May 05, 2010
Courtesy Of Military News
The top National Guard commander said his troops are being forced to make some tough choices as both the Army and Air Guard shift from a post-World War II defensive footing to one that can better support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That reality means fewer fighter wings where previous active-duty Air Force pilots might find a home and more trips to the war zone for Soldiers used to pitching in on flood relief or dousing forest fires in their states.
"We're transforming ourselves into a force that doesn't necessarily need manned aircraft to do what we did from World War II on," said Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the U.S. National Guard Bureau, at a May 4 breakfast with reporters in Washington.
"We are transitioning to a new place. … It's going to be painful for many of our units who are going from a long history of flying fighters to what's next."
Instead, the Air Guard is evolving to better reflect the active-duty force, with RQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drone pilots replacing F-16 drivers. There will also be a greater emphasis on cyber security operations and space, said McKinley, a career fighter pilot.
For the Army National Guard, it's not so much a switch in its core mission as an increase in overseas deployments, he added, which is as big an adjustment as seeing the plane you used to fly retired for a UAV. The Army Guard has maintained about 60,000 Soldiers deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan for the last four years, McKinley says.
And that's not going to change anytime soon.
"We believe we can sustain [those deployments] indefinitely," McKinley explained. "We are in a rotational cycle that allows our Soldiers and their leadership to know exactly when they're going to deploy," adding that today's deployment cycle for the Army Guard allows for three years at home for every one year deployed, or a "one-to-three" ratio.
"But we want to get the Army Reserve and Army National Guard to a one-to-five" deployment ratio, McKinley added. "We think that is sustainable over time."
With all this transformation of the Guard away from its previous emphasis on homeland defense and state support to joint operations in the war zone, McKinley says he recognizes the bureau shouldn't shift too far in favor of current operations.
"That's the exact word that I'm searching for is how do we make a 'balanced' force that allows us to do the services' requirements but allows the governors flexibility and a capability if they need it at home," he explained. "The National Guard is a pretty resilient force in its ability to adapt to the changing styles of warfare."
For example, the active-duty Army has streamlined the pre-deployment training and equipping requirements for National Guard units so that troops can be ready to deploy more quickly. When the same units prepared for operations in Bosnia in the 1990s, McKinley said, some were unable to react in time to deploy.
"Not the case today. They've got the Army National Guard doing most of their training at home before they even show up," McKinley added.
On the Air Force side, McKinley said his bureau has been strategic in where it places some of the new squadrons, for example shifting a retiring F-16 squadron to Predator drone units in border states.
"So that those long borders along the north and the southwest, we can have trained people who might work for … Customs and Border Patrol by day and come fly with us by night," McKinley said. "Where these locations are is not without some forethought to say when we get back to a normal tempo how does that help our homeland defense footprint?"
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