WASHINGTON — Whether US Army's active component absorbs the National Guard's AH-64 Apaches may be the highest profile issue for a congressionally established commission on the service's future, but the panel is taking on tougher questions, ones that may redefine the roles of the active side, Guard and Reserve.

"The more lasting, longer term recommendations we will make will be, 'How do those three components of the Army contribute most effectively to the nation's land power requirements,'" retired Army Gen. Carter Ham, chairman of the commission, said after it met Thursday. "It's more nuanced, it's more difficult, it's a less precise answer than the AH-64 issue."

The commission was mandated by the fiscal 2015 National Defense Authorization Act following a public dust-up between the Army National Guard and active component over the active Army's Aviation Restructuring Initiative. The panel is to study the Army's structure, size, force mix, and how they all should be modified to fit the Army's missions and available resources.

The controversial aviation restructure, over five years, would eliminate the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior and use the Apache to fill the Kiowa's reconnaissance and scout role. In turn, it would pull the Apaches from the Guard and replace them with UH-60 Black Hawks, a move the Guard and its advocates oppose.

The commission's report to Congress is due in February 2016, and therefore is unlikely to influence the budget immediately.

"This is not about the Army of 2016, it is about the Army of 2020 or 2025," Ham told reporters. "While there are some things of immediate concern, the force structure, force design, force mix are larger issues, and we're trying to think about that."

The active and reserve components are meant to be complimentary, and over the last decade's wars, the reserve component has hovered at slightly more than half of the total force. Shrinking budgets and the shrinking Army have sharpened the arguments over the proportions.

The argument in favor of a stronger reserve component, which is made up of part-time troops, is that they're interchangeable with their active-component counterparts, at a lower cost. The counter-argument is that reserve component troops are not as capable, and that they take more time and training to mobilize for immediate crises. The commission is expected to examine these arguments.

In 2013, the Army had 547,000 people in the active Army, 358,000 in the Guard and 206,000 in the Reserve. Since the first round of sequestration cuts, today's Army has about 490,000 active troops, 350,000 Guard troops and 205,000 Reserve troops, for a total of about 1 million.

Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, director of program analysis and evaluation, said in testimony to the commission on Thursday that senior Army leaders have, amid the cuts, struggled to balance manpower, readiness and modernization accounts, cutting manpower last year to shore up modernization at the direction of the defense secretary.

Army Secretary John McHugh and Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno, first had the active component absorb the brunt of manpower cuts connected to sequestration to staunch the bleeding in the modernization account. To make use of what's left, the Army has opted for incremental improvements to key systems like the armored vehicles and helicopters, forgoing new development for systems like the Ground Combat Vehicle and Armed Aerial Scout — but such a strategy only goes so far, Ferrari said.

"After we take the people out, the modernization dollars come back somewhat, but they're still lower than they should be for historical levels," Ferrari said. "We either have to keep reducing people or we don't rebuild readiness and modernization to the extent we need."

Meanwhile, the Army must be ready to surge troops for crises and keep troops rotating into Korea, Europe and the Middle East, requirements that were supposed to come down according to 2012 models, but have only gone up, Ferrari said. Manpower cuts are not supplying dollars quickly enough to fund training and readiness, endangering the Army's ability to surge in a crisis.

In 2014, the Army operated at a budget of about $126 billion, which fell to $120 billion this year, a loss of $6 billion, with more than $3 billion coming out of operations and maintenance accounts, Ferrari said. Whether home station training is funded, hinges on ongoing budget negotiations.

"If we think there's additional money to solve the problems we have, the actual truth is there's probably going to be less money, and we're going to have even more difficult problems," Ferrari said.

While the Reserve is entirely federal, the Guard is a both a federal and state organization, with each state Guard unit answering to its governor. Accordingly, commissioners have invited officials from the National Governor's Association to speak at its next meeting and have attended the annual meeting of the National Guard Adjutants General of the United States in mid June.

Commission Vice Chair Thomas Lamont, former assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said he got a sense of the emotions connected to the AH-64 issue at the adjutants general meeting.

"Part of the charge of the commission is to remove that emotion and make informed decisions regardless of their emotional aspects," Lamont said.

At least from an administrative standpoint, the commission would largely hew to playbook of a similar commission created for the Air Force, which delivered its recommendation to Congress last year, Ham said. That commission ultimately recommended force structure and integration between the active, Air National Guard and Reserve components, to resolve budget battles between them.

Members and staffers for the two commissions have met to learn discuss best practices and get a sense of the challenges that lay ahead. As to the mission of the commission, Ham said the two are not on precisely parallel tracks.

"In terms of substance, the commissions have some fairly different tasks, but I think there are things we can learn, and you heard in the questions today whether there are things this commission can learn about the Air Force's integration of components."

In early 2014, the Air Force commission recommended the Air Force should look at moving as much manpower into the Reserve and Air National Guard components as possible. , a move that could touted as saving billions of dollars annually that could instead be used for readiness and modernization.

When a reporter asked Ham whether he was open to folding of the Guard and Reserve entirely into the active component, roughly the reverse of the Air Force commission's recommendation he was unfavorable said no.

"The Army has three components for a reason, with commonalities across all three, but each has a bit of a different role that contributes to the nation's requirement for land forces," Ham said in answer to a reporter's question. "I don't see the nature of that changing fundamentally."

Still, Lamont pointed to the similarities between the components, saying the panel must look at what readiness level defines the reserve component, particularly when the readiness some Reserve forces matches active units.

"Whether it's fight tonight, be ready in 30 days or 60 days, I'm not sure that's a great deal different from where a lot of the active Army is today," Lamont said. "We're all operationalized in many senses."

Email: jgould@defensenews.com

Twitter: @reporterjoe

Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.

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