FORT MYERS, FL-- America's heroes are now feeling the impacts of the sequester. Today the Florida National Guard painted a scary picture by saying the budget cuts will prevent the guard's equipment from being properly maintained and will harm national security. 

The FNG  also said those predicted furloughs are real will and will start giving employees 30 day notices of those furloughs in the next few days.

The Florida National Guard says they are about to roll down an extremely rough road. They are blaming the $85-billion mandatory government cuts that went in to affect March 1st.

993 uniformed military technicians and civilian employees will be placed on a one day per week unpaid furlough day for up to 22 weeks.

That equals a nearly a 20% pay cut per person. The national guard says $11 million for facilities maintenance will be gone.

They also say 10% of readiness equipment will be phased out, 400 soldier medical exams will be cancelled and $1.2 million of tuition assistance will be cancelled.

Wednesday the Senate passed a measure that would force the Pentagon to reinstate the military tuition assistance program if the house passes it as well. Just a few weeks ago, many armed forces officials stopped new enrollments. If the program is reinstated, tens of thousands of troops would be able to go back to class and hopefully that would keep up the lower unemployment numbers.

A new report says veteran unemployment dropped to 9.9% in 2012.