The National Guard cannot go back to the days of the strategic reserve, the chief of the National Guard Bureau told conferees in Rochester, Minn., on Aug. 9.
"We must maintain the level of efficiency and effectiveness that has been achieved today," said Gen. Craig R. McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, who spoke at the 38th annual conference of the Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States (EANGUS).
"We can't be relegated to obsolete and incompatible equipment like we were during the Cold War," he said. "We have proven that that old way of doing business does not work in today's environment."
McKinley added that the Guard cannot return to a model of one weekend a month and two weeks a year.
"In an era of persistent conflict, we need a predictable rotational model and we must maintain proficiency and interoperability with the rest of the force," he said. "We must modernize at a proportional rate to the active component."
This period in history is exactly what the Guard and reserve were built for, McKinley said. "We are shock absorbers in an all-volunteer force that allows us to go to this level of tempo."
How long can the Guard remain an operational force? McKinley said he asks the same question: "If resourced with the personnel and equipment to maintain readiness, can we maintain this optempo indefinitely, including floods, fires and hurricanes that we support for our governors? So far, I am hearing the answer is, 'Yes.'"
McKinley said the Guard proves this by enlisting high-quality recruits.
He said the better question is: What do we want to be when the war stops? "Even though the Guard, properly resourced could sustain the optempo, our nation cannot afford to do so," he said.
Even during steady state, the Guard will continue to have persistent requirements, McKinley said. For example, the Air National Guard flies the vast majority of air sovereignty alert missions, and "we are going to be challenged here in the near future as we retire our aging fleet."
The Chief said persistent conflict and constrained resources will be with us for the foreseeable future.
"While I recognize this to be true, I fear our leaders may eventually become worn down in the fight for resources and lower our expectations for our Airmen and Soldiers," McKinley said. "I fully expect you to continue to push enlisted issues up, so they are prioritized appropriately."
About 85 percent of the Guard force is enlisted, and "central to the way I approach every issue as the chief of the National Guard Bureau, is how decisions we make affect you, the backbone of our services," McKinley said.
Ellen Krenke (NGB)
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