Army National Guard soldiers will now serve a maximum of 12 consecutive months on active duty under mobilization changes announced Jan. 11.
The new timetable means mobilized units will train, deploy, perform the mission, and come home in 365 days, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
But the changes also mean some Army Guard soldiers who've already been mobilized 18 or more months for service in Iraq or Afghanistan are eligible for involuntarily recall.
This would be near impossible under previous policies, which limited individual involuntary mobilizations to 24 months cumulative under the president's Sept. 15, 2001, partial mobilization order.
The new rules manage ground reserve-force mobilizations on a unit basis rather than an individual basis, Mr. Gates said.
They also allow adjutants general to certify some predeployment training, a step designed to reduce post-mobilization training. Guard soldiers have long complained they spent much too much time at mobilization stations duplicating training completed at recent unit assemblies.
Believing that some involuntary recall of Guard soldiers was inevitable, NGAUS and many Guard leaders hailed the changes as long overdue.
However, many Guard leaders have cautioned that the changes will also increase the urgency of the Army Guard's need for equipment reset and full-time manning, both of which are critical to premobilization training.
Officials said the "planning objective" for Army Guard and Reserve units remains one year mobilized for every five years demobilized (Capital View, page 12).
They admitted this will not be possible for all units.
© 2007 National Guard Association of the United States Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Source: National Guard
