FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — First, Robert Randles got “riffed” — removed from his building inspector job at the nearby Fort Bragg Army post as part of the military’s “reduction in force.”

Next, he got “sequestered” — forced to take an unpaid day off every week for six weeks this summer from his new job as an electrician at Fort Bragg.

Then this month Randles, a 50-year-old Army veteran, became a victim of the government shutdown. Along with 7,250 other civilian government workers at Fort Bragg, he was furloughed.

The shutdown sent shock waves through Fayetteville, a tough, vibrant military town that for decades has enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the sprawling military reservation on its shoulder. When asked where they’re from, many Fort Bragg soldiers born and raised elsewhere reply: “Fayetteville.”

Fayetteville would still be a sleepy Southern hamlet without Fort Bragg and the Army’s adjacent Pope Field. The city’s very identity is inextricably bound with the military, from the gun stores and strip clubs along Bragg Boulevard to the “Iron Mike” paratrooper statue at the entrance to the city’s revitalized downtown.

Some unexpected — and welcome — news arrived Saturday when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that about 350,000 civilian defense workers would be called back to work. A Fort Bragg spokesman said most of the base’s furloughed Defense Department workers would be back on the job Monday. In all, about 800,000 federal employees had been idled.

Hagel said the worker recall was possible after lawyers determined that the Pay Our Military Act, a measure passed by Congress and signed into law shortly before the shutdown began Tuesday, could also apply to civilian workers “whose responsibilities contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members.”

New cargo planes on order for the U.S. Air Force are being delivered straight into storage in the Arizona desert because the military has no use for them, a Dayton Daily News investigation found.

A dozen nearly new C-27J Spartans from Ohio and elsewhere have already been taken out of service and shipped to the so-called boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Five more are expected to be built by April 2014, all of which are headed to the boneyard unless another use for them is found.

The Air Force has spent $567 million on 21 C-27J aircraft since 2007, according to purchasing officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Sixteen had been delivered by the end of September.

The Air Force almost had to buy more of the planes against its will, the newspaper found. A solicitation issued from Wright-Patterson in May sought vendors to build more C-27Js, citing Congressional language requiring the military to spend money budgeted for the planes, despite Pentagon protests.

Congress put the brakes on the expenditure, which was the right thing to do according to government watchers such as Mike O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute. He said the planned additional purchase would have been “simply wasting precious taxpayer money.”

The military initally wanted the C-27J because it had unique capabilities, such as the ability to take off and land on less developed runways, according to Ethan Rosenkranz, national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. But when sequestration hit, the military realized the planes weren’t a necessity, but instead a luxury it couldn’t afford, he said.

“When they start discarding these programs, it’s wasteful,” he said.

O’Hanlon said their near-resurrection was largely due to parochialism.

“It’s too bad, and a waste,” he said. “I’m not sure the program was ever a white elephant, and yet given budget cuts I’m not sure it should be saved now.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's order to bring 400,000 furloughed defense workers back on the job this week was greeted with relief by many, but it didn't cover a crucial part of the military — the National Guard and Reserves.

Monthly drills and the paychecks that came with them have vanished for hundreds of thousands of part-time troops, including about 20,000 soldiers and airmen in the Texas National Guard.

But that's not all.

Training days are being erased from the books. Occupational and professional development classes have been canceled. Troops called up for temporary deployments in the United States and overseas have been called back.

While the shutdown has idled much of the force, the troops still can be deployed for essential missions, such as disaster response.

At Martindale Army Airfield on the East Side, five UH-60 Black Hawk medical evacuation helicopters were idled on the flight line Wednesday, barred from flying because Congress hasn't passed a new budget.

A crew did a “run-up” on one, starting the engine and spinning the rotor blades, but the helicopter stayed on the ground — a bad place for a cantankerous machine that must fly to save lives.

“If you don't fix these things and use them the way they're intended to be used, they will break,” said Maj. Gen. William Smith, commander of the Texas Army National Guard. “And if we don't have dollars to fix them, then at some point, they'll all be broken.”

The standoff between Republicans and Democrats hasn't yet imperiled force readiness, in part because the Guard and Reserve are used to living on lean budgets.

But the possibility that lawmakers could be at loggerheads for weeks or months is a larger matter of concern for everyone from commanders to troops in the ranks.

Some worry about morale. Others fret over the potential for troops to lose their edge.

“The problems are certainly not isolated to the Guard. That said, who's not training this month? The Guard. What service had difficulties with sequestration furloughs? The Guard,” said John Goheen, a spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States.