Towards a New National Guard
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (23) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
A lot of attention has been focused on the role of the National Guard in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The range of opinions has varied from the initial claim by the left that a lot of damage could have been mitigated if the Guardsmen in Iraq were still at home - a specious claim at best – to the allegation by an NOPD official that the Guard sat idly by while people died thus explaining why we are “losing” the war in Iraq.
Behind the mudfight in regards to Hurricane Katrina is a real issue that needs to be settled, what is, and what should be, the role of the National Guard?
Read on.
Background For The Interested
When the outside observer looks at people in green uniforms (I say “green” advisedly because the correct term is becoming pixelated) they tend to assume that they are all the same. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We have two military forces in the United States: a federal military composed of the active and reserve components responsive to the president, and a national guard that is responsive to state governors.
It is more than a cosmetic difference. The National Guard does its own recruiting, sets its own standards for enlisting and commissioning (within certain constraints), and the governor appoints the state Adjutant General, a two-star general who only has to have achieved the federal rank of lieutenant colonel in order to be promoted three grades higher.
The governor can ask for federal troops in the case of a natural disaster or to quell an insurrection, but the governor can direct the mobilization of the state Air and Army National Guard on a whim, if he’s willing to pay for it. National Guard troops, while on the state’s dime, can enforce laws, while federal troops cannot participate in law enforcement activities without incurring legal jeopardy:
“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
Section 1385 of Title 18, United States Code
The National Guard’s origins are firmly anchored in our British heritage, tracing its lineage by way of the colonial militia, the English militia and and fencibles to the 1511 Assizes during the reign of Henry VIII. In the past 30 years, however, substantial changes have taken place in the roles and missions taken on by the National Guard. Some of the changes were driven by necessity and some were driven by the lust for federal cash.
[As a note, the term “National Guard” here is used interchangeably with “militia” for ease of understanding. The term National Guard became standard with the establishment of the National Guard Bureau under the Militia Act of 1903 and mandatory under the National Defense Act of 1916.]
Before and after World War II the National Guard’s federal mission was very limited. It could be called out pursuant to a directive from a governor, like during the Homestead and Pullman Strikes, or called up in response to a very specific set of circumstances:
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
The Spanish-American War essentially killed the National Guard as it had been constituted. The Constitutional parameters for the use of the National Guard limit it to domestic use only. On the eve of the Spanish-American War the nation had about 100,000 men enrolled in state militias who could only be used within the United States and some 26,000 regular Army soldiers. To use the National Guard during that war the federal government enlisted National Guard units en masse into the US army.
The experiences of this war resulted in the Militia Act of 1903, which replaced the Uniform Militia Act of 1792, and the National Defense Act of 1916 which established the dual federal-state status of the National Guard. These acts infused substantial, in the view of the day, funds into the National Guard but at the same time they required the National Guard to adhere to federal rules in many areas.
Things seemed to work fairly well. The National Guard troops were used for both general warfare, as in World War I, and it was used as an expeditionary force in a our brief war against the Bolsheviks in 1919-1920 (as it turned out, a dress rehearsal for our failure to deal with Saddam Hussein in 1992). After teething problems, National Guard divisions more than pulled their weight in World War II. During the Korean War a total of six National Guard divisions were ordered into federal service, two of them, California’s 40th Infantry Division and Arizona’s 45th Infantry Division, served in combat.
How We Got Here
The Vietnam experience and the ending of the draft resulted in another change for the Guard. The regular army was capped at a strength of 785,000 and without recourse to an pool of draftees simply could not meet its alliance obligations to NATO and Korea. This led to the Total Force Policy of 1973.This policy accomplished two purposes. First, it created on paper a sufficient number of Army divisions to satisfy its treaty obligations. Secondly, the Army was determined to prevent another Vietnam experience and restructured itself to make waging a war impossible without the activation of significant numbers of National Guardsmen and Army Reservists.
The paper army was created through the chimera of “round-out” brigades. An infantry or armored division traditionally has three maneuver brigades. Under the round-out system one of the three maneuver brigades, plus its “support slice” (an artillery battalion, an aviation company, an engineer battalion, etc) belonged to the National Guard (with one exception, the Army Reserve’s 205th Infantry Brigade which was partnered with the now-deactivated 6th Infantry Division). This allowed the Army to expand from 13 divisions in 1973 to 18 divisions in 1989 while maintaining a constant strength of 785,000.
At the same time, most of the Army’s logistics capability was moved into the Army Reserve. The result was an Army that could neither move nor fight without a significant mobilization of Guard and Reserve units.
So far, so good. A completely valid case can be made that it is good in a democracy that the Army can’t go to war without the political leadership sharing some of the heat. But the decision of what type of unit to place in the Reserve or Guard is proving to be less than inspired.
What It All Means
Logic tells you that the Guard is going to have many more opportunities for deployment as a state force than as a federal force. When the governor calls the guard out, he will much more likely need engineers (construction, water purification, etc.), military police, transportation, and medical personnel than infantry or armor. But logic also tells you that combat units are going to receive a much higher priority for resources from the Army than will combat support units.
The political clout of the State Adjutants General (TAGs) overwhelmed the Army. While the Army is forbidden to lobby congress, TAGs have no such restriction and they have direct access to their state congressional delegations. As it was obvious to even the most casual observer that the money to be made in being part of the Total Force was in having combat units, the TAGs, not being dummies, were able to have combat forces moved into the National Guard and combat support forces moved into the Army Reserve.
The first cracks in the system appeared during the Gulf War. The signs had been there for a while. If your division had a round-out brigade you had your share of horror stories on the unreadiness of those units. The Gulf War required the deployment of divisions who needed round-out brigades to bring them up to full strength: 24th Infantry Division (now reflagged to 3d Infantry Division) with Georgia’s 48th Infantry Brigade and 1st Cavalry Division with Mississippi’s 155th Armored Brigade. In the event, 24th Infantry Division was rounded out by the regular Army’s 197th Infantry Brigade and 1st Cavalry deployed with only two brigades.
Without airing a lot of dirty laundry the best that can be said was that the National Guard roundout brigades, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan, wanted to be lumberjacks but couldn’t handle their end of the log.
It was showtime for the Total Force and it failed to show.
A reasonable person might have come to the abrupt conclusion that this system was unworkable. But a reasonable person would have been wrong. In a monument to throwing good money after bad, the force structure cuts after 1991 resulted in the National Guard being included in contingency planning.
The official Army history describes the situation:
The new strategy outlined by the Department of the Army in late 1991 looked toward a reduced, four-corps force by 1995 commanding 12 active and 6 reserve component divisions along with 2 cadre divisions. Army divisions abroad would be limited to 2 Active Army heavy divisions in Europe and 2 Active Army divisions in the Pacific — 1 heavy, 1 light. From its 780,000 peak in the late 1980s, Active Army strength would be reduced to 535,000 in 1995, with equivalent reserve component reductions.
In reality, by the end of FY1995 the Army was reduced to 508,000 bottoming out at 479,000 in FY1999.
This meant that in theory the National Guard units in those plans had to be ready to deploy in a period of hours to only a few days and they had to do so while being reduced from approximately 457,000 troops in 1989 to 373,000 in 1996.
As my friend Doug Hanson notes in The National Guard and homeland security:
But [Rumsfeld] has also had to deal with a total force whose active component was cut too severely in the 90s. Defense planners had no choice but to include National Guard units in contingency mission force packages that were traditionally composed of active duty forces. The planners knew that these were missions the Guard would be hard-pressed to accomplish without an undue amount of preparation and training.
Indeed, the ever omniscient Government Accountability Office, or however they’re styling themselves this week, reported in 1996:
Although the Guard has come down in size, our analysis shows that the combat forces may still be too large for projected war requirements. The Guard’s combat structure, with 42 combat brigades, exceeds projected requirements for two major regional conflicts, according to war planners and DOD and Army studies. According to DOD documents and Army officials, the excess forces are a strategic reserve that could be assigned missions such as occupational forces once an enemy has been deterred and as rotational forces. However, we could find no analytical basis for this level of strategic reserve.
Breaking the Guard
In Iraq, Army National Guard brigades and divisions have served gallantly. But the constant and large scale deployment of National Guard units beginning with our Great Balkan Adventure™ and culminating in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the Iraq War have taken a toll.
National Guard recruiting was always heavily dependent on two markets: recently discharged soldiers who wished to affiliate with the National Guard and people who were attracted by the extra paycheck. In this market they have to compete with the Air National Guard, and Army, Navy, and Marine Corps Reserves. Those two markets have been devastated by the combination of skyrocketing reenlistment rates in the regular Army as the regular Army adds 30,000 spaces, and the reality that most National Guard units can look forward to overseas deployments.
The result is doing nothing short of breaking the National Guard as we know it because the paradigm for which its current iteration was structure had vanished by 1990 and the political implications of restructuring it were too high for the stakeholders -- DoD, governors, TAGs, state congressional delegations -- to contemplate.
Towards the Future
We need to relook the mission of the National Guard. While the National Guard could conceivably have been all-things-to-all-people in the past, those days are gone. The sophistication of the equipment used by combat brigades has reached a stage where it is difficult, if not impossible, to master it in “one-weekend-a-month, two-weeks-in-the-summer.”
Perhaps the combat force structure should be moved to the Army reserve and the National Guard be assigned units that are more closely aligned to the disaster relief/civil disturbance operations.
Perhaps Heritage Foundation is correct and the National Guard should be viewed as the ground component of Northern Command and it should not be called upon to fight conventional wars.
Perhaps the Army Reserve and Air Force Reserve should be abolished to reduce the competition the Army and Air National Guard faces for enlistments as well as eliminating the overhead associated with those two organizations.
Regardless of the path chosen, the National Guard, as we know it, cannot survive in this environment and neither should it.
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Towards a New National Guard 23 Comments (0 topical, 23 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Perhaps this is self-interest speaking, but if we intend to create a reserve force of any stripe that should fully expect to be mobilized repeatedly, we need to up the ante on compensation to attract and retain higher caliber reserve soldiers.
You'll get no disagreement with me. My question is do we really want or need a reserve force that will be mobilized repeatedly. I have come to the conclusion that that model isn't sustainable.
Streiff, I have detected a bit of disdain for the National Guard from you before. This is an army-wide problem, and quite frankly, if you expect the Guard to behave as "real" soldiers do, you have to treat us as such, and not second-class soldiers. Yeah, we're not as trained as the full-time guys, but that doesn't necessarily mean the desire is not there, and the army doesn't do enough to integrate the force during peacetime to maintain good relationships.
Perhaps some, but I did give you and your homies props for how you're doing in Iraq. Desire is fine, but when you're on the sharp end of the bayonet performance is what counts. The idea that the National Guard can deploy at the same time and with the same capability as their regular counterparts is ludicrous. Were that the case then we should move 100% of the regular Army into the Guard and save a lot of money.
It is patently unfair to the Guard to saddle them with a mission that is implausible (quick mobilization and deployment in support of contingency plans) and it is patently unfair to the nation to perpetuate the fiction that they can do this.
It is my understanding that the reason why the Reserves are focused on logistics and support is because the active army divisions at peacetime strength focus much more on the tooth than the tail, and that the Reserves can be called up to fill out those functions for deployment. If you change the Reserves into a combat force, either the active army will have to contain more support soldiers, or the Guard will have to undertake that role, which means the Guard will still need to mobilize with the active army and get up to speed quickly.
I think it is a false dichotomy. As I state, the logical force structure for the Guard is combat support and combat service support. There is no need to change the combat nature of the regular force based on which reserve component has which force structure.
From a mobilization standpoint calling up the Guard is little different than calling up the Reserves.
In my mind the penalty for not getting up to speed as a forklift driver is markedly lower than that assessed on an infantryman.
You will also note that I am not advocating combat structure in the Army Reserve.
I might point out that in North Carolina, the National Guard is NOT interchangeable with the Militia. Here, in NC, we have a state militia which is not a part of the Guard, or Reserves. It is wholly independent of Federal control and under the authority of the Governor of the state.
"Longstreet"
It is unrealistic to expect the same degree of finely honed competency from part-time soldiers, at least in the early stages of mobilization and deployment. So long as we can assess this as a fault of the system and not some intrinsic failure within the membership of the Guard, I'm on the same page with you. Your comments about state-set standards and your somewhat higher estimation of the Reserves was what prompted my response on that subject.
My solution would be to expand the active-duty force in light of the probable extended committments and higher chances of more wars in the next decades. Reconfigure the Guard for homeland defense, leave the reserves as the support arm. Move the combat burden back to the "professionals." Stop trying to fight war on the cheap.
Or are you talking about this bunch?
There is a Virginia Militia, too, but it is composed only of the professors at VMI.
We both know, don't we, that the various "militias' today aren't really militias?
the impression Your comments about state-set standards and your somewhat higher estimation of the Reserves was what prompted my response on that subject I apologize.
I don't believe that to be the case. The Guard does set its own standards but that doesn't imply that I think that makes them qualitatively inferior. Far from it.
But I am a big fan of the National Guard, or certainly at least the intended concept.
Perhaps the answer is to have two layers of National Guard. One would be the deployable personnel, the ones responsive to the President and Congress in times of war or other need overseas, or any federally-directed deployment domestically (but still belonging to the state governors' National Guard proper). The second layer would be, akin to the "militias" some states retain, responsive pretty much exclusively to governors, deployed to handle natural and man-made disasters and other rescue/security missions. Maybe such a plan doesn't necessarily require more personnel, just a more defined division of duties.
Just a thought. Probably a bit out-there and idealistic, but a thought nonetheless.
It's hard to see how this works from a recruiting standpoint. It seems to me that you end up with the echelons of the National Guard competing against themselves for the same pool of applicants.
Streiff: First, great article and a great topic that is long overdue for frank discussion (so we can forget about elected officials having it, right?). FTR, I'm a former member (CO XO) of a CT ARNG unit that was originally (in the early, early plans) supposed to go to Saudi in 1990 (as round-out for the 130th EN BDE). Long story short, your comment:
It was showtime for the Total Force and it failed to show.
is unfortunately quite accurate in our case. However, what may not be as clear is that the system seemed designed for failure from day one.
Let me explain: we of course had the same split responsibilities as every other NG unit, but because we were a combat engineer battalion we had some unique equipment (such as chainsaws and earthmovers) that made us pretty attractive to the state executive, particularly during snow emergencies. We would on average have our troops for about 39-days per year (that's right folks, thirty-nine!) and of that, roughly 1/3 of that (or 13-days) would be tied-up with assorted ash-and-trash state duties while another 2-3 would be committed to inspections, inventories, and assorted misc. administrative activities.
Those of us who were/are reservists and guardsmen are already painfully familiar with all of this, of course.
Given that, it is ludicrous to expect that we should be able to get our troops (146 per company) to any reasonable level of proficiency on even basic soldier skills (shooting, moving, communicating, first aid, fitness, etc.) with the remaining 24-25 days of training available (completely ignoring such things as muster and travel), to say nothing of the tasks that were on our METL (such unimportant and completely safe task as those involving explosives and AP/AT mines), but that is precisely the situation we were in.
Given that, it is no small wonder that the 1st Army evaluators laughed their brains out when they paid us a surprise visit in October 1990 - seeing whether or not we were actually deployable.
So, you raise interesting points and even hint at possible solution. My solution is probably wildly unrealistic - and that is to beef-up the active duty force to at least the 20-divisions we had for Gulf War I and bring back the state militias (opposed to the assorted brainiacs out in the woods playing cowboys and indians in the hope they get to take on the big, bad feds someday) and tell the states simply, 'we won't mobilize them, but we ain't gonna pay for them anymore, either.'
That way, broken-down, overweight old farts like me who would be a liability in anything remotely resembling real combat, but who could still provide basic emergency services in the case of local emergencies (think snow emergencies, again) could have the opportunity to serve while the younger folks would have more opportunities (and hopefully better pay, benefits, etc.) in the active or reserve federal service.
Not gonna happen, though.
Cheers.
is that we need to have a domestic force that can never be deployed away from our home soil. We need a dedicated force with their own equipment to stay and protect us from nature, terrorist aftermath and other boogiemen.
While is appears that the LA guard numbers were fine to help, it appears that they were missing some equipment that was deployed overseas that may have helped.
LA National Guard Wants Equipment to Come Back From Iraq
Yunji de Nies
August 1, 2005, 9:07 PM CDT
JACKSON BARRACKS -- When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem.
"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," said Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider with the LA National Guard.
Col. Schneider says the state has enough equipment to get by, and if Louisiana were to get hit by a major hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have all agreed to help.
"As Governor Bush did for Ivan, after they were hit so many times, he just maxed all of his resources out, he reached out to Louisiana and we sent 200 national guardsmen to help support in recovery efforts," Col. Schneider said.
Members of the Houma-based 256th Infantry will be returning in October, but it could be much longer before the rest of their equipment comes home.
"You've got combatant commanders over there who need it they say they need it, they don't want to lose what they have, and we certainly understand that it's a matter it's a matter of us educating that combatant commander, we need it back here as well," Col. Schneider said.
And even if commanders in Iraq release the equipment, getting it home takes months.
"It's just the process of identifying which equipment we're bringing home, bringing it down to Kuwait, loading it on ships or aircraft however we're gonna get it back here and then either railing it in or trucking it in, so we're talking a significant amount of time before that equipment is back home," Schneider said.
Copyright © 2005, WGNO
that this guy is just Chicken Little. Most of the equipment belonging to the LANG remained in state with the Engineer Brigade. The 256th Mechanized Brigade has maybe 5 generators, about 4 tank & pump units, 8 bulldozers, and a handful of Humvees.
The fact is that the primary mission for which a National Guard mechanized infantry brigade is equipped with federal dollars is national defense and the idea that their equipment should not accompany them into combat strikes me as rather bizarre. YMMV
I don't think this issue is that they should not deploy overseas without their equipment, it is that the gear that could help out at home is taken with them-- it is dual use--combat and disaster related.
My cousin in the MONG has commented that they are currently short equipment that could be used to help, too (their state-based, non-fed gear). It is keeping track of and maintaining the gear that if often times the challenge.
what "state gear" they own. Their MTOE (modified Table of Organization and Equipment) gear may be dual use in some cases but its primary use is for their combat mission.
The unit also has TDA (Table of Distribution and Allowances) equipment, maybe the "state gear" you mention, that is not supposed to go overseas. However, the equipment this LTC mentions is not found on a TDA.
But all of this is beside the point. The fact is that the 256th Brigade had a minimal amount of useful equipment and the unit that was still at home had lots and lots of useful equipment which may or may not have been used. Even had the equipment been useful, the soldiers deployed to combat have a priority on using that equipment.
I appreciate the thorough and thoughtful analysis you have done for this piece--please forward your ideas to the appropriate feds!
malitia is this link for North Carolina:
http://www.ncstateguard.org
I can't tell that there is any state sanctioning of this unit. It certainly isn't much to look at, based on the website.
Here's a similar one from Texas, that does have sanctioning from the state:
http://www.agd.state.tx.us/stateguard/
Its not really armed (that I've seen), but I've seen them around helping in disasters around the state.
Streiff, this is the best explanation I have read concerning the relationship between the Army and the National Guard. You've evidently done your research on the matter, unlike many commentators and would-be pundits out there.
You run a tight ship with commentators too, demanding high standards of debate. (Have you been a debate instructor in the past?)
Unfortunately, few teachers today seem willing to instruct their students in forensic skills because they're more concerned with "promoting student self-esteem" than teaching their students how to think logically and debate effectively from research and well-constructed argument. In lieu of requiring rigorous thinking, they are all too willing to let their students assemble a hodgepodge of cant and prejudice rooted in feelings and deference to the zeitgeist.
Sorry for the digression.
You have made a compelling case for the need for change. I only hope that whatever improvements in the structure of our defense forces end up being implemented on the basis that this is the best for the needs of our country, rather than out of a desire to assemble a military on the cheap or out of infatuation with new gadgets. Our brave men and women serving in our armed forces and National Guard deserve no less than the best.
the Guard can't go on like this. If I read this right (excellent piece btw), the major factor in the "breaking of the Guard" is the reduced size of the regular military.
Since as a nation we seem to be constantly involved in expensive military actions, shouldn't we face up to the need for a larger military? Peace dividend my foot. The problem, as I see it, doesn't so much stem from the Guard's inability to do the job. It's the Army's need, as ordered by one President after another, to call on the Guard for constant interational deployments.
Shouldn't we be expanding the size & reach of our ground forces, since they're so obviously overstressed, as evidenced in Iraq? (meaning, the way they have to call on the Guard for such a large part of the effort).
Getting political here: President Bush finances the Iraq War off the budget, with (I forget the correct term) extra budget bills not included in the regular Pentagon budget. His use of these off budget bills is unprecedented. The same with his extended use of the Guard. It seems fundamentally dishonest to scrape the bottom of our existing barrel -- it seems like a transparent attempt to underplay the financial, human, and institutional costs of the Iraq policy.
Tell me where I'm wrong here (as if I need to ask).
The whole idea of the so-called 'peace dividend' at the end of the Cold War was just so much nonsense. Sure, in theory we could stand down large parts of the nuclear strike force, but nuclear weapons are cheap compared to troops and all the functions necessary to support them, even out of combat.
But hey, with the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the Soviet Union what do we need an Army (Navy, Air Force, pick one) for? Afterall, we'd never be engaged in significant conflicts again, right? The only problem with this is that US forces have been engaged in more combat since the end of the Cold War than at any time since Vietnam.
Peace Dividend? Nonsense.
Re: The whole idea of the so-called 'peace dividend' at the end of the Cold War was just so much nonsense.
In theory at least it wasn't nonsense. We had defeated the last enemies with a military of sufficient size to actually threaten us. We could have withdrawn to a Fortress America and spent only what we needed to insure the inviolability of our borders and the freedom of the sea lanes for trade. However we decided (under Clinton by the way) to continue playing the role world hegemon, which created the need for a larger military than we would need just for our own interests. Problem is we failed to fund (or staff) that larger military adequetely.
The president has tried to fight the war in Iraq on the cheap and the military (both active and reserve components) are suffering for it. We need a larger active army and the Administration needs to admit it. Many people are on their second and even third tours. My father-in-law was career Marine Corps from 1955--1978 and did two tours in Vietnam three years apart. That was a pretty typical. Unless you volunteered for additional tours you didn't do more than two or three tours in Vietnam. We are making huge demands on a very few people.
Now in New Orleans we have members of 1st Cav providing disaster relief. They just got back from Iraq and I think they are scheduled to go back in January. The president needs to reactivate a couple division and make a direct plea to the young people of this country to join the military. Maybe even get his daughters to sign up for OCS.
While I agree with your overall premise that the role of the National Guard needs to be re-evaluated, I disagree with some of your conclusions. Perhaps this is self-interest speaking, but if we intend to create a reserve force of any stripe that should fully expect to be mobilized repeatedly, we need to up the ante on compensation to attract and retain higher caliber reserve soldiers. Things like providing health and retirement after 20 years of service, rather than at retirement age, would help. As it stands now, the incentives to join continue to increase, the incentives to stay are limited primarily to one-time bonuses that attract the mercenary more than the responsible.
Streiff, I have detected a bit of disdain for the National Guard from you before. This is an army-wide problem, and quite frankly, if you expect the Guard to behave as "real" soldiers do, you have to treat us as such, and not second-class soldiers. Yeah, we're not as trained as the full-time guys, but that doesn't necessarily mean the desire is not there, and the army doesn't do enough to integrate the force during peacetime to maintain good relationships.
It is my understanding that the reason why the Reserves are focused on logistics and support is because the active army divisions at peacetime strength focus much more on the tooth than the tail, and that the Reserves can be called up to fill out those functions for deployment. If you change the Reserves into a combat force, either the active army will have to contain more support soldiers, or the Guard will have to undertake that role, which means the Guard will still need to mobilize with the active army and get up to speed quickly. Plus, you still face the dilemma of placing part-time soldiers in combat situations using systems which are difficult to master and maintain proficiency with during the short time spent in uniform.
There was a proposal at one point to dedicate certain Guard units in each state for an exclusively homeland security mission, but I belief that was vetoed by the Pentagon for fear of cutting too deeply into the reserve combat pool. I'm sure you're familiar with the Unit of Action concept that the army is moving toward, buffing up brigades with more support and independence, moving the focus of maneuver from division level to brigade. This may help the Guard by forcing more subordinate units and ancillary tasks under one command before mobilization - Guard units can only succeed at their missions because of the close-knit, long-term relationships built by working with the same people for years. The active duty force moves soldiers around as replacable parts because they have the luxury of time to constantly train. The Guard does not, and must rely on an experience and espirit de corps to overcome obvious obstacles to combat readiness. Thus sticking branch liasons and beefing up the support structure for Guard combat brigades may lend some of that cohesiveness to deployed units.
Anyway, kind of rambled here, but the bottom line is the old paradigm is not working and it's always good to see someone pondering the future instead of just griping about the Nasty Girls.