When the Kansas National Guard headed to the Gulf Coast this fall to aid in hurricane relief, it did so in an assortment of vehicles collected from bases around the state.

“If you were to look at the bumpers, they came from all over the state,” said Joy Moser, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Office.

The guard, after all, doesn’t have the full supply of Humvees that it normally would; many have been taken overseas in deployments to Iraq and left there.

So far, Moser said, that’s not been a problem for guardsmen accomplishing missions in Kansas.

“We’ve had enough (equipment) to do what we’re supposed to do,” here, Moser said. “We haven’t come up short, at least that I’ve heard, up to this point.”

Moser couldn’t say how much Kansas National Guard equipment has been left behind in the Middle East, but a federal report released Thursday showed that, nationwide, guard units are short equipment on the home front partly because they were told to leave vital equipment such as armored Humvees in Iraq for replacement troops.

As of June, Army National Guard units had left overseas more than 64,000 pieces of equipment worth more than $1.2 billion, and more than half cannot be accounted for by the Army, according to the Government Accountability Office.

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On average, National Guard units at home have only 34 percent of their essential war-fighting equipment, according to the report released at a hearing of the House Committee on Government Reform. The report did not contain state-by-state breakdowns, and the GAO author did not return calls to the Journal-World on Thursday.

Moser said state officials had not tallied how much Kansas equipment had been left overseas.

But, she said, “we have left some things.” It makes sense, she said, for Kansas guardsmen to leave Humvees and other big pieces of equipment in Iraq to be used by replacement units from other states – rather than make those units go to the expense of bringing new equipment over.

“You’re not going to bring home up-armored Humvees and send ones that aren’t armored,” Moser said. “I don’t think we’re alone in this.”

Moser added: “I’m sure there are other pieces of equipment that were left.”

A man answering the phone Thursday at the Kansas National Guard armory in Lawrence would not comment. A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon. Ryun is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

The GAO said the Guard was working on an old business model in which it only deploys in the later stages of a major conflict if needed. As a result, Guard troops on average are only provided 65 percent to 74 percent of the people and 65 percent to 79 percent of the equipment needed to conduct their wartime duties, the report said.

The report noted that the Army is working to take steps to implement stricter accountability over Guard equipment left overseas and a better method to replace equipment left behind.