A final plan for settling the Army National Guard’s ownership of AH-64 Apache and how many of the attack helicopters it will transfer to the active component should land on Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning’s desk within a month.
Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said the recommendation will closely resemble that made by the National Commission on the Future of the Army (NCFA) to retain four Apache units of 18 aircraft each within the Guard.
“Everybody in the Guard and in the Army supports the commission recommendations,” Lengyel told sister publication Defense Daily on Oct. 26 following a Defense Writers Group breakfast with reporters in Washington, D.C. “I think right now they are sorting through the appropriate options to get to the recommendations. At some point in the next month or so we will probably bring a plan to the secretary of the Army.”
The Army continues to implement the transfer of some Apaches from the Guard to the active component under authorized provisions of the Aviation Restructure Initiative (ARI), a plan to save $12 billion through that transfer and the wholesale retirement of older airframes like the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior scout helicopter.
The NCFA was tasked with assessing, among other force-structure issues, whether the ARI should be implemented as designed or should be altered in some way to preserve the relative capabilities of the active and reserve components. It ultimately offered its own solution that would keep 72 Apaches in four Guard aviation battalions. The 20 active battalions would each have 24 aircraft while the four Guard battalions would be equipped with 18 helicopters, but would borrow Apaches before deploying.
“I think we will go to something along those lines,” Lengyel said.
The aviation issue is a symptom of a larger effort in which the Guard is scrambling to retain the combat proficiency, equipment and budget it has enjoyed as a largely operational force during the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As budgets waned with U.S. involvement in the conflicts and fiscal uncertainly on the homefront, concerns grew that the Army was prioritizing its own readiness and modernization over the Guard and Reserve.
The relationship between the active Army and the Guard was tense to the point of hostility under former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno. Current Chief Gen. Mark Milley has seemingly healed the rupture by instituting plans to more seamlessly integrate Guard and Reserve soldiers into active-duty units, Lengyel said.
The Army is moving toward a “continuous operational” model with its Guard component under Milley, who wants to establish multi-component units for aviation and other missions and deploy reserve-component soldiers regularly overseas.
“They haven’t been all that good,” Lengyel said of the relationship of the active and reserve Army components in recent years. “It’s been a bit of a rocky road. … Gen. Milley, [Army Forces Command Chief Gen. Robert] Abrams have totally changed the tone of the relationship, the access, the utilization of the Guard component. … There has been no new bad news for a while. There is always going to be, when resources are an issue, there is going to be tension about where is the best place to save money and take cuts.”
Much of the Army’s integration plans are based on the Air Force’s success integrating its Guard and Reserve troops into active component units. That integration came about only after much difficult work and melding two cultures that often were at odds, Lengyel said.
“The Air Force has built a system now that can’t do any operational mission without a portion of the Air National Guard,” Lengyel said.
About 60 percent of the Air Force aerial refueling tanker fleet belongs to the Guard, which also has 26 fighter squadrons. Guardsmen are stationed in both space and cyber units and they fly all fighter aircraft, bombers and remotely piloted aircraft.
“I just can’t think of a mission set – we have B-2 pilots in the National Guard,” he said. “We are completely, totally, seamlessly integrated with the Air Force. … Whatever mission the United States Army and the United States Air Force is in, the Army Guard and the Air Guard will be part of it.”