Lessons of Desert Storm Phantom Army

Few institutions are as quintessentially American as the National Guard. Founded by the colonists in 1607, blooded in the Revolution as the Minutemen, the Guard has served in every major U.S. conflict, and acts as a first line of defense when natural disasters strike. The 574,000 Guard members enrolled in 4,000 units are the military's link to civilian society: part-time soldiers who are supposed to devote a minimum of 12 weekends and one two-week period each year to prepare themselves for battle.

Since 1973, when the Pentagon abandoned the draft and installed the all- volunteer armed forces, the Guard, along with the armed forces reserves, has 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.

The strategy got its first real test in Operation Desert Storm, when 228,500 Guard members and reservists were called up for active duty in the biggest mobilization since the Korean War. More than 100,000 of these part-time soldiers were sent to the Persian Gulf, while the remainder filled in Stateside for the departing regular forces.

The gulf deployment showed the best, and the worst, of the weekend warriors. Air National Guard fighters and attack planes knocked out Iraqi tanks, and the Air Reserve conducted a huge airlift of troops and materiel. A force composed of the Marine Reserve blasted through Saddam Hussein's defenses and led the way to Kuwait City.

At the same time, though, the Army encountered major difficulties in deploying its National Guard troops. Several thousand Guard members on the rosters could not be sent to the gulf because they had not attended basic training. Some were too old, others overweight and out of shape. A full 5% suffered from dental problems that needed treatment.

Far more alarming was the attempted mobilization of three so-called round- out brigades, each of which had 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.