Paul,
What unit were you with?
Do you know what concrete changes, if any, were made after Desert Storm so the units could deploy?
I was good friends with a Captain, and was practically reduced to tears with the frustration. According to him, active duty Army kept moving the bar, seemingly so that they would never reach the almost mythical status of "deployable." They had some troops they had to requalify on every infantry weapon to deploy, some of which they didn't have. Case in point, as I recall, they had to have everyone qualified on the M249 and M240, even though they still had M60s. And how dumb is it to absolutely insist someone requalify yet again who had annually qualified on the same weapon system every previous year for 10 years!! Also, I believe they had just received the M1A1s and M2s, and the active Army was requiring each and every MOS to get all the training redone on the new equipment. As he said, if you can drive one you can drive the other; you don't need the full week of programed training that the Army made them accomplish. All in all, the Army just heaped hoop after hoop on them that they had to jump through.
They pretty much got there after busting their asses for months, and then Army still did not deploy them. A lot of pissed off troops quit, and they were still rebuilding when 9/11 happened.
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