a growing gap between military America and civilian America, and particularly in the Army as it grows smaller, sadly, as I say, over my dead body, but it appears the train is coming down the track, that you are going to have fewer and fewer families involved, you are going to have fewer and fewer neighbors, sons and daughters involved.

In my hometown, you are going to see the National Guard sergeant driving to and from the Army unit and that is going to be your representative in America, in small town as well as large city America. I think it would behoove the active duty, as well, to embrace them as much as possible and to recognize them for the crown jewel that they are.

General Navas, would you answer my question?

General NAVAS. Sir, I have to agree with Ms. Lister and the vice. I think that we have been working very closely in the last couple of years. I think that results of the Bottom-Up Review with the 1993 off-site, which you were briefed and you were very supportive, gave us some areas where each of the Reserve components found some niches, some core competencies that we will, the Guard, like I said in my opening statement, a balanced force of combat, combat support, and combat service support because of its mission of expanding the Army.

I think that when the Commission on Roles and Missions relooked at the Bottom-Up Review and came to the realization that there was a shortfall in combat support and combat service support and an excess combat structure in the total Army and they gave as an example a National Guard division, we came to the table. The 54 adjutants general, General Alexander, who is here, who happens to be now the President of the National Guard Association, at that time was the force structure chairman for the TAG's and he led his fellow adjutants general and the 8 division commanders in a plan that was briefed and it is what we know as division redesign where the Guard will convert 12 brigades of combat structure into combat service support.

Also, what it has lost is that we did other things to those definitions, and by definition, the guidance given to division redesign was at the end of the day when that process would be completed, which will take either one POM or two POM's because there is a bill to that, there is a hefty bill to that-it is almost a $4 billion bill-then, by definition, the remaining structure would have been mission relevant.

But we are not there yet. We hardly have started, and then the QDR comes along and we are still going back and revisiting the relevance of that structure. The issue here is if we do it in an open process where all come to the table, of course the world changes. The world changes constantly and we understand that in the Guard and we want to be part of that change. That is our vision, to be relevant and to embrace change.

But we need to do it basically in an inclusive process because different to the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of the Army Reserve, like I said in my opening statement, I am the channel of communication. The commanders of those units out there are the Governors of the States, the commanders in chief. The law, title 32, says that you do not take structure from those States unless the

Governors agree to that. Now, we have done that very well when we dialog with the States, when we have that type of relationship and we brief and say, this is how we are going to do it. This is the time line. These are the units that we are going to backfill.

But when you compress that, like Ms. Lister said, and this was done in a very, very short period of time and you see almost a 10 percent cut across the board in the Guard, then that really created a blip in the curve of a lot of progress that has happened in the last 3, 4 years and luckily we came together and as a family we worked together on some principles on a way of dealing with the immediate cuts that need to be taken to pay the bills and hopefully we will emerge stronger about this. So I am bullish about the future if we can work together.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Mr. Skelton.

Mr. Bartlett, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. I have just two brief questions for General Griffith.

On page four of your written testimony, you mention, and I quote, "The active Army today consists of ten divisions and two armored cavalry regiments with a personnel end strength of 495,000 soldiers." Do you actually have 495,000 soldiers today, as your statement indicates, or is your current assigned end strength 481,000, and thus you essentially cut end strength that you are unable to maintain anyhow?

General GRIFFITH. Sir, I do not know what the precise figure is today. I think we believe that with the recruiting efforts ongoing that we will end the fiscal year right about 490,000, sir. I would further say that as we came out of the cold war and we drew down the active Army from 780,000, 781,000 and 18 divisions and 3 regiments that, in fact, we kept too much structure. One of the problems that we are having in the active Army today is that we have more structure than we have manpower to fill and that, in fact, that is creating very, very tough readiness challenges as we try to meet the operations in Bosnia and other places around the world. So, sir, to answer your question, as we go to a 480,000 Army, we are going to take out in excess of 25,000 in structure so that the manpower, the end strength of the Army, and the force structure of the Army are aligned so that we do not have the undermanning problems we have today.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. On page 12 of your statement, you mentioned several completed and ongoing analyses that were used in determining where personnel reductions could be achieved, including GAO and CBO reports. An April 1997 CBO report concluded that upward of $500 million a year could be saved by a merger of the two Reserve components of the Army. Did the Army consider this report in its analysis and what is your personal and professional opinion on this issue?

General GRIFFITH. Sir, if that is in my statement, I would-the merger, suggested merger?

Mr. BARTLETT. No, sir. An April 1997 CBO report concluded that upward of $500 million a year could be saved by a merger of the two Reserve components of the Army. I was just asking, did the Army consider this report in its analysis and what is your personal and professional opinion on the issue?

General GRIFFITH. Thank you, sir; I am sorry. My view, quite frankly, we have not considered it. There has been no discussion within the active Army leadership, the secretariat, the Secretary of the Army's Office, or anywhere else that I am aware of within the Pentagon, serious discussion of merging those two components.

My view is the Army Reserve and the National Guard have in some cases different missions and my personal view is it would not be wise to eliminate either of those components. Certainly, you could not eliminate the National Guard because of the missions they have in the various States and territories. So my personal view is we would not be particularly well served by that. I would be opposed to it. But I will tell you in all candor, I have not studied that proposal sufficiently to give you any in-depth answers.

Mr. BARTLETT. I thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BUYER. Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, if you would allow me, if you would give me 48 hours to submit any questions that I have in writing.

Mr. BUYER. No objection.

Mr. McHale is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MCHALE. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I will take 48 hours to ask questions. [Laughter.]

Mr. BUYER. There is an objection.

Mr. MCHALE. Mr. Chairman, I thank you.

General Baratz, let me say at the outset that you do not need to be here and if anything I said earlier was misinterpreted or poorly stated on my part, I apologize. The integration between the Army Reserve and the active Army, I think, is seamless. It is a model of how it should be done. The combat support and combat service support that you provide to the active duty Army early on in a conflict is exactly the kind of integration that we hope to achieve not just within the Department of the Army but in all of our Reserve components.

So the comments that I made earlier were, frankly, addressed at what is a difficult and painful division within the Department of the Army, separating the active Army from the Guard, not from the Army Reserve, so I wanted that to be clear on the record.

General Griffith, you mentioned earlier, and I think with sincere and legitimate pride, that when you served as a division commander in the Persian Gulf war, you had, in your words, 6,000 Reserve component soldiers serving under your command. I think that was an accurate statement of your prior testimony.

General GRIFFITH. Yes, sir.

Mr. MCHALE. How many of those 6,000 were combat soldiers from the National Guard?

General GRIFFITH. Sir, I do not recall. Again, once we were in the assembly area, it was of no relevance to me whatsoever from which component those units came. The medical support I had, as I recall, was for the most part, and I had two hospitals that traveled with my division, as I recall, they were Army Reserve.

Mr. MCHALE. The reason why I ask you is to the best of my knowledge, we did not use combat soldiers from the National Guard in the gulf war.

General GRIFFITH. Sir, if I might correct that, sir

Mr. MCHALE. Please.

General GRIFFITH [continuing]. I certainly considered artillery combat and

Mr. MCHALE. Well, that is combat support. I am asking about combat.

sir.

General GRIFFITH. We had no maneuver to my knowledge, yes,

Mr. MCHALE. There is a reason for that, and I am not trying to pick a fight with you here, but it is, I think, an indicative point that out of 6,000 Army Reservists and National Guardsmen who served under your command, none of them were combat soldiers from the National Guard and, in fact, it remains a very painful point of division between the Guard and the active duty Army that the 48th Brigade was not deployed into theater.

I do not think we need to belabor that today or point out who was right or wrong in that division, but it is nonetheless, even 6 years later, a painful division of opinion between the active Army and the Guard. I would suspect that if I turned to General Navas and asked him about the combat readiness of the 48th Brigade, we could get a vigorous debate going here in the room.

The reason why I point that out is no National Guard combat forces were committed in Desert Storm. No National Guard divisions have been included in our current op plans. None of the enhanced separate brigades rotated through the NTC this year. And the National Guard redesign, which I supported-I think it was wisely presented-was underfunded by some $2 billion.

If we are to believe, as I do very passionately, in the concept of a total force Army, we have to make sure that the National Guard has a warfighting responsibility in the op plans and that we train and equip those forces for the missions assigned.

So let me conclude and then invite your comment, if I may. My friend Ike Skelton said, where do we go from here? I do not know that the points that I am about to enumerate are all worthy of implementation, but I ask you to consider them and comment upon them.

No. 1, I think we have to implement the drawdown of the end strength in the National Guard as proposed in the QDR, and a figure of 21,000, though painful, is probably correct. But that decisionmaking process must incorporate the Guard's input in a meaningful way at every stage in the process.

No. 2, we should integrate every Guard division into a current op plan. There should be a warfighting mission assigned to every single Guard division.

No. 3, we should assign each division to a CINC as a theater-oriented strategic reserve.

No. 4, the enhanced separate brigades should rotate through the NTC once every 4 years, not once every 8 years as currently planned.

No. 5, we should adopt objective evaluation standards across all Army components, Active, Reserve, Guard. We should have an ob

jective series of performance standards used to fairly evaluate all components. The Marine Corps, for instance, has the Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation System [McCRES] standards used for both Active and Reserve Components. Other services have done the same. It is time for the Army to come up to a single objective standard of performance that measures warfighting capability.

And No. 6, I would strongly suggest that in order to build the spirit and the teamwork of a unified total force Army that periodically and for brief transitional periods of time, Guard general officers should be placed in command of active duty forces. Now, that may seem like a radical concept, but, in fact, the Marine Corps is just about to do that. A Marine Corps Reserve general will shortly take over command of the active duty Third Marine Division for a period of time of about 3 months.

It is important that we begin to build the spirit of a single total force Army and only by establishing day-to-day working professional relationships between officers who happen to be active or happen to be Reserve or happen to be Guard but who come to respect one another through daily interaction that we can achieve that total force concept.

I would invite your comment on any of those points.

General GRIFFITH. I will be happy to respond to each of those. I do not want to monopolize, but I would be happy to.

First of all, with regard to the drawdown, I think we agree. Yes, sir, we should have, and I think we have set in place the methodology and the processes to do just that. So the inclusion, I take no exception with.

Mr. MCHALE. With the Guard as a participant in a very meaningful way at every stage in the process. If the tough decisions are made, they need a voice at the table.

General GRIFFITH. I agree, sir.

The issue of every Guard division into war plans, I take no exception to. Under title X, the Army provides forces, just as do the other services. The pool of forces that are developed are available to the CINC's. I would have no objection to-and, in fact, in all candor, one of the problems that we have in terms of the vulnerability of the Army's structure is the fact that we have structure that is not included in war plans. I guess also, in all candor, there are forces deployed from other components which you might even question whether you need that robust a force in some cases. I do not want to get cross-service dialog going here, but one of the things that makes the National Guard divisions vulnerable in any analysis you do by anybody is the fact that they are not called for in the war plans by the unified CINC's.

Mr. MCHALE. And that is particularly frustrating when those who write the Guard out of the op plan on a Monday come back on Tuesday and accuse them of irrelevance because they are not in the op plans. It seems to me we ought to draw down the force to a warfighting capability and then write every element of that force into a current contingency.

General GRIFFITH. Again, I would say that that is something that we quite frankly do not have control over. If the CINC's call for the forces, they will certainly be provided to the CINC's to the fullest extent of our ability to provide those forces.