I didn't know whether you had seen a сору of this or not.
General PEERS. No, sir; I had not.

Senator THURMOND. That is the opinion of Mr. Yorty, the mayor of Los Angeles.

Talking with Admiral Zumwalt day before yesterday, he assured me that Los Alamitos would not be closed if the Army and Air Force Reserve units wished to use it and, as I understand from you now, they do wish to use it; is that correct?

General PEERS. Very definitely, both the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve Aviation units desire to use it.

Senator THURMOND. Since they do wish to use it then under the statement that was given to me in person by Admiral Zumwalt in my office day before yesterday, I presume the station then will not close.

RESERVE COMPONENTS READINESS

General Peers, in your statement you said the overall preparedness of Reserve components is probably the highest ever achieved in peacetime. On what do you base this statement?

Would you give some additional factors for the record?
General PEERS. Yes, sir.

During the Vietnam war, as you know, it was necessary to withdraw equipment from the Reserve components of the Army and also some of the equipment that was purchased for the Reserve components which was diverted to South Vietnam and that was very necessary. Since that time, however, we have provided a large quantity of equipment to the Reserve components.

In fiscal year 1970 we provided $300 million worth of equipment. Most of this was firstline equipment and much of it came directly from the production line.

This year we anticipated at the start of the year to provide $425 million worth of equipment, about $255 million in ground equipment and $170 million in aviation equipment.

By the end of the third quarter we had already issued and had in the hands of the units $417 million worth of equipment; we had another $192 million worth of equipment in depots which was waiting shipment to the Reserve component units, and in the month of April we allocated another $108 million worth of equipment to the Reserve component units.

All totaled thus far we have either issued or allocated $717 million worth of equipment to the Reserves. So we may well double in issues and allocations what we estimated that the Reserves would receive in this fiscal year.

Equipment has a major bearing upon the readiness of our Reserve component units. We have established the standards to attain company level readiness for our Reserve units.

Last year at the end of annual training 24 percent had achieved company level readiness, taking annual training tests at company level. At the end of this year we anticipate that approximately 75 percent of all of our company-sized combat units will have satisfactorily completed annual training tests and, of course, directly associated with this statement is the fact that these new armories, Reserve training centers and also the acts being taken to procure local training areas

has had a great impact upon improving the readiness of the Reserve components.

Senator THURMOND. General Peers, you have a strong statement and a good report. What do you see as the major problems for our Reserve components in the way of military construction and installation needs in the years ahead?

General PEERS. The program which the Department of Defense approved for us last year, which is referred to as the 10-year Reserve component facilities improvement program, should take care of, within that time frame, the Reserve training centers and the National Guard armories as well as maintaining and improving the training sites such as Camp Shelby in Mississippi, Ripley in Minnesota, Grayling in Michigan, Camp Roberts in California and so on.

The one problem, to answer specifically your question, we have at the present time and which we are working on as it is a major project for us, is to improve local training facilities. If we have, for example, a battalion in any city, we would like to be able to acquire a maneuver training area within a reasonably short driving distance, maybe an hour or hour and a half from their home station so they would be able to go there on weekends and be able to train practically all day Saturday and all day Sunday and return in a reasonable period of time.

If we do not have these facilities, some units are required to travel 4 to 5 hours to go to a training area, and 4 to 5 hours to return. As a consequence they don't have much training time.

At the present time we are reviewing 402 battalion-size units to determine their training requirements. We have completed our analysis of these units and have forwarded suggestions to the National Guard Bureau and to the Chief, Army Reserves, for correcting current training area deficiencies. Thus far we have had quite a bit of success through this effort in obtaining additional local training area and we think it is going to take a lot of hard work on the part of the National Guard Bureau and State adjutant generals and also the ARCOMS and Armies to acquire these areas, but we feel this program will pay high dividends in this regard.

Senator THURMOND. Thank you.

COLLOCATION EFFORT

What are Army Reserve units doing in the way of collocation? General PEERS. There is a great deal of effort going on in this matter. We are trying to collocate units to the maximum extent.

I think that perhaps General Roberts, the new Chief of Army Reserves, and General Greenlief would be better prepared to answer that question specifically, Mr. Chairman.

General ROBERTS. Yes, sir, Senator Thurmond, we are making every effort to use joint facilities with other Reserve components including Army Guard and Air Force Reserves, Navy or Marine Reserves. At the present time we have four such projects underway. Just yesterday we approved award of a new joint center with the Army National Guard at Decatur, Ala., and where feasible we are planning to construct facilities jointly.

Senator THURMOND. I have a few other questions for you.

General Roberts, what part of the Army Reserve fiscal year 1972 construction request is going to build or improve facilities to support the Army's expanded Reserve flying program?

General ROBERTS. Sir, we have one item for aviation in the fiscal 1972 construction budget.

Senator THURMOND. I will tell you what you might do there. Would you care to put that in the record?

General ROBERTS. Yes; we can submit that for the record.

(The information follows:)

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