WASHINGTON – The Army National Guard is adapting manning and force structure to the National Defense Strategy, the head of the Army National Guard said.
Army Lt. Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, director of the Army National Guard, said the Army National Guard met its end strength and recruiting numbers over the past year, thanks to recruiters and leaders at every level.
Because of the nature of the National Guard -- with forces in all 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia -- it is challenging. Recruiters brought in more than 39,000 new Army Guard Soldiers this year, with 335,500 the end strength, he said. "It's one of those things you can never take your eye off," he added in an interview Oct. 2.
The majority of Guard Soldiers come in off the street, he said, with others transferring after active duty service, but there is no overriding reason young men and women join the National Guard. Many come for the educational benefits, others join for the training, while many come in to serve their country and their communities, Hokanson said. "There is no generic answer," he said.
In certain communities -- for example, in hurricane-prone states -- members of the Guard are viewed as a supplement to the community's emergency services. Guard members are on the streets protecting fellow citizens and helping them recover.
And Hokanson said that's what they want. "That's what they signed up for," he said. "They are an integral part of the community, and the community expects that support. To them, they see it as a chance to make a difference."
While the domestic mission is important, that is not why the National Guard exists, Hokanson said. It's a warfighting organization with service members serving alongside active-duty personnel and partner nations.
"We exist because of our wartime mission," the general said. "It just so happens because we are trained to fight a war that we have the training, the personnel and the leaders that can respond to virtually anything. A disaster to them is, 'We are just doing another mission set.'"
The Army National Guard has 27,700 Soldiers activated now, with roughly 20,000 deployed overseas. "When I look at the 20,000 deployed overseas, I see there are 20,000 getting ready to go and 20,000 who have just gotten back, so we are really talking about 60,000, which is still just about one-fifth of our force," the general said.
He noted that in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the Army Guard had roughly 80,000 Soldiers deployed overseas. A crisis like Katrina was an all-hands-on-deck effort, the general said. He later added that 40,000 Army National Guard members were on duty in the affected area within days of the hurricane making landfall.
They could see the difference they were making in the lives of their countrymen. "Our Soldiers love to do that," Hokanson said. "That's what keeps a lot of them in uniform."
Given the end-strength today, that level is not sustainable, he said, but it can be done for short periods. The Guard must find the balance so Soldiers can have civilian careers, Guard careers and family time, he noted. Hokanson said he has asked leaders at all levels to work with their Soldiers to identify where the friction is.
"Soldiers come in with the expectation that they will deploy at some point," he said, "and working up to that deployment will take more than one weekend a month." Still, he added, the Guard is approaching the 1-to-5 dwell time ratio, with some high-demand capabilities at about a 1-to-1 ratio. The dwell time ratio quantifies time spent at home station compared to time spent on deployments.
And once the units deploy, Hokanson said, they must be able to operate with service members from the other services, components and allies.
Hokanson, a pilot, said he remembers when active-duty pilots were flying Apache helicopters, reservists were learning on Cobras and Guard members were flying old Huey gunships. "Now, the move is to modernize the Army as a whole, not just the active component," he said.
"The Army has to be deployable. It has to be sustainable. We've got to be interoperable," the general said. "Whatever legacy equipment we have has to be able to talk to newer equipment and operate with new formations."
The Guard is changing to bring more teeth to the National Defense Strategy, Hokanson said, and is in the process of realigning eight full National Guard divisions for the Army.
"What we are getting back to is those large-scale formations -- not just for capability, but deterrence," he said. "With eight new Guard divisions, you could create two additional corps in the service. It helps the Army with capabilities, and it helps the Guard."
The Guard also has to operate in a new warfighting domain: cyberspace. Hokanson said the United States is already at war online, and the Guard has formed units to defend the country and the states from internet threats. And these Citizen-Soldiers provide a unique capability to the armed forces and the country, he added, noting that one unit in Washington state is made up of people who work at Microsoft.
"Go to the parking lot, and there are some really nice cars on a drill weekend," Hokanson said. "They [join the Army National Guard] because they can do stuff on the military side that they can't do in their civilian jobs. They bring the knowledge and skillset and the abilities that are unmatched."
In August, the governors of Louisiana and Texas called up the Guard to combat a large-scale ransomware attack. The Guard was instrumental in blunting the attack and getting school children back in classes. They also worked with law enforcement and local governments to free their computers.
These National Guard cyber response teams will be extremely valuable, Hokanson said. "We really want service members who complete their active duty enlistments in any service and who have computer skills to think about joining the National Guard," the general said.
Hokanson said he wants to make it easier for Soldiers to transfer among the Army components. "We want to facilitate people continuing the spectrum of service, and if they are getting out, I want to encourage them to reach out to the National Guard," he said.
"We have a lot of community-based forces, and we rely on those people who want to serve and be part of the community," he added. "Anybody in uniform who wants to continue to serve, we would love to have them. We have opportunities in every ZIP code in the United States."