I am well aware of the National Guard and it’s federal Call ups. I was in it for about 12 years. Joined it after I was discharged. They are Army yes, but they go by NGAR’s. It was confusing getting NGR’s that were ARs with alterations. It just wasn’t the Army to me so I left and did the next 16 years in the USAR which was like being back in the regular army. The State Guard, if I recall correctly, is a Unit that was there to cover the Guard Buildings while the Unit was away. Its an Honorary type unit, a volunteer force without pay. They get to wear their uniforms, even though some couldn’t pass AR 600-9 requirements. They wear state brass, not the “US” one you see on an officer’s lapel. I was on a FTX one year and they were doing one too. They used the radios like you would expect in a Hollywood movie. “Red Dog, this is Able Fox” “Roger Wilco Over and Out”. Lets just say they were entertaining. When I was in the Guard, the 4 Company CO’s in my Bn., were recent vets who decided to join the Hobby Army, as we referred to the NG, who at the time, was attended by those who didn’t want to go into the real Army. I left in the late 70’s so I guess times have changed since my guard years. I do know that they aren’t as large as they were, and many of the Divisions are gone, and what was left of their units, have been combined with other state NG Commands.
“I am well aware of the National Guard and it’s federal Call ups.”
Unfortunately, your experience is not representative of all of the Army National Guard and especially not the Air National Guard. I understand where you are coming from, because in my own experience I am very much aware of National Guard units where a person would have an experience similar to yours. I also served in the Seventies, and my experience while in the Air National Guard with TDY assignments to units in every sort of Air Force, Army, and their Reserves branches gave me opportunities to see situations quite different from what you experienced.
The cliché of the National Guard units is a bunch of locals who treat the National Guard unit as their local club with little actual expertise in the military sciences. Granted there are circumstances in which this cliché was recognized to a lesser or greater degree. However, I have strong doubts that such a cliché is applicable to the majority of Army National Guard units, and the cliché is certainly not applicable to your typical Air National Guard unit. Assuming it is applicable to all of the Guard units is a disrespectful and grave disservice to many of their men and women. For example:
The Air Force conducted the William Tell Aerial Gunnery Competition. Time and again the active duty Air Force units, their commanders, and their command staff would come into the competition with the expectation the performance of the Air National Guard squadrons were going to be a joke in comparison to their own squadrons. Time and again they were defeated by the Air National Guard units they had been bad mouthing so badly. What too many of these active duty people failed to see or respect was the advantage the typical Air National Guard unit possessed with respect to their many years of greater experience. Your typical Air National Guard unit had pilots who already logged more flight hours in the active duty Air Force before separation and commissioning in the Air National Guard than their competitors in the active duty Air Force. The same was true of the ground crews and combat support units. The Air National Guard units typically had officers and enlisted men with more years of service in their military occupation than their younger active duty counterparts. Another advantage was a broader level of experience and maturity derived from their age and civilian occupational experiences.
Another common misconception is the Guardsman’s experience being necessarily apart and unhelpfully different from the typical experience of the active duty counterparts. I spent nearly all of my ANG ACDUTRA (Active Duty for Training) hours on active duty Air Force and Army bases performing the duties of my active duty counterparts, complete with the identical duties and required certifications. The principal difference was my obligation to meet and surpass all of the very same professional proficiency requirements in only a small fraction of the time available to my active duty counterparts.
Note also, I was always subject to the orders of the POTUS while I was performing those duties on those Federal reservations, despite the fact my ANG unit was NOT called up and commissioned into active duty. In fact, I was once shown a copy of the report which detailed how I was to be reassigned from my ANG unit to another active duty Air Force unit in the event my ANG unit was Federalized and placed on active duty in an emergency. So, even during the time period in which you served, there were many of us in the Guard who were more experienced on active duty than our active duty counterparts, were equally or even more proficient than our active duty counterparts, and in many cases were fully integrated on TDY inside our active duty counterpart units and missions. In some cases our participation in the active duty units was somewhat similar to that of an Air Force Reserves individual augmentee.
“The State Guard, if I recall correctly, is a Unit that was there to cover the Guard Buildings while the Unit was away.”
My ANG unit was activated and assigned to a mission at Ft. Polk, Louisiana in 1940. After their departure for active duty, their ANG base was occupied by a U.S. Navy Reserve squadron until the end of the war, and my ANG unit returned to its former ANG base. There have been many other occasions in which a state provided for a State Defense Force whose duties in part include maintenance of the ANG ARNG bases. But the maintenance of the Guard bases is often far from being their only or most important duty and purpose.