"An alert is a heads-up that the unit could be called to active duty," said Utah National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Brad Blackner. "It doesn't mean the battalion will be mobilized."
Yet every Utah unit placed on alert was mobilized except one. And that unit, the 116th Engineer Group, was mobilized later and deployed to southern Iraq.
The 222nd, or Triple Deuce, has already served a six-month deployment. Soldiers from armories in Richfield, Beaver, Cedar City and St. George were mobilized in March 2003. They were training at Fort Carson, Colo., for security duties in Iraq when the battalion was diverted to teach Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) students at Fort Lewis, Wash.
A second deployment would entail several months of training and likely a full year of duty in the Persian Gulf, pushing to the limit the two-year activation of citizen soldiers allowable under federal law for each enlistment period.
Of the thousands of Utah National Guard and Army Reservists deployed, only a single unit of combat trainers serving stateside from the 91st Division has served two full years of active duty.
The Triple Deuce is likely to be attached to the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, one of the new Brigade Combat Teams unveiled by the Army in October 1999. Five units have been formed from regular Army active-duty troops. The Pennsylvania brigade is the only combat team comprising citizen-soldiers.
"The Army's decision recognizes that the Pennsylvania Army National Guard has achieved the highest levels of strength and readiness of any Army Guard in the nation," said then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge - now secretary of Homeland Security - in 2001.
The combat teams are intended to serve as a bridge between the tank-heavy Army of the Cold War era and light, mobile fighting forces that lack armored firepower.
"These interim brigades will help us move towards a force that is more strategically responsive and dominant across the spectrum of military operations," said then-Army Secretary Thomas White in 2001. "Their improved deployability and lethality will enhance deterrence and meet an operational requirement with a capability that does not currently exist."
The combat teams are to be assigned new Interim Armored Vehicles, or Strykers. The system of 10 vehicles includes an infantry carrier, a mobile gun system, an anti-tank guided missile unit, a nuclear, biological and chemical reconnaissance vehicle, and a remote weapon station with an M2 .50-caliber machine gun or an MK19 40 mm grenade launcher.
The vehicles can sustain speeds of 60 mph, have a commonality of parts, a central tire-inflation system and self-recovery abilities, according to the U.S. Army Public Affairs Office.
The Pennsylvania unit is among the nation's oldest, tracing its lineage back to 1747 when Benjamin Franklin established the infantry "associators," or Associated Regiment of Foot of Philadelphia.
