ARLINGTON, Va. — The Army National Guard’s readiness is in “an even more dire situation than the active Army,” due to equipment being worn out or destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan and never replaced, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Tuesday.

Speaking in Washington to defense reporters, Blum joined a growing list of Army officials and members of Congress who are voicing concerns about the Army’s ballooning equipment replacement costs and its effect on the service’s ability to go to war.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on June 27 that the Army needs another $17 billion added to its fiscal 2007 budget to pay for resetting and replacing equipment consumed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and $13 billion a year for two or three years after the wars end to bring the force up to par.

Asked by the top Democrat on the committee, Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, if he was “comfortable with the readiness level for the nondeployed units that are in the continental United States,” Schoomaker replied, “no.”

When Skelton asked him to elaborate, Schoomaker declined to give a public reply.

On July 26, however, House Democrats held a news conference and cited “unclassified documents” they said stated that more than two-thirds of the active Army’s units are not combat-ready, mostly because of equipment shortfalls.

When reporters asked Blum how the two-thirds figure compares with the number of National Guard units that are unprepared to go to war, Blum replied, “It’s worse for me.”

“We’re in an even more dire situation than the active Army,” Blum told military reporters at Washington breakfast meeting.

He did not quantify the percentage of unready units.

“We both have the same symptoms, I just have a higher fever, let’s put it that way, OK?” Blum said. “I’m a little sicker in that regard than they are.

“And there’s no question about it, we both need to be cured.”

Schoomaker told lawmakers that the active Army entered the Iraq war in 2003 with a $56 billion shortfall in equipment, which has gotten worse and worse as equipment has been consumed at rates up to four times their normal programmed wear and tear.

The Army National Guard’s reset situation is even worse, Blum said, because before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks it was the Pentagon’s policy to give priority to equipping active units.

“We went in (to Iraq and Afghanistan) less resourced than our active counterparts, and we suffered the same wear and tear and battle damage and battle loss that they did,” Blum said.

Blum said the cost to re-equip the Army National Guard will be $21 billion, including $2 billion to re-equip aviation units.

“That is not just reset, that’s to buy them the equipment they must have to do their job,” such as trucks, communications engineer equipment, helicopters, night-vision devices and radios, he said.