Casey: National Guard essential to war effort
By Army Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill
National Guard Bureau
Gen. Craig McKinley, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army's chief of staff, seen at the National Guard's 2009 Joint Senior Leadership Conference at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Nov. 19, 2009. The National Guard has played an essential role in operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Casey said. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill)
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hi-res photo WASHINGTON (11/20/09) -- A transformed National Guard has been essential
to America ’s war effort, the Army’s chief of staff said here Nov. 19.
“There is no way that the United States of America could have done what
we’ve done in the last eight years without our Guardsmen and Reservists,”
Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told about 2,400 senior officers and enlisted
leaders attending the National Guard’s 2009 Joint Senior Leadership
Conference.
“Half the Guard and Reserve are combat veterans,” Casey said. “That is a
fundamentally different force.”
It’s also a fundamentally joint force of active, Guard and Reserve troops.
“We’re closer to being one Army that any time in my 39-years of service,” he
said.
While the Defense Department is making rotations more predictable and
lengthening dwell times – the time spent at home between deployments – the
current operational tempo seems likely to continue for years.
“We have been at war for eight years,” Casey said. “We’re engaged with a
global, extremist terrorist network that attacked us on our soil. You’ve
fought them. You know. They’re not going to give up. They’re not going to go
away easy. They are going to have to be beat. This is a long-term
ideological struggle. If you think about this more in terms of the Cold War
… that’s a much better way of thinking about it.”
A re-balanced, modular Army is in a better position to deal with the
challenges ahead.
“We’re much better positioned now than we were two and a half years ago to
accept some additional demands,” Casey said. As re-balancing and
modularization efforts reach their goals in 2011, “we will be a
fundamentally different Army. We will be much more capable of conducting the
operations that we’re conducting today.”
Meanwhile, the Army’s ranks have grown, which contributes to rotational
predictability and longer dwell times. The dwell time target for the active
force is 1:2 and for the Guard and Reserves 1:4, Casey said.
“I believe we’re in for an era – a decade or so – of … persistent conflict:
protracted confrontation among states, non-states and individual actors
increasingly willing to use violence to accomplish their political and
ideological objectives,” Casey said. “We’re going to be doing this for a
while.”
Global economic, technological and demographic trends are contributing to
conflict. “The trends are more likely to exacerbate what’s going on right
now rather than ameliorate it,” Casey said.
The most worrisome trends to Casey? The specter of weapons of mass
destruction in terrorist hands and the proliferation of terrorist safe
havens.
“We know that there are terrorists out there actively seeking weapons of
mass destruction,” Casey said. “If and when they get them, they will attempt
to use them against a developed country.”
The Army has three goals, he said: to sustain the current fight with trained
and ready forces, to have forces ready as a hedge against the unexpected and
to maintain a sustainable tempo for an all-volunteer force.
“I’ve got to give the men and women of our Army the predictability so that
we can sustain this rotational tempo for another decade or so, because
that’s the reality of what we’re doing,” Casey said. “We want to build a
versatile mix of tailorable and networked organizations that are operating
on a rotational cycle.”
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