JEFFERSON CITY, MO -- The Missouri National Guard announces they have moved up in the ranks, according to a tool used by the National Guard Bureau to rate each state.
"I am very proud of the leadership here in Missouri as we have driven individual Soldier readiness and taken those metrics that the Guard Bureau judges us by and moved from 37th on the list when we started in 2009, to being in the top 10 today," said Maj. Gen. Stephen Danner, Missouri's adjutant general.
The National Guard Bureau started using a readiness report card in spring 2011 to rate each state's National Guard. The report card is broken down into three categories and is used to help decide the future force structure allocations for units within the states.
"In other words, future units would be decided on how well the states are performing at filling the units that they have, for instance, and how well they are doing at training their Soldiers and essentially managing readiness," said Lt. Col. John Oberkirsch, the director of manpower and personnel. "NGB doesn't want to allocate that force structure presumably in states that are not doing a good job at filling it and ensuring that it's ready to perform its mission."
The readiness report card measures states on their strength, vacancies, and availability.
Strength includes assigned strength, the amount of Soldiers qualified in their military occupational specialties, the number of Soldiers who are not attending drill and other factors like Soldiers' expired term of service, the percentage of Soldiers that are getting to basic combat training. Another factor included in strength is dwell time, or how long Soldiers have been back from a mobilization.
Vacancy is broken down into sections for junior enlisted, noncommissioned officers, officers, and warrant officers.
"Some of the things that we found as to why we struggle in some of these categories is because of cross-leveling in order to fill some of our unit vacancies for units that are mobilizing," said Oberkirsch.
When a Soldier is cross-leveled, their slot is seen as a vacancy, thus resulting in a negative result for the unit.
"Up until recently, there was no way to account for that and now the National Guard Bureau developed a strategy and we've vigorously embraced that and made sure that we have essentially claimed all the vacancies for all of our cross-leveled Soldiers," said Oberkirsch. "That is one of the reasons we have made a dramatic improvement in the last 30 days or so - is just understanding how the process works and implementing it fully."
Availability primarily has to do with medical readiness. This includes Soldiers that are currently non-deployable until their medical retention can be determined. Other Soldiers included in this category are those that are medically undetermined.
"That means they haven't completed their physical health assessment or dental examination," said Oberkirsch. "A large majority of those people are probably deployable; we just haven't been able to determine it."
All three categories tie into the Missouri National Guard's strategic plan, published by Danner in the summer of 2011.
"This is definitely an area of emphasis in the strategic plan, so the entire organization has been striving to improve these metrics that we're being evaluated upon," said Oberkirsch.
The strategic plan creates a focused effort on the core vision and values over the long term with an emphasis on improvement of the Missouri National Guard's overall performance. It is utilized to build a solid foundation for future progress that is capable of reacting to new initiatives from inside and outside of the organization.
Within the strategic plan are numerous strategic goals. The goals focus on improving individual Soldier and Airmen readiness, empowering the organization, incorporating communication throughout the organization, optimizing responsible resource management, and managing and growing force structure.
As with any other journey towards reaching a specific goal, challenges must be overcome.
"Vacancies are going to remain a challenge because recruiting and training people is kind of the organization's long pole in the tent," Oberkirsch said. "You have to convince people and attract them to the organization and then, likewise, they have to be qualified and you have to train them and that takes significantly longer than a lot of the other things that we do."
Now that the Missouri Guard is in the top 10, the organization has to continue their efforts and build on the progress that has already been made.
"When the organization is focused and everybody is full steam ahead, trying to accomplish the goal, and then you get to the goal, how do you keep the organization energized to maintain?" said Oberkirsch. "It's like a sports game. Everybody rallies together to win the game. But when the game is over, everybody has to go back to practice to get ready for the next game."
By keeping the strategic plan as a central theme in overall readiness, the Missouri National Guard should stay on track and keep the successful momentum going.
For more information about the Missouri National Guard, please visit www.moguard.com
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