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Training Overhaul For Guard Is Costly

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The Associated Press

Published: August 20, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is determined to overhaul the training and active duty tours for the Army National Guard.

However, finding a way to give those part-time soldiers more time at home will cost more than $128 million, The Associated Press has learned.

After struggling for more than a year and a half to condense the training process, Army National Guard leaders have chopped months off the time that citizen soldiers must spend away from their jobs and families because of deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Until early 2007, Guard combat brigades were training for up to six months, much of it away from home. Then they would spend 12 months to 15 months in the war zone. The average time has been slashed to a bit more than 13 months, including about a month of training at home, another 40 to 70 days at the formal Army training center and about 10 months on the battlefront.

Spurred by the Pentagon's promise that Guard deployments would be limited to one year, military leaders pledged to spread some of the required pre-deployment war preparation into the soldiers' routine weekend and weeklong training exercises each year.

That would allow soldiers to train, get required medical tests and do some paperwork while at home for much of the 12 months prior to heading to one of 10 mobilization centers for their final prewar training and equipment.

It's an expensive exercise, though. Training and equipping the part-time troops will cost nearly double the estimated $128 million cost of revamping their active-duty tours.

Depending on the size and type of unit, soldiers are spending anywhere from two weeks to more than two months at the mobilization center, where they receive their final, most up-to-date training.

The spike in spending will fund the hiring of about 2,000 trainers for the Guard. They will be needed to ensure that Guard members get as much training as they can during that one-year period before they mobilize.

According to Col. Rob Moore, chief of training for the Army National Guard, nearly 1,500 of those slots have been filled.

The Guard also has spent about $5 million to buy cell phones, laptop computers and other supplies for each state.

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