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Preston's Projection
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National Guard Bureau ARLINGTON, Va. (10/14/2004) — The time is ripe for the Army National Guard to begin transforming its brigades that are returning from combat duty into units that will be primed to take part in future Army operations, the Army’s top enlisted Soldier advised Army Guard Soldiers on Oct. 12. “If you bring units back from a combat zone; if you reset them, patch up the bullet holes in the vehicles, put new tires on trucks and new tracks on tanks and Bradleys and if you reset them back into their legacy configurations, then shame on you,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth Preston told troops at the Army National Guard’s Readiness Center. “Now is the time to reset those units into the configuration in which they need to be for future operations,” Preston added. A window of opportunity now exists to begin that process, he said. It was friendly advice, not a do-it-or-else message, which Preston offered to the troops he talked with that morning during his first visit to the readiness center as the 13th sergeant major of the Army, the job he assumed last January. He had run for 25 minutes before dawn that morning with an estimated 80 Army Guard Soldiers at nearby Fort Myer, where he lives, and Preston’s visit to the Army Guard’s national center was friendly and upbeat. It was “a historic occasion,” observed Command Sgt. Maj. A. Frank Lever III, the Army Guard’s top enlisted Soldier and advisor to Lt. Gen. Roger Schultz, the Army Guard’s director. Sgt. 1st Class Sean Niemi, Staff Sgt. Kevin Winn and Sgt. Lana Luciano accepted the challenge to recite, from memory, The Soldiers Creed, with Preston during a town hall meeting. Still, the big picture about Army transformation that Preston presented during the nearly two-hour meeting was appropriate for all concerned, including the current and future generals and the colonels who will oversee the Army Guard’s part of the transformation during the next five years. The active Army will increase its number of brigades from 33 to 43 by the end of 2006 with the option to add five more brigades by the end of 2007, Preston said, and the Army Guard will have 34 fully-manned brigades. That, he projected, “is going to help take the pressure off those units that are performing back-to-back deployments.” It will also help make it possible to reduce the length of deployments to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan from a year to nine months or perhaps six months and make Soldiers’ lives more predictable and stable, Preston said. “We want to get away from these 12-month boots on the ground deployments as soon as we can,” said Preston who clearly understands the hardships they create for reserve component troops who actually serve for about a year and half so they can train first and then be demobilized afterwards. “The impact they have on our Guard and Reserve Soldiers and their families; the impact they have on their civilian careers and on their civilian employers out there is very real,” he observed. “Ideally, we want to get to a place where, during a three-year life cycle [for active duty] Soldiers or during a six-year cycle if you’re in the National Guard, a unit will do a six-month, maybe a nine-month deployment,” Preston said. “Transformation is really all about predictability and stability for our Soldiers and their families.” Transformation has already started, Preston explained. The 3rd Infantry Division this year has already been transformed from three brigade combat teams into four brigade units of action, and the 101st Airborne Division is undergoing the same process, Preston said. The Army Guard and Army Reserve will complete their transformations in 2009, he said. The Army Guard will have 34 brigades, Preston explained, and all of them will be fully manned, whereas now many of the Army Guard’s brigades remain at only 70 percent strength, he pointed out. There will be 21 infantry and 12 armor brigades and a Stryker brigade, Preston said. “All of those Guard brigades will be manned at 100 percent and will be equipped with all of the newest equipment to ensure that they are postured just like their active duty counterparts,” he said. And this is a very good time, he maintained, to begin transforming the Guard brigades as they return from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan because the Army has money and resources for transformation. “There is narrow window of opportunity,” Preston said. “The resources are available to slingshot the Army through transformation.” Last 10 Stories
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2004 National Guard Bureau |
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