WASHINGTON — The Army National Guard and Reserve are gradually fixing equipment shortages brought on by the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they won't come close to catching up for at least five years, the services reported.
On average, Guard units around the country have 61 percent of their needed equipment, officials say. The Guard aims to be at full readiness in 2013 — but only if Congress sends along big budget increases for the next two years, Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn told a House Armed Services subcommittee last week.
In New York, the Guard has just half of the Humvees it needs, said Eric Durr, a spokesman for the New York National Guard. But that is an improvement from 27 percent of the necessary Humvees on hand last year, a result of a shipment of 250 of the vehicles, he said.
"We're getting better on the equipment piece," Mr. Durr said.
The shortages hurt the services' ability to train and also challenge the Guard's ability to respond to disasters at home, such as hurricanes and ice storms.
"We've got to get that equipment flowing," said Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, at last week's hearing.
Shortages affect a wide range of equipment, from night-vision goggles to communications gear, but the gap is most severe for trucks, Gen. Vaughn said. The Guard is working on a national inventory of equipment numbering perhaps as many as 3.8 million pieces, he said.
The Army Reserve faces a similar situation, holding about 67 percent of its necessary equipment but only about 20 percent of the "right, modern equipment," Gen. Stultz said.
"Does that mean we're broken and falling apart? No," Gen. Stultz said.
The Reserve can get by with what it has but needs $22 billion over several years to catch up, he said, and may reach 70 percent of needs by 2013. Even by that year, he said, budget projections suggest the Army Reserve will be $6.8 billion short of funding to be 100 percent equipped.
But even as the Reserve restocks, more pressing war-related needs in the Defense Department seem to take money away, he said, telling lawmakers that he worries about competition within the military for equipment funds.
"Every time another priority comes along, we lose," Gen. Stultz said.
In addition to plugging gaps, the Guard and Reserve are replacing older equipment. In some cases, the Army Reserve has 37-year-old trucks that had an effective life expectancy of 20 years and are too outdated to be deployed, he said.
In past years, the National Guard received used equipment as the Army moved on to more modern pieces. With the Guard and Reserve such a key part of deployments now, that is no longer the rule, Mr. Durr said.
Guard units are short because so much equipment has been left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for troops that follow them, Mr. Durr said. He was unable to predict when the New York Guard would reach its equipping goals but cited improvement in several areas.
Last year, New York had less than half its needed number of cargo trucks, for instance, but has since reached 82 percent of the goal, Mr. Durr said. The Guard has all the engineering equipment necessary and 66 percent of communications equipment, an improvement from 42 percent last year.
Gen. Vaughn told the subcommittee that the Guard is trying to compile more reliable state-by-state statistics to show what type of equipment is going where, and how it was paid for from the National Guard budget.
