I sat and read a piece where the suggestion has come up....to have a 'quick-reaction-force' (QRF) based in DC....permanently, because of the events on the 6th of January.
The position taken in this 'white-paper'? There are three possibilities:
1. A QRF organized under the leadership of the D.C. National Guard. The suggestion here was that you'd take military police from Guard elements in the fifty states....bringing each in for a period of 90 to 180 days.
I looked over this idea and started laughing. Most Guard guys don't mind a two-weeker situation....ONCE a year. Once you started talking about a 90-day deployment (away from their job, or the farm)....things get a bit negative. Maybe 10-percent of Guard folks might go along with this, but the rest will be fairly frustrated.
Another problem here....various states would refuse to participate and if necessary, would dismantle their Guard program.
Finally, they fail to say the magic number. Are we talking about 3,000 Guardsmen in this rotational scheme? If you looked around for National Guard Military Police units....there's not a big huge number here to draw from.
2. This QRF idea would also be within the DC Guard....but creating a permanent military police battalion. It would be formed with active-duty, Guard, and Reserve personnel.
Problems with this? I can't think of many units that have all three elements (active-duty, Guard, Reserve) existing today.
It's basically suggesting that you'd have maybe 300 active duty Army folks, then around a thousand to three-thousand Guard folks that come in quickly from the region (Maryland, DC, Virginia) and form up within a couple of hours.
Cost-wise, this is the cheaper idea....I'll admit.
3. Finally, this QRF would be regular civilian (federal) law enforcement. It'd be capital police....pumped-up.
Again, they avoid discussing numbers, and you'd suspect that it'd have to be in the three-thousand range as a minimum. It'd be like Wackenhut security folks....federally employed (kinda like the way TSA went).
So I looked at how this would all function.
First, there's the issue of where you'd base these people. I just don't see them based out of DC. It'd have to be some military posting existing already....on the Maryland side, or the Virginia side.
Second, military folks on deployments....tend to get themselves into trouble. It's a pattern and rarely ever avoided...especially Guardsmen. Alcohol, gambling, partying, etc. This Guard creation would continually be in trouble, and commanders would be fired every year.
Third, cost factor? Just to bring around three-thousand Guardsmen for deployments, with quarters and TDY-pay for each year? You'd be talking about fifty-million a year....before you even got to specialized training or equipment issues.
Fourth, Guardsmen with time for this, on a regular basis? That would be the destructive key to rotations. A lot of Guardsmen complained over the year-long deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Even if you made these 90-day trips....it'd take a lot out of folks.
What'll happen here, in the end? Pelosi, Schumer and Biden would have to be in agreement, and I suspect they'd go to some expanded Capital Police deal....adding a 1,500 to 2,000 man federal security team. Cost factor? If you use TSA as an example....this would easily get up into the 500-million a year, if you count vehicles, training and intelligence-collection 'toys' (drones, for example).
This would be a magnet for poor recruitment, and you'd end up with the fired policemen from across the nation....applying to be full-scale Capital Police riot-control. If you wanted a Kent-state event....this group would be designed to orchestrate and create such an event.
My advice...whatever they think will be some good to come out of this 'creation'....will be a bigger mess to clean up in five years. This just starts to look like some state capital environment in Peru or Bolivia. You might as well prepare a truth commission to operate in twenty-four months....on how to dismantle this mess.
2 comments:
A significant part of maintaining a standing army is feeding the troopers.
A significant part of recruiting a standing army is offering something the potential recruit cannot get at home.
If the housing (a sleeping-bag in a parking garage during winter months...) and the chow is intentionally offensive to troopers, I predict zero-zero-zero retention of trained troopers.
As today's column suggests, the turn-over will be close to a hundred-percent, leaving the new recruits with little experienced cadre to maintain standards of conduct.
And then, there is this series of articles from Military Times about the quality and quantity of chow to those guarding the Great Wall around Imperial City:
www.militarytimes.com/news/your-navy/2021/03/08/the-militarys-worst-rom-meals-vol-ii/
Most Guardsmen and Army folks will tell you that two weeks of 'roughing it' is about their medium-acceptance point, which usually means MREs, sleeping bags, and 'camping-out'. That also means no showers and limited toilet facilities.
The problem here, if you sit and think about it....this isn't a jungle, war-zone in Afghanistan, or some Bavarian training forest site. This is an urban 'zone'. No one wants to set up tent-cities over at Fort Meyer, or the base at Bolling. No one wants chow-tents set up on capital grounds. There's this serious negative optic that won't be pleasant to gaze at.
So you make up a childish game....putting Guardsmen in hotels, and fetching $10 bags for breakfast (coffee, muffin, an apple). Then give them some sub-sandwich bag for lunch. It's ok for a month, but after that....guys don't understand the physical limits put upon this whole situation. It'd be like some riot at Disneyland, and the Cal governor putting 600 Guardsmen at Disneyland to protect customers.
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