ARLINGTON, Va. - An investment in the National Guard is a great value for America, and we must sustain America’s Guard as a ready, reliable and accessible operational force.
These are some of the statements that Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, made about the Guard in the 2012 National Guard Posture Statement released this week.
“As members of an operational force, regularly used by the president and state governors, the Soldiers and Airmen of the National Guard contribute daily to our nation’s overseas and domestic security objectives,” he wrote.
“On average, 63,000 Guardmembers are either deployed or mobilized at any given time for federal missions,” McKinley stated, “and about 5,800 are activated for domestic missions.”
McKinley said since the National Guard Bureau became a joint activity of the Department of Defense, it has been forging ahead to develop its dual-mission capabilities and develop interagency relationships to help facilitate domestic responses.
McKinley outlined the three major areas that the NGB is working on to improve the Guard’s domestic response priorities.
These areas include enhancing Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosive response capabilities, establishing a Homeland Response Force in each FEMA region and improving the command and control capabilities of the State Joint Force Headquarters.
The National Guard is also supporting domestic missions, such as those along the Southwest border, the Guard’s Counterdrug Program and more recently, Operation Deepwater Horizon.
Specifically for the Air Guard, Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry “Bud” Wyatt, chief of the Air Guard, said the Reserve component is in the process of continuing to define its role in domestic missions.
“Many are unaware of the contributions and skills our Guard Airmen provide [most of which] are unique core capabilities that the Air Guard is trained and equipped for.”
These missions include air defense, air traffic control, aerial firefighting, airlift coordination, urban search and rescue and specialized medical care, Wyatt said.
Wyatt added that homeland defense, “will remain our top priority. We expect this to remain a steady state mission for the Air Guard, and we will be engaged constantly in protecting America, at home and abroad.”
The National Guard is also fully engaged in operations overseas, McKinley noted.
“As of September 30, 2010, the Guard has mobilized about 650,000 Soldiers and Airmen in support of overseas operations since the attacks of September 11,” McKinley said. “In many cases, these men and women have mobilized for combat multiple times.”
He said that though many Americans are aware of the Guard presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, many are not aware that the, “vast majority of forces in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are also National Guardmembers.”
Global engagement through the State Partnership Program is another National Guard core competency, said McKinley. “Since the end of the Cold War, the National Guard has established enduring and mutually beneficial relationships between states and more than 60 foreign nations.”
According to the statement, building relationships is the primary goal of the SPP, partnerships that improve regional security, stability and prosperity.
Created in 1933, the SPP has helped the U.S. European, African, Southern, Pacific and Central Commands engage the defense and military establishments of countries in every region of the globe.
Another program unique to the Guard is the Afghanistan Agribusiness Development Program, which provides training and advice in an effort to stabilize and improve opportunities for the country’s re-emerging agribusiness realm, McKinley said.
“Thanks to this program, Afghanistan reports declines in poppy production and increases in harvests of apples, grapes, cherries, almonds, wheat, corn, alfalfa, pomegranates and saffron,” he said.
In 2010, the Guard was also engaged in large-scale global efforts such as Haiti earthquake relief, deploying about 7,100 Guardmembers, and the Pakistan flood relief efforts, deploying about 5,000.
With such a broad mission-set across the entire National Guard, Army Maj. Gen. Raymond Carpenter, chief of the Army Guard, said people are the Guard’s most precious resource.
“The quality of the Citizen-Soldiers of the Army National Guard is unprecedented,” Carpenter wrote. “However, we are experiencing a troubling increase in the incidence of suicides.”
Although Carpenter said that there is no one contributing factor to the suicide spike, innovative programs have emerged in several states, including California, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada and Wisconsin, to support and deepen Soldier resiliency.
“Today and in the future, the National Guard will continue to simultaneously defend the nation’s interests overseas, support the homeland and serve as an indispensible and cost-effective military option for the United States,” McKinley wrote.