LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ largest National Guard unit is no longer scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan later this year, a move that comes two months after a change in an Ohio unit’s mission called into question whether the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team would be sent overseas.
The nearly 3,000-strong Guard unit has trained for months for a 2012 deployment, but Friday, Lt. Gen. William E. Ingram Jr., the director of the Army National Guard, notified the adjutant general of Arkansas, Maj. Gen. William Wofford, that the 39th was no longer needed.
“Although the 39th Infantry Brigade does not have a current deployment tasking, they remain ready to respond to the needs of the state and nation,” Wofford said in a news release.
The deployment was to be the third for the 39th in eight years. The 39th was last deployed in 2008 when it guarded bases and supply convoys in Iraq. Before that, the 39th deployed to Baghdad from 2004 through 2005 on a full infantry mission as part of the 1st Cavalry Division.
Now, Maj. Matt Snead, a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard, said the brigade will remain in the Army’s available pool to deploy if necessary until October.
“They’re in what they call the ready year. If the Department of Defense has a requirement for a unit to go to support one of the combatant commanders, they will pick a unit in their ready year and send them,” he said.
The 1st Battalion, 167th Infantry Regiment of the Alabama National Guard, which was to be mobilized to supplement the 39th, is still scheduled to go to Afghanistan, Snead said late Friday.
“They are still on a security force mobilization. ... Obviously I can’t speculate on whether they will be removed,” he said of the battalion, which has about 500 troops.
Snead said he didn’t know whether any other Guard units had their deployments changed or whether the move was related to a Defense Department budget announcement this week that called for a shrinking of the nation’s military. There was no immediate response to an e-mail sent to the Army National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va., late Friday.
Snead said, “Frankly, at our level here at the state, we can’t speculate on whether anything the administration puts out played into this or not. Our focus is just to make sure our units are ready to go when they’re called.”
The 39th Infantry Brigade received notification of its deployment in 2010 and was placed on alert last spring. Those actions released millions of federal dollars for training and equipping the brigade in preparation for mobilization. The brigade went through a $25 million, three-week training session at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., in May.
In December, the Guard estimated that between $4 million and $6 million would be spent in the next three quarters on logistics and training support for the brigade. As of late last year, about $5 million worth of new machine guns and rifles had been delivered to the 39th in preparation for the deployment.
Snead wasn’t sure if any equipment would be shuffled because of Friday’s announcement, which was one of a series of changes for the 39th over the past year and a half.
“It wasn’t just one change. It’s been very fluid. It gradually moved from that full spectrum of combat operations to more of a base defense type mission - kind of more from an offense to a defense,” he said.
Arkansas’ 39th was to replace the Ohio National Guard’s 37th Infantry Brigade over the summer. In November, within days of the 37th leaving for Afghanistan, the Defense Department changed that brigade’s mission.
Instead of patrolling towns and valleys while training the Afghan army, a much smaller contingent of the 37th was deployed to guard gates at bases in Afghanistan and Bahrain.
The change in the 37th’s mission left Arkansas’ 39th without a set mission or an idea of how many troops it needed. At the time, Guard officials said the troops would continue to train as if they would be needed for a traditional infantry operation involving the entire brigade.
Snead said the 39th will now focus more on fundamental infantry training.
“Their focus in training now will be what we call their mission essential task training, which just goes back to ‘You’re an infantry company, you’re going to train on the basic fundamental task of being an infantryman,” he said.
“Over the past 18 months, they’ve undergone extensive training. They are at a high state of readiness for whatever comes up, whether it’s another national mission or if we have a domestic response here in the state,” he said.
In the meantime, Snead said Friday’s news was taken “pretty well” by many guardsmen and their families.
“As soon as we put that out on our Facebook page, I can’t speak for all 3,000 soldiers affected ... but it appears that the news is being taken pretty well,” he said laughing.
As of 8 p.m., 62 people had “Liked” the National Guard’s announcement and 41 people had commented, starting with “That is great news to hear” from one writer and simply “sweet!” from another.
Snead said a few others may react differently.
“I’m sure there were folks out there that may not be as happy about the announcement as the vast majority because they were looking at this as an employment opportunity.” Information for this article was contributed by Amy Schlesing of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/28/2012