ARTICLE: “Turnaround in Recruiting Puts Guard on Path for Expansion,” by Associated Press, New York Times, 31 January 2006, p. A17.

Apparently the Guard’s enlistment is up so much this last year that it’s poised to actually plus up its overall “end strength,” meaning it’s total number of personnel.

This is the result of a determined effort by the Guard to bolster such recruiting, but it creates some weird moments for a Pentagon that’s determined to sell to Congress the notion that the Reserve Component can be marginally reduced in coming years as a result of the Army’s modularization effort by which divisions are reformatted into self-contained brigade combat teams. This rationalization of Cold War force structure is declared by Pentagon seniors as allowing the Guard to actually shrink somewhat in the next few years, despite the apparent strain on end strength.

This is a very touchy subject inside the Pentagon. The administration seeks to sell Congress on its budget plan and Quadrennial Defense Review that seems to keep all the big-ticket platforms on line for near full funding despite the Army and Marines and Reserve Component (Reserves and Guard) seemingly running themselves ragged on this non-stop rotation process into and out of southwest Asia.

The dream of the modular Army says they’ll need three active duty brigade combat teams for everyone they keep overseas (one breaking down back at home, having just come off the line, and another one gearing up to replace the one currently overseas), and six reserve teams for everyone currently abroad (the Reserve Component necessarily has a slower cycle), but doubts are being raised as to whether those rotation numbers will hold up in reality. Maybe the active duty number will be more like 4 to 1, and the RC ratio more like 8 to 1. If that’s the case, then the end strength requirements of the Army go up big time, and such an Army should be happier than hell for the Guard to be expanding its overall numbers.

All of this is caught up in the Congressional decision to give Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, an extra 30k in its ceiling during the modularization process that will drag on for several years. The extension or ending of that temporary ceiling boost is a political hot potato, especially for any politician unhappy with the Pentagons’ seemingly iron-will desire to keep funding big platforms poorly suited for a Global War on Terror and obviously far more in line with the dream of future war with China. If you’re unhappy with the Pentagon’s inability to let go of its Big War past and believe the ground forces are being shortchanged by those budget priorities, then you use the end strength debate to score your points.

Rest assured that plenty in the Department of the Army are of two minds on this subject: trying to cater to the official line while wanting to submit to the clear logic of growing the ground forces’ end strength for this Long War.

So keep an eye on how the Hill argues this issue. It will say a lot about what I feel is the inevitable rise of the SysAdmin function within the Army.