Issue Date: September 13, 2004
Army shifts reserve role, closely mirrors Corps
By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer
First, it borrowed the Corps’ “Every Marine a rifleman” ethos, declaring that “every soldier” should be a rifleman first.
Then, it took and modified the Corps’ digital design for its cammies.
Now, it appears the Army wants its National Guard forces to operate more like the Marine Corps Reserve.
Facing increasing stress on Guard and reserve forces, Guard officials are reorganizing their citizen-soldiers to allow for a high mobilization tempo without burning them out or leaving a state governor high and dry if disaster strikes. And that’s where the Army is again taking a page from the Corps’ book.
This year, the Army began training and equipping its reserve-component forces to seamlessly assimilate into brigade-size units throughout the active-duty force.
In the past, entire reserve units deployed as one and operated as a component of a larger, division-size force. Now, a single battalion or even company-size unit may readily plug into an active brigade and deploy to a war zone without a hitch.
“What I’ve committed to is taking all of our brigades and moving them to exactly the same shape, size, organization [and] equipment as the active brigades,” said Army Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, head of the Army and Air National Guard.
Though the Corps does not contribute to America’s state militias as the Air and Army National Guard do, its small size has forced the organization to mirror the active duty in almost every way.
Thus, a Reserve AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter squadron based in Atlanta can plug in effortlessly with the active-duty 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, in Afghanistan — or even an active-duty Army unit, if necessary.
The Army already has done that with some of its Guard units. Soldiers with the Florida National Guard’s 124th Infantry Regiment teamed up with active-duty Special Forces troops and operated with them throughout much of the Iraq war as prison security and quick-reaction forces.
The Army also is mirroring the Corps by training 12 units to respond to potential chemical, biological or radiological attacks in the United States.
Blum sent the teams this year to the headquarters of the Corps’ Chemical Biological Incident Response Force in Indian Head, Md., where they learned how to deal with mass casualties during a possible domestic attack.
Though CBIRF is an active-duty unit — part of the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade (Anti-Terrorism) — it has been deployed several times for domestic chemical attacks.
CBIRF teams deployed to Capitol Hill in fall 2001 after letters contaminated with anthrax were found in several Senate offices.
The chemical warriors again deployed in February when traces of the deadly chemical ricin turned up in a Senate office.
The Army has a similar team in its Guard forces to take some of the strain off of the Corps’ CBIRF and to provide relief to local law enforcement and medical personnel in the event of a domestic terrorist attack.
“When we trained at Indian Head with the CBIRF and had them certify our packages, we had never thought about being a reserve of the Marine CBIRF unit, but that’s what we end up being,” Blum said. “Because now, they have 12 National Guard packages that can back up the two that exist on active duty in the Marine Corps.”
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-MARINEPAPER-334324.php