FY08 NDAA provision requires roles and mission review. The fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) contained a provision that requires the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough review of the military services’ roles and missions.

A press released issued by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., states: “The roles and missions of our military services are largely unchanged since the Truman Administration and the Key West Agreement of 1948. After almost six decades, it’s time to once again analyze the Defense Department’s roles and missions, identify the services’ core competencies, discover the missions going unaddressed, and examine possible duplication of effort among the branches,” Skelton said.

“In today’s rapidly evolving security environment, the Department of Defense must be able to reform and modernize to meet 21st century threats. The defense authorization conference agreement, which requires a roles and missions review every four years, will be an invaluable tool to ensure that our forces are properly prepared and ready to respond to future national security challenges,” Skelton added.

In an article in the Jan. 24 issue of Defense Daily, Skelton said that last year, the military tried to get Congress to referee mini roles and mission spats on programs like the Joint Cargo Aircraft and the issue of executive agency for unmanned aerial vehicles.

“They wanted us to decide whether the Army or the Air Force should manage both of those weapon systems,” Skelton said. He does not believe Congress should be in the position of making those decisions.

The provision would:

• Require a review of the roles and missions of the Department of Defense every four years, with the first review in 2008 and subsequent reviews occurring in 2011 and every four years thereafter;
• Require that the missions of the department be organized into core mission areas, and that the requirements, acquisition, and budget processes follow this organizational structure;
• Require the review to identify the core competencies and capabilities of the military departments, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the commands, defense agencies, and field activities;
• Require the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) to provide the military services with clear guidance on the priority assigned to each requirement to ensure that the resources allocated align with the assigned priority level; and;
• Require the future years’ mission budget to be displayed by core mission area, allowing Congress and the Department of Defense to assess whether resources are being allocated properly between mission areas.

Commission on the National Guard and Reserve releases report. The congressionally-chartered Commission on the National Guard and Reserve has released its long-awaited report.

Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine Corps Reserve major general and chairman of the Commission, said the panel is calling for “fundamental changes” in how these forces are trained, equipped, used domestically, paid, promoted and supported if they are to become an operational reserve rather than a strategic reserve.

“Without these 600,000 guardsmen and reservists” mobilized for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq “the nation would have had to go back to the draft,” said Punaro.

In its 400-page report, the commission said Congress must modernize the military reserves to enable them to better respond to wartime needs and correct an “appalling” lack of readiness for domestic catastrophes.

The report also said it sees “no reasonable alternative to the nation’s continuing increased reliance on the reserve components” for missions at home and abroad.

Punaro said at the start of the commission’s work about 2 ½ years ago that “We were skeptics” about the changing nature of the reserve components’ role in military operations abroad and in providing military support to civilian authorities.

He said that it was a natural fit to have the reserve components take the lead in responding to weapons of mass destruction being used in the homeland, massive earthquakes and catastrophes such as the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.

“They have a huge skill set that the active duty does not” in these kinds of crises, he said.

He added they also have the equipment and training for that kind of mission. “We need to enhance DoD’s role” in providing this support to local and state governments.

But, Punaro said the commission found the Army National Guard less ready now than it was seven months ago when the panel said 88 percent of units were not ready for deployment.

Wade Rowley, a commission member who served 23 years in the California Army National Guard and Army Reserve, said, “Today, the U.S. is part of the battlefield,” but “nowhere is it spelled out the National Guard’s role in homeland security and civil support” missions.

Rowley said the commission is recommending that U.S. Northern Command have a significant increase in guard and reserve membership and be included by statute in the command’s leadership. “We believe the National Guard and reserve should be the tip of the spear in homeland security and civil support” and that federal forces in those situations should be placed under the governor’s control.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said earlier he would not recommend that federal forces be placed under local control.

Looking at personnel questions, Patricia Lewis, a commission member and former senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the panel “wants to take advantage of the highly educated work force of the future” and shed recruiting and retention practices that are 50 years old or more.

She said the commission was recommending a portable benefits package so a person can move in and out of military service, “promotions based on skills rather than longevity” that would include changes in Goldwater-Nichols for joint duty assignments and education needed for promotion to three-star or higher rank, “recognizing civilian skills on entering military service” and “more early vesting for retirement.”

At the same time, the commission recommends integrating pay and personnel systems from the 20 or more statuses a guardsman or reservist could be in to two “on active duty or in reserve.”

Lewis said that better support for families and employers was “critically important.” The panel recommends an expanded role for the Employer Support for the Guard and Reserve program with a “one-stop shopping site for employers and small businesses” to receive the information they need about the rights and responsibilities of the guardsmen and reservists working for them.

“Continuity of care is a significant concern for families of mobilized guardsmen and reservists, she said, and the panel recommended incentives for employers to keep these families in their health care programs and the possibility of opening the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to them.”

The response from Congress was swift and critical of the commission’s report.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Christopher Bond, R-Mo., leaders of the Senate’s National Guard Caucus, strongly objected to a proposal that would subordinate leaders of the Army National Guard and Air National Guard to their respective services chiefs of staff, saying it would undermine the guard’s power.

Leahy said the panel “disconnected its findings from recommendations” while Bond called many of the panel’s plans “not only short-sighted but flat-out wrong.”

They were also critical of the commission’s proposal that the Department of Homeland Security tell the Department of Defense what it would be expected to provide in terms of personnel and equipment in domestic crises. They said it would overwhelm the department and create confusion in military budgeting and bureaucratic infighting.

The Pentagon’s reaction to the report was equally critical. They called the report’s assertion that the U.S. military is not adequately prepared to respond to nuclear, biological and chemical attacks on the United States “fundamentally flawed.”

“While there are positive elements of the commission’s report, in most cases echoing and validating actions already well underway within the Department of Defense, the core elements of the report are fundamentally flawed,” said the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, Paul McHale.

He also said that some of the commission’s specific recommendations would harm the National Guard and reserve, such as changing the National Guard’s mission to responding exclusively to domestic disasters or cutting the pay of reservists.

“We think that’s wrong. Converting the National Guard into a domestic disaster-response force, training on half pay, would be a problematic and counterproductive course of action.”

The commission’s report can be found at: http://www.cngr.gov/Final%20Report/CNGR%20Final%20Report.pdf.

Treatment of wounded soldiers subject at Senate hearing. A hearing was held on the anniversary of the publication of stories in the Washington Post and Army Times about living conditions of outpatients being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the difficulties these service members faced in going through the complex disability rating systems in the services and Veterans’ Affairs department.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Secretary Pete Geren said managing the care for injured soldiers has greatly improved, especially assigning one squad leader for every 12 wounded soldier, one primary care manager for every 200 soldiers and one nurse case manager for every 18 to 36 soldiers.

He added that each of these units will also have “a dedicated ombudsman who reaches out to soldiers and families as an extra resource and problem solver.”

Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, said that there are 2,400 individuals assigned as cadre to these Warrior Transition Units compared to 400 earlier. In his prepared testimony, Schoomaker said soldiers notice the difference.

Quoting Staff Sgt. Michael Thornton, who is convalescing at Fort Hood, Texas, from burns covering 33 percent of his body: “Things flow more efficiently. It seems more organized. It’s good to have dedicated leadership who handle just our issues. In the past some of the wounded soldiers were also serving as squad leaders at the Medical Hold Company. They had appointments too, so it’s better to have dedicated leadership.”

Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that the Wounded Warrior Act included as part of this year’s defense authorization law “represents major reform” to advance “the care, management and transition of recovering service members, enhances health care and benefits for families, and begins the process of fundamental reform of the disability evaluation systems of the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans’ Affairs.”

The day before the hearing, Geren and Dr. James Peake, VA secretary, signed a mutual support agreement covering assistance to soldiers and their families as they transition the military Disability Evaluation System to the VA. Peake, a former Army surgeon general, said at the ceremony, “We share a duty to do what’s right for our soldiers and their families.”

In his prepared testimony, Geren said that 16 VA liaison officers have been added at major medical centers, provided VA access to military health records and databases as needed and entered an agreement with VA governing coordination between VA benefits advisers and personnel at Army installations.”

Gordon England, deputy secretary of defense, sent the committee prepared testimony on the pilot test of the Disability Evaluation System in the National Capital Region. “Key features include a single medical examination and single source disability rating” for the VA and Defense Department.

“A primary goal is to reduce by half the time required to transition a member to veteran status and receipt of VA benefits and compensation,” England said.

He said that two brigades’ worth of wounded, ill and injured soldiers are returning to the force year. “Eighty-eight percent of these soldiers are noncommissioned officers, the backbone of your Army.”

“We continue to face challenges that require blunt honesty, continuous self-assessment, humility and the ability to listen to those in need,” Schoomaker said.

He added that he was convinced that the efforts of the Army, Department of Defense and VA “have turned the corner toward establishing an integrated, overlapping system of treatment, support and leadership that is significantly enhancing the care of our warriors and families.”