danger is that they may be
overused.  And I think that the force that is at greatest risk of
being harmed in the short term is the National Guard, because of all
those things that we just talked about.  And I think it concerns us
all greatly.

SENATOR AKAKA:  Thank you very much.  My time has expired.

CHAIRMAN LEVIN:  Senator Akaka, thank you.