For Guard, equipment falls short

"The right answer will require some time and some resources," he adds.

For decades, there has been little need for the Pentagon to invest time and resources in the Guard. It was used only as a reserve, which meant its needs were secondary. But with the Defense Department now using the Guard as an operational force, "that model doesn't fit the current reality," Blum says.

Moreover, Mr. Bush suggested this weekend that the military take control of relief operations after catastrophic domestic disasters, pointing to an expanded role for the National Guard - the military's first responders for homeland security.

The more active role for the Guard has changed the calculus within the Pentagon, Blum suggests. "This is the first time in modern history that the Pentagon recognizes this as a core mission," he says.

Congress, too, is aware of the Guard's changing mission. Sens. Christopher Bond (R) of Missouri and Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont asked the president last week to press for $1.3 billion in spending on new National Guard equipment. "The National Guard has deployed many of its resources overseas, consequently there are insufficient reserves of equipment available to respond to future disasters," they wrote.

The letter is just a hint of what could come. Across the armed forces, the war in Iraq is straining equipment. Part of that is the nature of the war. The Pentagon had not originally expected such a prolonged insurgency, so soldiers have used vehicles like Humvees in ways they hadn't expected - weighing them down with makeshift armor, for example, which puts excess wear on other parts.

Then there's the desert, which blows sand into every crank and gear and fries vehicles in a furnace of 120-degree F. heat. "They're wearing out because the environment is so harsh," says Christine Wormuth, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here.

One analysis by the Congressional Budget Office suggests that once the war ends, it will take $20 billion to return military equipment to prewar condition. In congressional testimony this summer, Gen. Peter Pace, the nation's second highest-ranking officer, suggested the process would last two years.

"That means that, currently, if we go to war somewhere else ... we clearly would not have 100 percent of the equipment that we would like to have to fight that war," said General Pace.

The likely result is that in the scramble of future postwar politics, the National Guard's shortages will be just one of many competing demands. "It's something that everybody is fully aware of," says Ms. Wormuth. "But it's a very challenging problem in a resource- constrained environment."

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