Guard confronts equipment shortage

Four days after Hurricane Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, green camouflaged trucks lined up at National Guard armories across Missouri. In Fulton, engines roared at 7:25 a.m. as soldiers with the 175th Military Police Battalion started up 20 trucks, ready to depart for New Orleans.

By 8 a.m., however, Spc. Danny Johnson knew things weren’t going smoothly.

“We had two breakdowns right here before we could even get out of the driveway, which is kind of embarrassing when you’re trying to get somewhere,” he said. “It put us behind.”

Eventually, the convoy got on the road, but the problems continued. It took three days to travel 800 miles as guardsmen coped with bad brakes, reluctant engines and broken speedometers along the way. One soldier fixed a broken fuel line in his truck with a sharpened stick.

The rocky start to the unit’s response to Katrina illustrates the severe equipment shortages among National Guard units across the country. According to Capt. Bruce Becker, the officer in charge of about half the Missouri Guard’s equipment in Louisiana, the war in Iraq has taken away resources that local Guard units need to respond to domestic crises.

“We’re still short some of our vehicles from deployment,” Beck said. “When our units deployed overseas to Iraq, a lot of units had to leave vehicles in country, and those haven’t been replaced yet.”

The Missouri National Guard deployed about 2,000 soldiers to Louisiana, including members of the 128th Field Artillery Battalion in Columbia. According to Missouri’s top guardsman, Adjutant Gen. King Sidwell, guardsmen were forced to travel in “substitute vehicles,” normally used for training.

“In those shortages, a lot of times you get substitutes,” Sidwell said. “They’re substitutes for training, but they’re not deployable to a theater of operations.”

Shortages were known

The equipment shortage was well-known to the National Guard at the national level well before Katrina came ashore. An April 29, 2004, report to Congress by the Government Accountability Office found that the “extensive transfers of personnel and equipment needed to prepare lower resourced Army Guard units to meet wartime deployment standards have eroded the readiness levels of the remaining Army Guard forces.”

Officials in states across the country said in the GAO report that “mobilized and deployed personnel and their equipment are not available for states to use for ... recurring natural disasters, such as floods.”

Missouri Guard affected

Despite such accounts, the National Guard reported a $15 billion shortfall in its equipment budget in 2005. Sidwell said because of long-term funding shortages the Guard has about one-third of the modern equipment it needs nationwide.

“We have shortages in a number of items of equipment that not only are necessary for our deployed mission in support of the global war on terrorism, but also necessary items of equipment to respond to state and regional emergencies,” he said.

Sidwell said the Missouri Guard is suffering a serious shortage of Humvees and medium tactical vehicles. The Missouri guardsmen also lack about two-thirds of the global positioning systems they should have, he said. The units are also making do with fewer than half the larger heavy expanded mobility tactical trucks, which would have helped navigate the floodwaters in New Orleans, he said.

The Missouri Guard’s biggest problem, Sidwell said, is a shortage of radios — just half the Guard’s quota of Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio Systems was available when Katrina hit. Many soldiers relied on their personal cell phones for communication, and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office gave the Missouri Guard a number of police radios to use while in the New Orleans area.

Staff Sgt. Jason Walling said radios were some of the most important tools for the squad of nine men that he led through the wreckage of Jefferson Parish.

“Communications means the difference between a soldier who gets wounded, whether he lives or dies,” Walling said.

Lt. Steven Person, a communications officer during the deployment, said the police radios made many of the Guard’s missions possible.

“I think, if it weren’t for the police radios, it would’ve been a lot worse,” Person said. “We used the police radios and we were able to utilize their assets, their repeaters, their communications center.”

One soldier decided to take matters into his own hands to ensure his squad’s safety.

“I bought these little Motorola handheld radios, so we can talk amongst ourselves,” said Walling. “It cost me 100-something dollars, but if that little bit of communications is what it takes to keep one of my people alive, or one of my people unharmed totally, then it’s worth it, worth every penny.”

While National Guard units in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast were able to rely on civilian resources and local police for communication, they don’t have that option in Iraq. In November, the GAO reported that Guard units in Iraq were unable to use their radios because they were incompatible with the Army’s newer models.

Questioning Congress

The chronic shortages of key equipment have left some guardsmen questioning the value Congress and the Army place on the National Guard.

“It seems like with the Guard, you always get second hand,” said guardsmen Danny Johnson.

There has been a push in Washington to better fund the Guard. Sens. Kit Bond of Missouri and Patrick Leahy of Vermont have asked Congress to approve $1.3 billion dollars to allow for purchasing equipment such as medium tactical vehicles and night-vision goggles.

But Missouri’s adjutant general is not sure that such money, even if approved, will be enough.

“I am relatively confident that does not represent full resourcing of equipment,” Sidwell said.