The Army National Guard of the United States and the Air National Guard of the United States are two components of the armed forces Selected Reserve. The National Guard Bureau is the federal entity responsible for the administration of both the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard. The Army National Guard, which is authorized 350,000 soldiers, makes up more than one-half of the Army’s ground combat forces and one- third of its support forces (e.g., military police, transportation units). Army National Guard units are located at more than 3,000 armories and bases in all 50 states and 4 U.S. territories. Traditionally, the majority of Guard members are employed on a part-time basis, typically training 1 weekend per month and 2 weeks per year. However, after September 11, 2001, the President authorized reservists to be activated for up to 2 years. As of July 2005, more than 70,000 Army National Guard personnel were activated under this authority to support ongoing operations. The Guard also employs some full-time personnel who assist unit commanders in administrative, training, and maintenance tasks. Army National Guard personnel may be ordered to perform duty under three general statutory frameworks: Title 10 or 32 of the United States Code or pursuant to state law in a state active duty status. In a Title 10 status, Army National Guard personnel are federally funded and under federal command and control. Personnel may enter Title 10 status by being ordered to active duty, either voluntarily or under appropriate circumstances involuntarily (i.e., mobilization). Personnel in Title 32 status are federally funded but under state control. Title 32 is the status in which National Guard personnel typically perform training for their federal mission. Personnel performing state active duty are state-funded and under state command and control. Under state law, the governor may order National Guard personnel to perform state active duty to respond to emergencies, civil disturbances, and for other reasons authorized by state law. While the Army National Guard performs both federal and state missions, the Guard is organized, trained, and equipped for its federal missions, and these take priority over state missions. The Global War on Terrorism, a federal mission, is a comprehensive effort to defeat terrorism and protect and defend the homeland and includes military operations such as Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. As we reported in our November 2004 report on the National Guard, the Army National Guard’s involvement in federal operations has increased substantially since the September 11 terrorist attacks, and Army National Guard members have participated in overseas warfighting operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and homeland missions, such as guarding Air Force bases. Figure 1 shows that while the number of activated Army National Guard personnel has declined since its peak in December 2004 and January 2005, it continues to provide a substantial number of personnel to support current operations. As of July 2005, about 35,500 of the 113,000 soldiers, or nearly one-third of the soldiers serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, were Army National Guard members. In a June 30, 2005, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee the Army’s Chief of Staff said that the Army National Guard’s participation in overseas operations is expected to decrease somewhat in the near future. Although the Army National Guard is expected to continue its participation in ongoing operations, decisions as to the level of participation have not been made. The Department of the Army is responsible for equipping the Army National Guard. DOD policy requires that equipment be provided to units according to their planned wartime mission, regardless of their component. However, based on the Army’s funding priorities, the most modern equipment is usually provided to units that would deploy first. Later deploying units, such as most Army National Guard units, are equipped with older items from the Army’s inventory as active forces receive newer and more modern equipment. Army National Guard units are responsible for conducting some maintenance of their equipment. While deploying Army National Guard units have had priority for getting the equipment they needed, readying these forces has degraded the equipment inventory of the Guard’s nondeployed units and equipment shortages threaten the Guard’s ability to prepare forces for future deployments. Among nondeployed National Guard units, the amount of essential warfighting equipment on hand has continued to decrease since we last reported on the Army National Guard in 2004. Equipment shortages have developed because most Army National Guard units are still structured with lesser amounts of equipment than they need to deploy. To ready deploying units for overseas missions, the Guard has had to transfer large numbers of equipment items from nondeployed units—a practice that has left nondeployed units with increasing shortages of equipment and made it difficult to prepare units for future missions and maintain readiness for any unplanned contingencies. Moreover, the equipment requirements for deploying Army National Guard units have evolved as the nature of current operations has changed. This has meant that in some cases, the Army National Guard has had little time to identify sources of equipment and transfer needed items to deploying units. The Army is adapting some of its processes to help units address the evolving equipment requirements. Most Army National Guard units mobilized for recent overseas operations had equipment shortages that had to be filled so that the unit could meet the combatant commander’s equipment requirements for their mission. These shortages exist because the Army, following DOD planning guidance, has historically equipped all Army units, including the Army National Guard, according to a tiered resourcing strategy. Under tiered resourcing, those units expected to deploy overseas early in a conflict receive first priority for equipment, and most Army National Guard units were expected to deploy after the active component units to serve as follow-on forces. The Army therefore accepted some operational risks by providing lower priority Army National Guard units with less equipment than they would need for their mission under the assumption that there would be time to provide additional equipment to these units before they would be deployed. For example, Army National Guard enhanced separate brigades are generally supplied with about 75 percent of the equipment they require for their warfighting missions and divisional units, which comprise the majority of the Guard’s combat forces, are supplied with about 65 percent. In addition to being given less equipment, most Army National Guard units did not have priority for the newest, most modern equipment, so much of the Guard’s equipment is older and less modern than that of the active Army and is not always compatible with more modern items. However, for recent operations, combatant commanders have required Army National Guard units to deploy with 90 to 100 percent of the equipment they are expected to need and with equipment that is compatible with active Army units. As an increasing number of Army National Guard forces have been needed to support current operations, the Army National Guard has supplied the equipment its deploying units need to meet combatant commander requirements by transferring equipment from within the Army National Guard. The Army National Guard first tries to identify the needed equipment within the same state as the deploying unit. If the equipment cannot be found within the state, the National Guard Bureau requests the equipment from Army National Guard units across the United States. If the equipment is not available in the Army National Guard, the Army National Guard notifies the Army that the equipment is not available, and the Army takes over the task of providing the equipment to the mobilized unit. For example, although the 30th Brigade Combat Team needed about 8,810 night vision goggles to deploy, it only had about 40 percent of its requirement on hand when it was alerted to prepare to deploy, so the Army National Guard had to identify and transfer about 5,272 pairs of goggles to fully equip the unit. In another case, the Army tasked the National Guard to convert 40 nonmilitary police units, including field artillery companies, to security units capable of performing selected military police missions in Iraq during 2004 and 2005. While a military police company typically has 47 humvees in its inventory, field artillery companies have only about 3 humvees that are suitable for this new mission. Therefore, the converted units had to obtain armored humvees from other units already in Iraq because the Army National Guard had depleted its inventory of armored humvees. As current operations have continued, the pool of equipment from which the Army National Guard can draw has been reduced because so many items have been transferred to deploying units or left overseas. Shortages of some equipment items have forced the Army National Guard to take measures that have further exacerbated existing shortages in nondeployed units to provide training equipment for deploying units. For example, because the Army National Guard’s supply of armored humvees was depleted, the Army directed the Army National Guard to transfer more than 500 humvees from nondeployed Guard units to create training sets for units to use when preparing for deployment. Significant numbers of equipment transfers have persisted as operations overseas have continued. We previously reported that as of June 2004 the Army National Guard had transferred more than 35,000 pieces of equipment to ready units for recent operations. By July 2005, the number of equipment items transferred among Army National Guard units had grown to more than 101,000. As a result of these transfers, the equipment readiness of nondeployed Army National Guard units has declined. As figure 2 shows, the percentage of nondeployed units that reported having the minimum amount of equipment they would need to deploy dropped from 87 percent in October 2002 to 59 percent in May 2005. However, this estimate includes units that have older, less modern equipment referred to as substitute equipment. While these substitute items are useful for training purposes, commanders may not allow these items in the theater of operations because they may not be compatible with the equipment other units are using and cannot be sustained logistically in theater. In addition, this estimate includes units that have equipment that is undergoing maintenance after returning from deployment or was left overseas, so these items are not readily available for deployment.