York – Consider some of the numbers: 5,640, $210,591,891, $783,389,638 and $664,020,987.
Those figures for 2009 represent (in order): The total count of Nebraska Army and Air National Guard personnel, their annual payroll, value of their equipment and resources in the state and, finally, the value of real property and capital assets held by the Guard in Nebraska.
Broken down to the next level, paychecks in Lincoln, where the Guard is headquartered, add up to $35,241,588 for Army National Guard and $25,704,266 more for the Air Guard.
None of those figures include reserve units for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in Nebraska, which of course would run the numbers much higher.
It adds up to a huge investment in what military parlance collectively refers to as ‘reserve components.’ It’s an investment in troops, training, materiel and real estate that has helped make it a fact that America’s Army is now very close to 50 percent reserve component soldiers.
Col. Kevin Neumann, director of personnel for the Nebraska National Guard, talked about the economic impact of his organization on the state’s economy, and ranged into other topics as well, during a presentation before the Nebraska Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve’s (ESGR) 2009 Annual Training and Awards Banquet held June 19-20 in York.
Neumann said few are deployed from Nebraska at this particular time, however the pace of Nebraska fathers, mothers and civilian employees departing families and jobs will soon accelerate.
“Next year at this time we will have upwards of 1,800 Army and Air Guard personnel deployed somewhere in the world,” Neumann told his ESGR group during Friday’s training session. Neumann then illustrated his point by rattling off a list of Nebraska units slated for deployment by the end of 2009.
To optimize training and serve those troops, a major effort is in progress to replace and re-organize outdated and outgrown armories and reserve centers.
One example he cited is the now complete, $19.5 million facility in Grand Island to support a helicopter detachment stationed there. A new $11.7 million, 62,000 square foot training center in Hastings is slated for completion in August.
The ‘down the road’ list includes an Army Readiness Center in Beatrice at $10.5 million, a new joint forces headquarters in Lincoln at $27.2 million upon which site preparation has begun, a $7.2 million new facility in McCook and one estimated to cost $9.2 million at Columbus.
Clearly, American defense dollars are present in Nebraska. But what of the equation’s ‘people’ side?
Shaking his head in disbelief at what he was about to say, Neumann told the group, “We have to shrink now,” such is the rate at which men and women have lined up to join the Nebraska National Guard. “We have to get rid of 52 Army Guard soldiers by the end of the fiscal year,” he said, adding, “I never thought I would ever see that.”
The Air National Guard, he said, is over quota at 103 percent and in a similar fix.
Keeping Nebraska Guard forces in the required state of readiness in 2003 was a three-person staff.
“Now we have almost 25 folks working across the state,” said Neumann. The system now includes six family assistance centers scattered across Nebraska to help support the soldiers and also the loved ones they’ve left behind on as many as two, or in some cases three, deployments.
Add it all together, said Neumann, and the National Guard becomes the second largest employer in the entire state.
The numbers are tall and vertical, but they’re long and horizontal, too.
Maj. Gen. Walter Zink (retired), the assistant chairman of ESGR in Nebraska, pointed out during his remarks before the ESGR conference that, “The war in Iraq and Afghanistan has now lasted longer than World War II.”