Army Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, 57, serves as chief of the National Guard Bureau at an extraordinary time, when the Guard is deeply involved in a global war on terrorism. The Army Guard is undergoing a historic transformation, from a less-ready Cold War-era strategic force to a day-to-day operational force that plays an active role in safeguarding America and taking the fight against terrorism overseas.

The Army National Guard, underfunded for decades, now is a centerpiece in the biggest, longest mobilization since World War II. Blum must manage unprecedented strain on citizen soldiers, their families, and their employers. Blum, who has held the position since April 2003, shapes and implements policies and programs for more than 450,000 Army and Air National Guard personnel. He also is principal advisor to the Army and Air Force chiefs of staff on all National Guard issues.

Blum brings 33 years of Army experience to the task, including background as a special forces officer and infantry command assignments at every level, including a light infantry battalion, an infantry brigade, and the 29th Infantry Division (Light), Virginia Army National Guard. For six months, beginning in October 2001, Blum was commanding general of Multi-National Division (North) for Operation Joint Force in Bosnia.

He discusses the challenges of the war and of wartime transformation on the National Guard with Contributing Editor Tom Philpott. Answers have been edited for space and clarity.

In recent congressional testimony, you said the Army National Guard is undermanned and overstructured.

Our authorized force allowance is 388,000. But the number of soldiers who are actually assigned— who we have money to recruit, train, and pay—is 350,000. So we’re overstructured by 38,000. When the National Guard was a Cold War strategic reserve force, that made sense. The larger structure could be filled by draftees, who would be trained and equipped over an extended period, maybe a year or more.

But 30 years ago we ended the draft and didn’t adjust the model. We continued to underresource and overstructure. For the last two and a half years, since [Sept. 11], we’ve been used as an operational reserve. Factors that made the strategic reserve wise for its time have to be dramatically adjusted, including types and numbers of units and capabilities. And we need to transform at a time when we are in a global war on terrorism, fighting overseas, protecting the homeland, and responsible as first responders to state governors when civil authorities need help.

Did Sept. 11 spur this transformation or was it the demand for troops in Iraq?

They are inseparable. [Sept. 11] set off a chain of events. Operation Noble Eagle, to protect the homeland, generated a significant requirement for mobilized National Guard soldiers. We protected airports, DoD-critical infrastructure, and our northern and southern borders. The Air Guard provided combat air patrols over every major city.

Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan required mobilizing more National Guard soldiers and Operation Iraqi Freedom still more. Since [Sept. 12, 2001], daily more than 100,000 Army National Guard citizen soldiers have been mobilized. We don’t see any end in sight.

That’s a third of your force mobilized at any time.

It has stabilized at about 25 percent. We’re in the beginning of a long, difficult war, [the likes of which] this nation has never fought before. It requires an unprecedented use of the National Guard.

Was the Guard ready?

No one was ready for what happened Sept. 11. The Army National Guard was not organized, trained, equipped, or resourced properly for today’s environment, yet we immediately became 21st-century minutemen. Consider that 8,600 citizen soldiers and airmen out of the New York National Guard responded to [Sept. 11], most without written orders, in less than 24 hours. Maryland, Virginia, and the D.C. National Guard responded within hours of the attack on the Pentagon. In the Air National Guard, we went from single-digit numbers of fighter aircraft to 400 within 24 hours. There is not another air force on the planet that could do that. We had a combat air patrol over every large populated metropolitan area of this nation in less than 24 hours. That’s why the National Guard was founded. It’s an enduring value we should not change in this transformation.

How is it evident in the typical unit that the Guard is underresourced?

Ranks would not be full. Some percentage of the unit would not have the training needed to deploy in a war fight. Also, full-time manning to support a 100-person unit is only about two people in the Army National Guard. In the Air National Guard, it’s 25 to 30. That’s a big difference. You cannot prepare training, take care of soldiers and families, and ensure medical and equipment readiness having two full-time people out of 100. It’s a formula for failure, not designed for an operational reserve.

So how have we been getting this done if the model is so broken? The answer is, on the backs of soldiers and by taking two and three units to make one. That’s fine for the first unit you push out the door. It’s more difficult for the second. For the third and fourth, it starts to become impossible.

What about equipment?

Army National Guard equipment in many units is not what a combatant commander wants brought to the fight. It is older, incompatible. The National Guard must have units organized and equipped like their active components so they’re interchangeable. Gen. [Peter J.] Schoomaker, [Army chief of staff], is working hard with us to achieve that. We need first to be interoperable before we can transform into interchangeable modules of capability with active duty components.

Can you give examples of what prevents that today?

Many units don’t have radio systems that are compatible with their active duty counterparts, as improbable as that sounds. That puts you at a significant disadvantage to be interoperable when you can’t even communicate effectively with the unit you’re supposed to be a part of. There are insufficient numbers of Humvees. I don’t have armored Humvees anymore. I sent the limited number I had into theater for soldiers in harm’s way. They deserve the best equipment we can get them.

How many billions of dollars would it take to close the gap so that Guard forces are interchangeable?

About $15 billion, just to be interoperable. For radios alone we’re talking about $298 million. For soft-skin Humvees, $1.7 billion. Armored are considerably more expensive.

Did the Army National Guard also have a strategic rather than operational mindset on Sept. 11, and did that need to change?

Absolutely. We have a whole different paradigm of how we recruit, what people we need, how we train and use people, and how we create incentives to keep them longer. It argues for greater attention on medical and mobilization readiness. We have to have a trained and ready manpower pool, capable of joint and expeditionary operations on short notice. We have to change the way we alert our force, the way we organize. We have to disperse capabilities so no part of our nation is left uncovered in responding to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. It is not a matter of “if” such an attack will happen, but when. And the National Guard had better be ready.

What’s been the impact on retention, or is that masked by stop-loss orders that keep soldiers in service?

Stop loss only applies while [National Guard] soldiers are mobilized. Three-fourths of the force is not under stop loss. So it doesn’t really mask retention problems. I would have thought reenlistments would be dropping, that we would not be able to sustain authorized end strength. But reenlistment rates overall are higher since [Sept. 11]. That is counterintuitive to what my gut told me.

What was the reenlistment rate before Sept. 11 and since?

The goal is to hold turnover as terms of service expire to less than 18 percent. It is two percentage points better than projected, at 16 percent. That’s huge. It means we’re keeping combat-experienced citizen soldiers who are far more valuable to us than someone coming in off the street.

You also told Congress, however, that you are worried about a declining percentage of active duty soldiers who are joining the Guard.

We have a military being stressed and used at a higher rate than at any time in modern history. And it’s an all-volunteer force in a combat environment. So people leaving active duty who normally would join the Guard or Reserve are less inclined to do that, because they know they could be mobilized and sent back on active duty. If they are willing to tolerate that, they might as well stay on active duty. So that has made recruitment more difficult. The reason we’re able to make end strength is greater success in reenlistment and retention rates.

The impact of the war on individual citizen soldiers has been dramatic. It hit home for me when a young neighbor who had joined the National Guard in high school was pulled out of college and sent to train for a year’s tour in Afghanistan.

They’re being pulled out of school, pulled out of work. They are interrupting personal and professional lives to answer the call to colors. I think that is magnificent and important. The reason you know we’re at war is the Guard and Reserve. Otherwise, it becomes less relevant to many Americans. This nation should never go to war without the Guard. When you call up the Guard, you call up America. When citizen soldiers come out of schools, communities, they bring the people to the war fight. That is powerful, both to sustain our forces and to send a strong signal to adversaries. It says the will of the American people is tied to this deployment. We are there for the long haul.

You noted that this is the biggest mobilization that has occurred since the all-volunteer force began. Many people wouldn’t have served in Vietnam had they had a choice, and almost 60,000 died there. Iraq is controversial too, but it’s being fought with volunteers. Do you worry long-term about your ability to recruit and properly man the force?

The only thing that concerns me, as a senior military leader responsible for sending young men and women in harm’s way, is that we not confuse them as to whether what they are doing is right or wrong. They interrupted their lives, put them on the line. I’m concerned that we don’t politicize what we’re doing so it erodes their will or confuses young men and women and those who influence them to join or stay in.

How do you protect them from that confusion?

I can’t. The people who have to do that are our elected officials and politicians. They have to shoulder the responsibility not to make the public debate such that it puts doubt in the minds of deployed soldiers.

I will say this: Even in the extraordinary environment of an election year, the American people and politicians, so far, have shown that they separate the warrior from any differences they have with the war. In Vietnam, they did not have such separation, and this nation suffered mightily. With an all-volunteer force that would be very unhelpful.

How well-equipped were the three brigades of Army National Guard set to rotate into Iraq by mid-year?

They were equipped before the same equipment got to active duty units. That has never happened in the history of the American Army.

As they come out of that mobilized-and-deployed mode, we want to reset the force—in organization, equipment, and skill sets—so they are relevant five, six years from now and have the right capability when called again. Some units will be reclassified, reorganized, and transformed.

In two more years, 80 percent of the Army National Guard will be combat veterans. That is unprecedented except perhaps at the end of World War II. We’ll have a much more capable and experienced force.

How will the mix of job specialties change?

As an example, the National Guard has 17 brigades of artillery. That made perfect sense when we were up against a monolithic, linear enemy on the plains of Europe. Today, with a different enemy and weapon systems far more precise and lethal, we don’t need mass formations of artillery to deliver the same effect. So we can take some risk and reclassify artillery units to be more relevant and formed into organizations more essential to future operations, like military police, civil affairs, information operations, intelligence, and general-purpose security.

Will this reclassification relieve stress on high-demand units?

Yes, and we can do it within the next 36 months.

Are you comfortable with current 18-month deployments?

Nobody is. That was out of necessity. We would like to have soldiers in Southwest Asia, including Iraq, serve less than a year on the ground. But we don’t control all factors. We have a wily enemy who has a vote in this, and our first priority is to accomplish the mission. To do that, the combatant commander in theater felt we needed soldiers on the ground for a year.

That’s being reexamined. The Marine Corps is in there for a seven-month rotation. If the Army goes to nine-month or six-month rotations, so will the Guard. Modularity will allow for smaller units and greater numbers of units, which should help move to shorter rotations and the ability to sustain them.

What about compensation? Are there particular new tools you’re going to need to keep enough quality people?

Yes, but I would be reluctant to tell you precisely what they are. We’re studying that hard. By the way, I don’t view [improved] health and dental care as a [new] entitlement but as a medical readiness issue. Why would I want to spend several hundred thousand dollars training a soldier, another several hundred thousand paying him overtime, and then [learn] I can’t use him when needed because I wouldn’t put a couple hundred dollars a year toward his health to make sure he’s medically fit?

One big problem for the National Guard has been late or incorrect paychecks.

Right now we are taking a Band-Aid approach to solving them for individuals as they arise. We don’t see the system getting corrected for several years. To me, it is frustrating that I cannot take better care of soldiers and their pay entitlements. Family support and quality-of-life programs also are crucial. We invest lots of resources and will continue to improve them.

The National Guard has changed.

It’s totally different. We have gone from asking, “Are they relevant?” to answering, “They’re essential.” We have become the essential force. And I have not met any soldiers who have come back from the Balkans, Southwest Asia, or any deployment who don’t stand taller and are not proud of what they’ve done. When the Guard was needed, they were there.