Guard Faces Phase-Out of Combat Role - Los Angeles Times

Guard Faces Phase-Out of Combat Role - Los Angeles Times To quote Col. Potter (MASH 4077) "Horse Pucky" The active component has never liked the Guard and Reserves. If they are forced to reduce forces, it will always be to reduce active duty combat service support and retain, or increase, combat arms. This makes sense only when the Active Component Combart Arms (Infantry, Armor, Artillery) forces are needed immediately. It does not make sense if those forces are needed in a follow-on mode.

Quite often, the Guard and Reserves, bring skill sets not found in the active components. I was a member of a Reserve Unit (3077 COSCOM) when, after being redisgnated as a COSCOM, the unit leaders went to the active duty 3rd COSCOM to learn and ended up teaching the active army about being a COSCOM. My artillery battalion was undergoing an Army training test required of all active and reserve units as the Iraqi's went into Kuwait. We passed the training test with flying colors, indicating that our training level was up to active army standards. Our "go to war" active component went to Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The Active Army elected not to send my unit and pulled people from the IRR for retraining. How could you not take an artillery battalion that sucessfully completed an ARTEP as the Iraqi's went into Kuwait and elect instead to pull your troops (fillers for active component units) from a group that had been away from artillery and military training for years? The only reason I can find for this is that the Active Component did not want a Reserve combat arms unit to look good, it would harm the grand plan to rid combat arms of us pesky reservists.

There is absolutely no reason that a reserve (Guard or Army Reserve unit) cannot be combat ready in a short time after activation. (Do you really think that the active components are all ready to go in 5 minutes?). The key is meaningful training and followup on readiness. I've heard some stories from mobiliation sites of Guard and Reserve units coming to the site, totally unprepared and lacking basic soldier skills. Correction of that is a command problem that absolutely must be addressed at all levels. Frankly, the Abu Ghraib mess was from a reserve unit that wasn't adequately trained by a leadership that wasn't capable of leading. This should never have happened and a bunch of folks should have been penalized for allowing it.

The Army is trying to consolidate what it thinks is exciting and pushing the dull stuff off to the guard and reserve forces. The idea is insulting, but it is just another turf war. All the arguments for this are simply fluff.