Reserve Combat Arms mostly went away after the Cold War. I think it was mostly from lobbying to maintain the relative prestige of combat arms in the National Guard.
The NG has more political power behind it. I was familiar with one reserve combat formation in the 80s. The 100th Division Also exercised at Ft. Campbell while I was in the 30th Armored Brigade, which was part of the Tenn Army NG back in the 80s. The Army Reserve is now just support units.
The Army career field that both calculates unit mix and mix within the components (AA. NG, AR, RR) is called Force Management. I worked these issues both at the Center for Army Analysis and in the Army Ops world. The AR is structured with combat support (signal, engineer, MI, MP, and Chem), and combat service support (the logistics branches, plus AG, FI, Med, etc). At the end of the Vietnam war, the Army structured itself to be unable to sustain itself in sustained combat without calling up the reserves to insure that the Active Army deployment ensured POTUS had the political will and juice to call up the reserves.
The NG is a combat supplement to the AA. In the horse trading that goes on every 4 years called Total Army Analysis, the States generally have the same desires, that are driven by:
- state missions (floods, fires, riots, parades, etc)
Very pertinent. This is what happens when the NGB becomes like the rest of the Pentagon and aligns itself with the current administration on political/domestic policy issues. Gosh, do you think those remarks might have precleared with DoD?
Between the politicization of the uniformed services via buzzword bingo and CYA language, along with the 42 Defense Department advisory committees that SECDEF Austin suspended, its not a mystery why officers cycling through their various assignments are coming out as being...unfocused & partisan.
Reserve and National Guard shouldn't have a seat at the JCS. The mission is to support the active component as decision makers. The head of the NGB thinks that because he's got a seat on the JCS, he's equal to the rest. The perceived status of being combat arms and fighting in the Big One as well as the Good Guys when disaster hits may be why they don't want the relatively dirty role performing border security.
Is the General’s comment a reflection of the mission that the Guard has been given near the border? Do they have a real military mission or are they just processing people? I am not aware of any government organization today that has been given the mission of stopping the invasion or the importation of illegal drugs. I wish I were wrong. If I am, please educate me.
The former Ft.Sherman in Panama is rife with NGO's who's focus is human migration and borderless advocacy, with a particular emphasis on crossing US borders.
Corsair, you may be interested in my writing at https://johnalucas6.substack.com/. I post an article about once a week so subscribing won’t flood your inbox. Hope to see you there.
Pete, you may be interested in my writing at https://johnalucas6.substack.com/. I post an article about once a week so subscribing won’t flood your inbox. Hope to see you there.
What bothers me most is the democrat elected officials in the southwestern states who put the party above the welfare of the citizens of their states. Mark Kelly being the most despicable.
Kelly used his military and NASA careers to hoodwink the electorate. He also drags Gabby's disability out as a deflection of his political activities. Just wait till Ruben Gallegos gets elected.
Mark Kelly is an execrable sellout like all of our political class. He has no "skin in the game" since he lives in a gated community. He won't deal with the dysfunction of the invasion of our southern border. He sold his soul for 30 pieces of silver, like all of the uniparty scum that inhabit Sodom and Gomorrah on the Potomac.
I've known guys who've worked the border support mission with the Guard. They're basically not allowed to perform any sort of interdiction and were stuck miles inland assisting other agencies and NGOs with processing the new arrivals. None were allowed to be armed at the border and stopping anyone entering, so from that point of view the mission really was a waste.
The separate Texas state mission may be another story, but I don't know any Texas NG guys.
Sal- You are partially right, but the General' is 100% correct stating the Guard's "time and effort would be better spent elsewhere."
just as the fire department's time and effort were wasted if they arrived at a blaze and were told to stay in their truck, don't charge hoses, and please don't interfere with the arsonists.
The failure is not the NG, but higher up, directly in the Oval Office, and the Department of Homeland Security which have opened the border, contrary to law.
We should have the NG on the border and their time and effort would be best spent with fixed bayonets behind the wall to repel invaders in the high traffic areas, and laying mines under interlocking fields of fire along the less used portions, with orders "They shall not pass."
A totally secure border and repelling invaders would also greatly diminish the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs, eliminate most of the terrorist sleeper cells flowing into our country, and reduce the economic disaster of supporting illegal immigrants, not to mention the direct cost of giving them phones, plane tickets and three hots and cots.
Our military forces can execute difficult missions, even the Guard and Reserves, but I am sure that many of them are infuriated at being used as Potemkin props or worse, operating welcome wagons and voter registration stands for criminals crossing the borders. It's not the fault of DHS or ICE boots on the ground either, it is the illegal orders flowing from their superiors telling them to let everyone in.
Hokanson and his fellow Guard general officers have sold out their states for federal dollars (this has accelerated since the Reagan years.) He can't be distracted with mere governors in his quest for new flag billets and staff for a "Space National Guard" and a cut of other federal missions. Particularly on the border issue, he will bend with the political wind in Washington. Like the politician Milley, he knows who butters his bread.
It has been decades, if ever, since Hokanson has been a drilling Guardsman who had to let his employer know that he had to work around his ARNG scheduled training. After all, he is a West Pointer. He can hardly lead a force of "citizen soldiers" by example. Those 'M-Day' soldiers are the true heroes and the true victims of rent-seeking generals.
The fentanyl crisis is a shadow war by the CCCP against the United States of America. It is modeled on the Opium War that Britain waged against them during the great reign of the British Empire. Our Chinese adversaries learned well. What better way to kill multiple birds with one stone - disrupt the border, redirect limited resources (fire, medical, LE, Border Patrol, etc) and kill over 100,000 Americans per year with impunity. Have no fear, the border is secure. We have the word of Diaper Joe and his Homeland Security Secretary that there is no problem.
Isn’t NG the only military force type capability than can (ahem legally) respond to a break-through at the border that were to involve a Hamas type attack augmented by those already organized across the SW? Given the times yes, NG needs to be sensitized and ready to support.
DHS had or is having some big recruiting event in Chantilly. I saw they are recruiting pilots for various acft and drones, so hopefully the General is (like DHS perhaps) covering down while imparting the party line in front of the cameras. Many natsec leaders are voicing more concern, finally. A lot of damage or rather risk is impossible to mitigate without much money and affecting freedoms. So discouraging…
"....more useful in the competition with (Red) China."
In May 2000 the Republican-controlled 106th CONgress handed their Traitor-in-Chief Bill Clinton, the Permanent Normal Trade Relations agreement giving the ChiComs unlimited access to the once-thriving USA market. Clinton gleefully signed off on it. In turn 24 years later FUSA has a trade deficit of trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars with Bill Clinton's beloved Peoples Republic of China. The traitors in CONgress conspiring with Bill Clinton, handed the ChiComs billions of American dollars to fund their "competition". Today, thanks to Clinton, CONgress and the indifference of the American people, FUSA no longer manufactures as the then "Arsenal of Democracy" once did. Our national sovereignty is long gone. We are simply a former, great nation beholding to the communists America once opposed.
American "competition" with the Chinese is no longer. We cannot compete with any nation on Mother Earth.
Just continue to bend over grabbing your ankles. Bill Clinton and his fellow communists in CONgress and the media put this former nation into it's death throes. Biden and his puppet master Barry Soetoro (aka Barak Hussein Obama) delivered the coup de grace eliminating our borders along with inviting and funding a foreign invasion of 10s of millions of enemy. The invasion ongoing for 3+ years.
Thank you for endearing my above rant. Your "competition" remark set me off.
Yes, we are probably behind due to the consensus expectation of China conforming to the West being wrong. I would suggest the competition has just begun and I think the training functions of the NG could be utilized in that competition. Cdr. Sal does us all a service in making these points and I provided the links to give some background.
And in 1989 President Bush worked hard to scrub the Tiananmen Square massacre from history, almost as hard as the CCP had to work to get the blood out off of the paving in Tiananmen Square. There are a LOT of shit-eaters and grifters to blame for this.
"President Bush was the first U.S. president to engage the People’s Republic of China subsequent to the events [notice how they phrase that] of the summer of 1989 and thus was the first U.S. leader after the normalization of bilateral relations in 1979 to manage a vastly more textured, complex, challenging and contentious relationship—in essence, the U.S.-China relationship in its contemporary form. President Bush’s extraordinarily wise, deft and steady handling of that 1989 crisis in U.S.-China relations—and indeed, his ability to give expression to American values without ever losing sight of American interests—paved the way for so many of the U.S.-China successes that followed his presidency."
The problem with your solution is simply, who in the politicized DoD is going to remove a Guard flag officer at NGB ? Mr. Austin ? The "commander-in-chief" ? Who himself, is part of the ruling cabal of traitors ensconced within the District of Criminals.
President Trump needed and asked CONgress for five billion dollars to complete his Mexican border wall. He was denied this inexpensive border asset to help secure what is left of CONUS. Yet, we can provide HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to secure the borders of Israel, Taiwan and most importantly using your TAX dollars defending the Ukraine from our once, Cold War nemesis the Soviet Union.
If what was once the United States has any real enemies, they are the American enemies DOMESTIC. Not the citizens of Vladimir Putin's 21st Century Russia !
But the media is telling us that UKR is winning and these weapons, along with last week's security agreement, are to secure peace with RUS quickly. Just don't look too deep into the talking points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7D_TliAuE
The NG that I have talked to say that it's incredibly demoralizing to be sent to the border. They aren't allowed to do anything, and the illegals very quickly figure out that they're scarecrows.
Justin, you may be interested in my writing at https://johnalucas6.substack.com/. I post an article about once a week so subscribing won’t flood your inbox. Hope to see you there.
"Army Training, Sir!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8-gyaN2Ydc
And: "94 Percent of All Confirmed Aliens in Department of Justice Custody Are Unlawfully Present"
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/departments-justice-and-homeland-security-release-data-incarcerated-aliens
Make more Reserve units combat arms, and the NG more support? Would that help?
Reserve Combat Arms mostly went away after the Cold War. I think it was mostly from lobbying to maintain the relative prestige of combat arms in the National Guard.
The NG has more political power behind it. I was familiar with one reserve combat formation in the 80s. The 100th Division Also exercised at Ft. Campbell while I was in the 30th Armored Brigade, which was part of the Tenn Army NG back in the 80s. The Army Reserve is now just support units.
The Army career field that both calculates unit mix and mix within the components (AA. NG, AR, RR) is called Force Management. I worked these issues both at the Center for Army Analysis and in the Army Ops world. The AR is structured with combat support (signal, engineer, MI, MP, and Chem), and combat service support (the logistics branches, plus AG, FI, Med, etc). At the end of the Vietnam war, the Army structured itself to be unable to sustain itself in sustained combat without calling up the reserves to insure that the Active Army deployment ensured POTUS had the political will and juice to call up the reserves.
The NG is a combat supplement to the AA. In the horse trading that goes on every 4 years called Total Army Analysis, the States generally have the same desires, that are driven by:
- state missions (floods, fires, riots, parades, etc)
- prestige functions
- high tech jobs
It varied from TAA to TAA, but the wish list was:
- Band
- Air Ambulances
- MPs
- combat engineers
- Infantry
- Aviation
- Armor
- Artillery
no
States have missions that lean toward combat units.
- fight fires with a hospital?
- deploy a quartermaster unit for riot control?
- send a finance unit to march in the parade?
any of the combat, engineer or MO units can do all three. Most CSS units can do none of the state missions
NG and RC are mired in admin minutiae and computer training
Very pertinent. This is what happens when the NGB becomes like the rest of the Pentagon and aligns itself with the current administration on political/domestic policy issues. Gosh, do you think those remarks might have precleared with DoD?
Correct. The problem is not General Hokanson but the administration which is committed to open borders.
Between the politicization of the uniformed services via buzzword bingo and CYA language, along with the 42 Defense Department advisory committees that SECDEF Austin suspended, its not a mystery why officers cycling through their various assignments are coming out as being...unfocused & partisan.
What’s not to like?
Open borders did wonders for the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Reserve and National Guard shouldn't have a seat at the JCS. The mission is to support the active component as decision makers. The head of the NGB thinks that because he's got a seat on the JCS, he's equal to the rest. The perceived status of being combat arms and fighting in the Big One as well as the Good Guys when disaster hits may be why they don't want the relatively dirty role performing border security.
Is the General’s comment a reflection of the mission that the Guard has been given near the border? Do they have a real military mission or are they just processing people? I am not aware of any government organization today that has been given the mission of stopping the invasion or the importation of illegal drugs. I wish I were wrong. If I am, please educate me.
On the contrary this administration in conjunction with NGOs is doing everything to encourage illegal immigration.
The former Ft.Sherman in Panama is rife with NGO's who's focus is human migration and borderless advocacy, with a particular emphasis on crossing US borders.
Corsair, you may be interested in my writing at https://johnalucas6.substack.com/. I post an article about once a week so subscribing won’t flood your inbox. Hope to see you there.
From everything I have seen, you are 100% correct. That is why I am not as critical of the general’s comments as is the esteemed Salamander.
Pete, you may be interested in my writing at https://johnalucas6.substack.com/. I post an article about once a week so subscribing won’t flood your inbox. Hope to see you there.
Perzackly. There's the answer to ""What adversary is allowing murderers, rapists, and gun runners prey on American citizens?"
What bothers me most is the democrat elected officials in the southwestern states who put the party above the welfare of the citizens of their states. Mark Kelly being the most despicable.
Kelly used his military and NASA careers to hoodwink the electorate. He also drags Gabby's disability out as a deflection of his political activities. Just wait till Ruben Gallegos gets elected.
Mark Kelly is an execrable sellout like all of our political class. He has no "skin in the game" since he lives in a gated community. He won't deal with the dysfunction of the invasion of our southern border. He sold his soul for 30 pieces of silver, like all of the uniparty scum that inhabit Sodom and Gomorrah on the Potomac.
I've known guys who've worked the border support mission with the Guard. They're basically not allowed to perform any sort of interdiction and were stuck miles inland assisting other agencies and NGOs with processing the new arrivals. None were allowed to be armed at the border and stopping anyone entering, so from that point of view the mission really was a waste.
The separate Texas state mission may be another story, but I don't know any Texas NG guys.
fair question
Both Army and Air National Guard are having recruiting issues along with their active duty counterparts.
https://www.ngaus.org/newsroom/recruiting-continues-be-challenging
The biggest threat to US security is not China or Russia, it's Mexico. Always has been.
Sal- You are partially right, but the General' is 100% correct stating the Guard's "time and effort would be better spent elsewhere."
just as the fire department's time and effort were wasted if they arrived at a blaze and were told to stay in their truck, don't charge hoses, and please don't interfere with the arsonists.
The failure is not the NG, but higher up, directly in the Oval Office, and the Department of Homeland Security which have opened the border, contrary to law.
We should have the NG on the border and their time and effort would be best spent with fixed bayonets behind the wall to repel invaders in the high traffic areas, and laying mines under interlocking fields of fire along the less used portions, with orders "They shall not pass."
A totally secure border and repelling invaders would also greatly diminish the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs, eliminate most of the terrorist sleeper cells flowing into our country, and reduce the economic disaster of supporting illegal immigrants, not to mention the direct cost of giving them phones, plane tickets and three hots and cots.
Our military forces can execute difficult missions, even the Guard and Reserves, but I am sure that many of them are infuriated at being used as Potemkin props or worse, operating welcome wagons and voter registration stands for criminals crossing the borders. It's not the fault of DHS or ICE boots on the ground either, it is the illegal orders flowing from their superiors telling them to let everyone in.
Concur except 1000 M2 with overlapping fields of fire might be better than bayonets
Right on, CDR.
Hokanson and his fellow Guard general officers have sold out their states for federal dollars (this has accelerated since the Reagan years.) He can't be distracted with mere governors in his quest for new flag billets and staff for a "Space National Guard" and a cut of other federal missions. Particularly on the border issue, he will bend with the political wind in Washington. Like the politician Milley, he knows who butters his bread.
It has been decades, if ever, since Hokanson has been a drilling Guardsman who had to let his employer know that he had to work around his ARNG scheduled training. After all, he is a West Pointer. He can hardly lead a force of "citizen soldiers" by example. Those 'M-Day' soldiers are the true heroes and the true victims of rent-seeking generals.
The fentanyl crisis is a shadow war by the CCCP against the United States of America. It is modeled on the Opium War that Britain waged against them during the great reign of the British Empire. Our Chinese adversaries learned well. What better way to kill multiple birds with one stone - disrupt the border, redirect limited resources (fire, medical, LE, Border Patrol, etc) and kill over 100,000 Americans per year with impunity. Have no fear, the border is secure. We have the word of Diaper Joe and his Homeland Security Secretary that there is no problem.
We often forget the Chinese have long [lllloonnngg] memories. This is likely more than a coincidence.
The Border should be militarized. The Border Patrol is not up to the task of halting the flood coming in.
There should be a five mile wide DMZ between the US & Mexico.
That last sentence is a zinger.
Isn’t NG the only military force type capability than can (ahem legally) respond to a break-through at the border that were to involve a Hamas type attack augmented by those already organized across the SW? Given the times yes, NG needs to be sensitized and ready to support.
DHS had or is having some big recruiting event in Chantilly. I saw they are recruiting pilots for various acft and drones, so hopefully the General is (like DHS perhaps) covering down while imparting the party line in front of the cameras. Many natsec leaders are voicing more concern, finally. A lot of damage or rather risk is impossible to mitigate without much money and affecting freedoms. So discouraging…
Supporting the community would be a good start to making the NG more useful in the competition with China:
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/expanding-our-deep-bench-possibilities-individual-ready-reserve
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/digging-ourselves-out-hole-some-thoughts-current-recruiting-crisis
https://www.army.mil/article/258753/investing_in_our_youth_army_develops_future_soldier_preparatory_course
And some philosophical guidance supporting a transition to population centric training and warfare:
https://smallwarsjournal.com/node/142014
https://mwi.usma.edu/getting-competition-wrong-the-us-militarys-looming-failure/
Mr. Dressler,
"....more useful in the competition with (Red) China."
In May 2000 the Republican-controlled 106th CONgress handed their Traitor-in-Chief Bill Clinton, the Permanent Normal Trade Relations agreement giving the ChiComs unlimited access to the once-thriving USA market. Clinton gleefully signed off on it. In turn 24 years later FUSA has a trade deficit of trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars with Bill Clinton's beloved Peoples Republic of China. The traitors in CONgress conspiring with Bill Clinton, handed the ChiComs billions of American dollars to fund their "competition". Today, thanks to Clinton, CONgress and the indifference of the American people, FUSA no longer manufactures as the then "Arsenal of Democracy" once did. Our national sovereignty is long gone. We are simply a former, great nation beholding to the communists America once opposed.
American "competition" with the Chinese is no longer. We cannot compete with any nation on Mother Earth.
Just continue to bend over grabbing your ankles. Bill Clinton and his fellow communists in CONgress and the media put this former nation into it's death throes. Biden and his puppet master Barry Soetoro (aka Barak Hussein Obama) delivered the coup de grace eliminating our borders along with inviting and funding a foreign invasion of 10s of millions of enemy. The invasion ongoing for 3+ years.
Thank you for endearing my above rant. Your "competition" remark set me off.
Yes, we are probably behind due to the consensus expectation of China conforming to the West being wrong. I would suggest the competition has just begun and I think the training functions of the NG could be utilized in that competition. Cdr. Sal does us all a service in making these points and I provided the links to give some background.
And in 1989 President Bush worked hard to scrub the Tiananmen Square massacre from history, almost as hard as the CCP had to work to get the blood out off of the paving in Tiananmen Square. There are a LOT of shit-eaters and grifters to blame for this.
Here's the official position of the Bush china Foundation. https://bushchinafoundation.org/u-s-china-legacy/
"President Bush was the first U.S. president to engage the People’s Republic of China subsequent to the events [notice how they phrase that] of the summer of 1989 and thus was the first U.S. leader after the normalization of bilateral relations in 1979 to manage a vastly more textured, complex, challenging and contentious relationship—in essence, the U.S.-China relationship in its contemporary form. President Bush’s extraordinarily wise, deft and steady handling of that 1989 crisis in U.S.-China relations—and indeed, his ability to give expression to American values without ever losing sight of American interests—paved the way for so many of the U.S.-China successes that followed his presidency."
I've always been of the mind Hill and Bill found themselves without masters when the CCCP fell, and cast about for new masters financially.
Only in the past 8 or 9 years have I realized we've only had one political party with two wings since at least 1988 as well
The Chinese bought us off the way the Chinese used to buy off border kingdoms and bandit chieftains in their imperial period. And it worked.
Fire him. Bring in the next in line. If the answer doesn't change, fire that one. Rinse and repeat until you start getting the right answer.
The problem with your solution is simply, who in the politicized DoD is going to remove a Guard flag officer at NGB ? Mr. Austin ? The "commander-in-chief" ? Who himself, is part of the ruling cabal of traitors ensconced within the District of Criminals.
President Trump needed and asked CONgress for five billion dollars to complete his Mexican border wall. He was denied this inexpensive border asset to help secure what is left of CONUS. Yet, we can provide HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to secure the borders of Israel, Taiwan and most importantly using your TAX dollars defending the Ukraine from our once, Cold War nemesis the Soviet Union.
If what was once the United States has any real enemies, they are the American enemies DOMESTIC. Not the citizens of Vladimir Putin's 21st Century Russia !
But the media is telling us that UKR is winning and these weapons, along with last week's security agreement, are to secure peace with RUS quickly. Just don't look too deep into the talking points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7D_TliAuE
First, the president can fire him. If he's regular army, the SecDef can, but of course they won't. I didn't way they would. I said they should.
The NG that I have talked to say that it's incredibly demoralizing to be sent to the border. They aren't allowed to do anything, and the illegals very quickly figure out that they're scarecrows.
Justin, you may be interested in my writing at https://johnalucas6.substack.com/. I post an article about once a week so subscribing won’t flood your inbox. Hope to see you there.