Normally I have a pretty good grip on military maneuvers and tactics but this time I need a tad bit of help from some other military minds. Recently, a National Guard unit from Alabama was sent to uh....no....not Louisiana nor some other stateside catastrophe but to Afghanistan! What in Ulysses S. Grants whiskey bottle are we doing sending NG's to a foreign country instead of RA's??? I could understand it if we had a full blown action going overseas and our active military and reserves were depleted but what the heck are we using the National Guard for overseas shoot em' up bang bangs when there's really not that much going on over there? What would happen if we had a major crisis here? Call in the regular Army I guess. There has to be a reason for it but danged if I can find anything on it or figure it out myself.
@Bobby Cole Perhaps to avoid repercussions due to having violated yet another "promise" to the American People? As a non-military trained individual, I wonder about the degree of training given to, and enforcement of highly rigid military methods are employed, in the case of Guardsmen? Ooops! "Guardspeople"
I sincerely doubt if "lady" guardsmen worry about that particular designation but "soldierette" might raise an eyebrow or two. Dunno @Frank Sanoica, the national guard, like the reserves go through the same basic training and the same specialized courses after basic as the regulars do. As a matter of fact, a large portion of the NG and Reserves is comprised of 4 year plus regular military soldiers who have gotten out of active service. For a moment I thought that maybe it was the specialized training such as avionics, medical, mess, etc they might be sending but I remembered having a conversation with my step daughter and she told me that all of the aircraft maintenance people were civilian. With that information in hand, my belief is that there are many normal military operations being done by civilians so why start sending NG's? Again....dunno.
http://federalnewsradio.com/army/2016/02/army-wants-guard-reserve-deployments-2017/ Excellent article on the use of Guard and Reserve units to supplement active duty Army deployments. During the height of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts, we were seeing 15 to 18 month deployments of Army units. They would be back home for no longer than 6 months and deployed again. Current deployment/home ratio is 1/1.6. The Army would like to see it get to 1/2... 1 year deployed and then 2 years home. Deployments wear on Army family units and on the soldiers themselves. When signing up, they understand they will be deployed. Yet, 1 year away from family is tough and if we could get to the 2 year home ratio perhaps it would make things more bearable. Depending on the mission, if NG or Reserve units are embedded with active duty Army they should do well in any conflict zone. After our son's first 15 month deployment to Iraq some years ago, he wanted to go right back. He was with the 82nd Airborne, one of the elite fighting units of the World. A regular Army infantry unit replaced his unit and they had already taken casualties before our son's unit could fly home. He said watching folks walking across the camps you could tell whether they were NG/Reserve, regular Army, or Airborne/Ranger. The different levels of training was evident in just how the soldiers carried themselves. Federal budget issues have found military budgets become political fodder. Recent cuts in military strength see the Army unable to adequately staff the many areas we are committed in the World. So, they do use some NG/Reserve units to properly staff and, hopefully, better protect all involved in the missions. Our son is currently deployed with the 5th Special Forces Group. He's been on a rotation of 6 months deployed/6 months home. That is wearing on his family when they barely get acclimated back to family life and then are deployed again. He is a highly decorated soldier, prepared to complete his career in the Army. However, with the often repeated deployments, he is actually beginning to talk about separation back to civilian life due to his wife and their three sons. It's not an easy life. We are so blessed that the ones who do enlist in our active duty military or NG/Reserve units are there to protect our freedom and liberty. When they enlist, whether active duty or NG/Reserve, they know the opportunity is there to be deployed fairly often. As far as local/state crisis involvement, I don't believe any deployment involves a large percent of any single State's NG. Here, if a unit from our State is deployed and we have a natural disaster, there are dozens of other NG units ready to respond.
Excellent observations @Will Lawrence! The recent wars are quite different than the one (Vietnam) I was used to. Granted, back then we had the draft so maybe that's why I do not believe I ever met an NG overseas. We did, however, have a few RE's serving in the medical field and from what I understand a lot of them volunteered for Vietnam duty. There are a lot of changes it seems for where we live, the Redstone Arsenal is right across the street from us and there are only about a thousand soldiers but over 40,000 civilians on the post. I guess somebody must know what they are doing so .........................? The best observation you made was concerning the 82nd Abn Div. of which, I was a very, very proud member and also proud that your son is a brother AA or All American! I know it will be hard for him to leave such a spirited and well trained group of soldiers. The division as a whole did not go to Vietnam but a few of us were attached to different companies throughout the south. For me, it was the 195th assault helicopter co. and not to strangely I was the only Airborne soldier in the entire company and the only thing that kept me half sane was the AA patch on my shoulder and wings on my chest. They always reminded me that I had a family.
@Bobby Cole thanks for your service!! Our son loves to jump out of perfectly good airplanes and run marathons. He was extremely proud of the time he spent with the 82nd. We have an 82nd Airborne... AA... flag we often fly along side our U.S. flag. He went from Ft. Bragg to the Pentagon for 3 years as an NCO. They begged him to take another 3-year assigned in D.C. Both he and his wife hated the traffic, high costs, etc. and he wanted to "go back to being a soldier". He seems to enjoy his work with the 5th Special Forces Group out of Ft. Campbell. And, his wife and boys have been really happy there... except for his repeated deployments. We have no idea where he is with this deployment. Didn't know on the last one until he returned home. He's supposed to be back in October. We live right next door to Ft. Riley. Have seen with our own eyes the damage caused by the long and multiple deployments. Sad to see some of the young men and women return with minds so damaged they will never fully heal. But... wasn't it General Sherman who is quoted, "War is Hell!"
Maybe because I am one of those persons with a tin foil hat. I would wonder if they had a uprising or revolution for some reason and the national guard was out of the way they could bring in troupes from another country to help the poor US and they probably don’t speak English.
Roughly 1.3 million active duty military in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. Right now, there are a little over 300,000 stationed and deployed outside the U.S. That leaves around 1 million in the U.S. at any one time. Many are clerical, medical, non-combat troops. Yet, all have had some basic combat training and all could be mobilized to civil uprisings. All have access to military weaponry if needed. Add to that ~1 million here in the U.S. the National Guard and Reservists available to the Country. Any and all of these are available to be called up and mobilized to anywhere in the U.S. for support in a natural disaster to assisting in quelling civil uprising. Many of those stationed overseas are "retrievable" on fairly short notice. Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea... Planes could be in the air in a very short time, full of full of combat ready troops to reinforce any units in action within our borders. Any foreign nation of any size knows well our troop strength and where they are. A mobilized invasion would be suicide. As any Country began moving troops by sea or air towards our shores, we would be retaliating in strength on not only their troop carriers but on their homeland. The biggest worry to the safety of the U.S. is nuclear war. What could happen at any point would be for domestic terrorists... uninformed citizens motivated by anti-government rhetoric... mounting some sort of militia situation. That would be quelled quickly, but there would undoubtedly be a loss of life to those who participated is such an exercise.
I think you might have missed understood my meaning the US government bringing in UN troupes to assist in a upraising of the US citizens. It happened on 911 when the government sent their planes out of the country to do training/exercise and had no planes available to stop the terrorists. There might be an uprising if they find that the election is a scam. I said I have a tin foil hat.
Lest we should forget, if all else fails there are approx. 20 Million veterans in the U.S. who, I am sure, would be more than willing to fight (if health permits) if anything serious broke out. And if that isn't enough, the population of the U.S. is around 350 million and there are 3 times that amount of registered weapons in the hands of mostly law abiding American citizens. Other than the gimme terrorist activities, Civilians and veterans (I do separate the two) who hold weapons is probably the greatest reason no other country has tried to breach our shores. True, nuclear action is definitely our greatest concern especially coming from Iran and N. Korea and of course in suit cases coming from ISIS financed terrorists. But, other than that our shores are pretty much covered militarily or even in the hands of civilians. Even if some enemy combatants did breach our southern or south eastern shores, they wouldn't get too far inland around Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia because of all the illegal stills operating. Good shots all, those good ol' boys do not cotton to Anyone messing around with their ability to make some shine!!
Ya might want to check the ingredients on that box of tin foil. I'm sure it's really aluminum and it's a known fact that aluminum foil hats do not work. It's got to be tin!!