Weekend Warriors No More

By Ed Magnuson.

Joining the National Guard was once thought of as an excuse to get out of the house for the weekend and play soldier. These days, however, service in the Guard is no lark. When 38 medics from the Iowa National Guard returned to Iowa City last week, they were back from Honduras, not Fort Dodge. They had spent two weeks training in the bush and giving medical treatment to occupants of remote villages like Toro Muerto. The Air National Guard unit in Bangor, Me., has already been in Alaska, California and Italy this year and is revving up to fly off to Panama next week.

Without fanfare, the once under-equipped and poorly trained National Guard and Air National Guard have been transformed into an efficient and indispensable component of the nation's military. Increasingly, the Pentagon is calling on the Guard for national service. During the past few years, Guard units have improved roads and bridges in Honduras in indirect support of the U.S.-backed contras fighting in Nicaragua. When President Reagan sent U.S. aircraft into harm's way, Guard pilots flew the tankers that refueled the American F-111s bound for the strike against Libya. The Guard also helped rescue American students in Grenada. The upgrading of the Guard stems from the post-Viet Nam decision by the U.S. to rely on an all-volunteer Army. To attract recruits, pay and perks were raised to the point where the Pentagon now spends an average of $24,478 a year on each Army enlisted man and $52,857 on each officer. Since the Guard and the Army Reserve are basically made up of part-time soldiers paid by the Pentagon on a daily basis, their availability is a bargain. On the average, guardsmen spend 46 days a year on active duty; that includes one weekend each month plus a two-week outing. While the Army cannot grow beyond the 781,000 officers and men authorized by Congress, the National Guard now has 440,000 and the Reserve 242,000. Those two forces may soon surpass the manpower of the regular Army. The numbers have virtually forced the Army to assign National Guard units to combat roles. Fully 44% of the Army's combat units come from the Guard, which by one estimate is now the seventh largest army in the free world.

The Air National Guard fulfills an equally critical function. It has been assigned almost full responsibility for the defense of the continental U.S. against enemy air strikes. Kept on 24-hour alert, the Air Guard flies 78% of all the interceptor aircraft in the U.S. inventory. In any call to large-scale combat, the Air Guard would handle 49% of all tactical air-support missions.

Gone are the days when the Guard operated with cast-off equipment from the regular military. Guardsmen now drive the latest M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, while Guard pilots fly every type of Air Force plane save the top-secret F-19 Stealth fighter. The Texas Air Guard, for example, recently acquired $723.9 million worth of new equipment, including 21 F-16 fighters costing $22 million each.

The Air Guard pilots are counted among the world's best. Many flew combat missions in Viet Nam and now man commercial airliners for a living, spending much of their own time in the jazzier world of military jets. In interservice competition, the Guard fliers often beat out their Air Force counterparts.

While some experts are worried that the military has become too dependent on the Guard, the nation's Governors fret about losing control of the troops they like to think of as their own. More than half-a-dozen Governors have said they would rebuff Pentagon calls for Guardsmen to serve along the Honduran-Nicaraguan border. Some, like Maine's Joseph Brennan and Arizona's Bruce Babbitt, are reluctant to help the Reagan Administration in its support of the contras. Most of the reservations, however, arise from the Governors' determination to retain full authority to use the Guard in such politically popular activities as patrolling areas devastated by storms or restoring order in violent strike or riot situations. Last week, at their national conference on Hilton Head Island, S.C., the Governors approved a resolution against any efforts to give the President absolute authority to send the Guard units wherever he wishes, even in peacetime.

In any serious clash over who controls the Guard, the Defense Department has the power of the purse on its side. "The Governors can't get too cocky," contends a Pentagon official, "or we'll shut off their faucet." Indeed, the Defense Department indirectly threatened to do just that last week. In an attempt to rally Governors and Congressmen against more defense budget cuts, the Pentagon raised the possibility that the National Guard would be seriously hurt by the reductions. For some 140,000 Guardsmen, that could mean unwelcome discharges and even more unwelcome weekends spent mowing the lawn at home rather than patrolling the bush abroad.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Los Angeles and Bruce van Voorst/Washington