Posted on 09/16/2016 5:28:09 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Before citizen-soldiers of the 48th Infantry Brigade deployed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Georgia National Guard troops spent months training away from their families and day jobs as they prepared for war. Now a shrinking Army wants them able to get ready for combat sooner.
The brigade’s 4,200 soldiers are the first of 13 National Guard and Army Reserve units nationwide chosen to test a new role that pairs them with commanders on active-duty who will oversee their training.
The Pentagon hopes the change will make the Guard and Reserve troops better prepared to fight overseas at a time when the Army has roughly 100,000 fewer full-time soldiers than it did at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
This is nothing new. It's been done before, multiple times.
What they are doing is giving the AD component more training control and approval authority.
Great plan until, say, Katrina hits...
Also keeps a lot of folks out of the reserves.
yes I know your employer is supposed to allow you to go, but realistically, unless you have a government position, being deployed for a month~6 weeks of training every other or third year instead of a predictable 2 week AT means that very few critical positions can be held by reservists. Which means you do not advance in your civilian job, even if they keep a position for you.
The plan is also to train two 3 day weekends per month plus a 30 day annual training period. What’s really up here is active duty wants to break the National Guard. They floated this same plan in the 80s.
Resume the draft.
No No No. Just put the military bases in swing states. Next have them TRAIN for warfare 20 hours a week and pay them for 40. Last, let them work in retail 20-30 hours to make an extra buck-deployable on a moments notice. Stateside all I remember is make-work jobs on the base. Total waste of manpower. Cleaned a lot of toilets too.
Break the Guard. That might be the end result, whether or not it is deliberate. If we want a full time military, pay them or conscript them or both. We’ve had good conscripted military operations before.
Wow, if they want that kind of commitment I do not see how they will keep anyone but unemployed guys. Not many wives will be too keen on hubby being away 6 days a month plus 30 days in summer. That is 96 days of service a year, with the training schools necessary to advance likely being on top of that (PLDC, BNCOC, etc). Right now it is about 36 days a year, with the weekend drills being a lot more like 1.5 day drills, Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon. The family sees something of Dad even on a drill weekend, at least Sunday dinner.
Now to the employer that is 44 days of lost time (2 x 11 months +22 days for 1 active month). In addition to that you have to add your vacation (15 days), sick time (5 days) plus holidays (9 to 10). That is almost 15 weeks out of the year lost. No way a vital employee could be gone that much.
It also means the young chaps with a just a few years of work experience will have to drop out as well, unless they have government jobs or are unemployed.
Totally unrealistic.
You must have been in during Nixon/Ford/Carter. During the Reagan era it seemed we were in the field all the time.
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