My son is a newbie CA Guard recruit who trained in a different location & deploys shortly. His concerns?
1 - Many of his fellow Guardmen are my age. He's concerned that they are out of shape and doing little to correct it. He says they spend more time trying to avoid work than doing it, and complaining the entire time. He's concerned his back will be covered by guys who have spent much of their time complaining instead of preparing.
2 - Leadership. The enlisted don't trust the senior officers. I tried to explain why the officers may have a different perspective than the junior enlisted, but I'm worried when senior NCOs are either unwilling or incapable of bridging the gap. He says morale sucks.
3 - Training & equipment. Says when some of the women failed to qualify in shooting, they were given more bullets until their scores were high enoough to pass, rather than being pulled / trained / retested. He says the equipment is improving, but substandard to what the active duty has.
Overall - from his perspective, a volunteer to go to Iraq who is too new to the military to know what to expect - he's worried that his equipment is substandard & his fellow soldiers haven't transitioned from the civilian world to active duty.
Bottom line: When his sister (USMC) deployed, she trusted her fellow Marines. As he nears deployment, he doesn't trust his fellow soldiers. That is a bad thing, whatever the root cause.
In the long run, the national guard needs to change: better training, move older guys to admin jobs out of the combat arms..have their 2 weeks training more relevent to current world situations......recruit more people....
I share your sons concerns, sounds like he's got it pegged. All boils down to leadership, and some guard units are deficient.