Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

CHAPTER 9THE army national guard,THE Army Reserve andTHE Marine Corps ReserveBruce I. GudmundssonIn the days when bronze was the material of choice for artillery pieces of the lightersort, the practice of recasting old ordnance on new patterns allowed armies to rapidlyrenovate their artillery parks at relatively low cost. In the middle years of the 19thcentury, a time of rapid improvement in the design of artillery pieces, the benefits ofthis practice were enhanced by the fact that new weapons made from the old materialwere much more effective than the guns, howitzers and mortars they replaced.At the start of the American Civil War, for example, the typical field artillery batteryconsisted of four 6-pounder guns (which fired a small projectile at relatively longranges) and two 12-pounder howitzers (which fired a larger projectile, but was severelylimited in range). The melting down of these six weapons produced enough metal tomake four 12-pounder Napoleons, pieces that combined the range advantage of the6-pounder gun with the larger projectile of the 12-pounder howitzer. Thus, instead offour weapons that were useful in some situations, and two that were useful in others,each battery was provided with four weapons that could fulfill all of the tasks that itwould be called upon to perform. 1The reforms of the Army National Guard, the Army Reserve and the MarineCorps Reserve proposed here have much in common with the recasting of bronzeordnance. The central premise is that, like the American field artillery parks of the1850s, the institutions in question are made out of first-class material that is formedon obsolete patterns. If one accepts the axiom that America’s reserve military formationsare important but need significant modification to better serve the nation’s needsin the 21st century, then it follows that the first step in the improvement of the ArmyNational Guard, the Army Reserve and the Marine Corps Reserve is the creation of aset of improved patterns, the organizational equivalents of the design of the Napoleon12-pounder field piece. The first step in this design process, in turn, is the productionof a set of very basic sketches, or broad descriptions of the sort of organizations thatthe author would like to see created.Like other preliminary sketches, the descriptions that follow neither condemn thepresent system nor defend a definitive alternative. Rather, they serve as an aid to theimagination, a means by which readers might compare the current state of affairs witha very different way of doing business. In keeping with this purpose, the descriptionsare presented in the present tense to describe a hypothetically existing situation.