National Guard Emergency Readiness in Summer 2026 Media Roundtable

Media Roundtable Transcript

Julie Lemay - National Guard Bureau: Okay, thank you everyone for joining us. Welcome to today's media round table for National Guard Emergency Readiness in summer 2026. I'm Julie LeMay, Chief of Media Operations for the National Guard Bureau, and I am moderating today's discussion. Some quick housekeeping, this is being recorded and a video and a transcript will be shared online along with the spelling of everyone's names. After introductions and brief statements from our participants, I will go through the list of media attendees giving everyone an opportunity to ask one question and one follow- up. To our reporters, please keep your mics muted when not speaking, and please introduce yourself and your media outlet when asking your questions. So here we are for an on-the-record discussion regarding National Guard readiness and domestic operations related to severe weather preparedness and response, specifically wildfires and hurricanes, and special to this season, World Cup support across the country. Please focus any questions or comments on these topics. With that said, today we have Major General Wynn Burkett, Director of Operations here at the National Guard Bureau. We also have Colonel Blake Heidelberg, Director of Joint Military Operations for the State of Florida. From Texas, we have Mr. Greg Whiting, Deputy J3 and CW5 Rick Dillenbeck, State Army Aviation Office. Next we have Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Siemendal, Public Affairs Director from Washington State. And from North Carolina, Public Affairs Director, Lieutenant Colonel Ellis Parks. With all that said, Major General Burkett, over to you, sir.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett - Director of Operations, NGB: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your continued interest in what the National Guard does and how we support our communities. It's amazing to me that I did this a year ago with many of you or your agencies, and this last year has completely flown by. It's a big advantage for me at the National Guard Bureau, is the Director of Operations for NGB. To witness all of the great things that we do across the 54 and how our National Guard continues to earn that reputation that we're always ready and always there. So we're 435,000 across every community. We take great pride in our ability to support our local, state and regional partners in maintaining safe and secure in our homeland, whether we're doing law enforcement operations or we're responding to a natural disaster or preparing for defense in the next war fight. We're very proud of what we do in our contributions as we talk about the preparedness for this year's storm season, fire season, storms, floodings, and hurricanes. All of that preparation started as soon as we concluded response operations from last year. And we'll apply those lessons learned, the things that we need to sustain, things that we need improve, how that process informs our exercises, informs how we update our operating procedures and, as importantly, how we prepare our formations. I'm really glad that I'm accompanied today for your questions by Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington State, because these gentlemen represent the tip of the spear across the 54. It is their organizations, it's the leadership of their adjutant generals that work at that local level. Where those partnerships have been forged across the state, emergency managers, and the wonderful professionals that pick up our law enforcement and emergency management across the 54. So I think I can speak on behalf of all of them, at least for this next comment. We look forward to your questions.

Julie Lemay - Thank you, Colonel Heidelberg.

Col. Blake Heidelberg – Director of Joint Military Operations, Florida National Guard

:Yes, ma'am, good morning. And again, and echoing Major General Burkett's comments, thank you for the interest in this opportunity. It's a big time opportunity for us. And really I stand on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us. And I'm humbled by the

team that we have together and Florida's plays a small part in that. Currently, we've got about 2,800 soldiers and airmen that are deployed overseas supporting the federal mission. And then we've almost 700 soldiers and Airmen supporting civil support operations across the state of Florida, whether that's the World Cup, ICE support, the Border Patrol. And then, we got about 250 packs currently up in DC supporting the Make DC Safe and Beautiful mission. So, while we're spread out, we're still prepared. In Florida, you're either in hurricane season or preparing for hurricane season. And we spent the entire season from last year. Now to this season preparing for hurricane season and we've done all of our typical training but we've had some unique instances with the world cup it's created some challenges for us and actually some great training opportunities so while we're supporting that that allowed us to work with our partners both state and federal bring them all into state do several tabletop exercises so while we have a lot of soldiers engaged and out of the country i feel like we're more prepared than typically with the training the expertise and the readiness that we have across state so. Florida prides itself on being right ready and relevant, but really we just get a lot of reps and sets So it's uh, we get a lotta support from ngb our federal partners It's a whole of government approach and that's really what makes us successful I wish I could say it was all us but it's truly a team effort and we're just a small part of it And I look forward to answering any of your questions

Julie Lemay: Thank you. Thank you over to Texas. Mr. Whiting.

Mr. Greg Whiting – Deputy Director, J3, Texas National Guard: Hi, it's Greg Whiting with the Texas National Guard. I have two main roles pertinent to this meeting. I am a small UAS program manager. So we have been primarily focused on border security with our drone program for the last four years, but it has really helped our partnerships with Texas DPS, state, local, and federal partners in preparation for hurricane season. My other role is I manage the Texas Air Operations Center, which manages all the disaster aerial response for the state of Texas. And each year we prepare with two large exercises. Chief Dillon-Mack can speak to the SAR-EX, it's a large search and rescue exercise, and an AREX. And each years it gets bigger and bigger. This year we had over 500 participants with 87 aircraft. So we go out and we practice with the people that we are going to be responding with, our state, local, and federal partners in preparation for storm season, and of which the drones, the small UAS are a large part of that, bringing that technology to be able to help people.

Julie Lemay: Great. Thank you. And Chief Dillenbeck, back over to you.

CW5 Rick Dillenbeck - State Army Aviation Office, Texas National Guard: Hey, good morning, everyone. Chief Dillenbeck here from Texas. My role in as far as this is working in the AOC as the SAR director, basically, which runs all the helicopters during a huge event. Big note, the Kerrville flood of last year, we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of that. And our wonderful media team from Texas is putting the dividends together. So I'm glad to answer any of y'all's questions, as far as preparedness and training and all that that we do, but yes, Texas is a big, big state. And so we rely on all of our state and local agencies to come together, as Mr. Whiting said, regarding the SAR-X, which is a huge event. We do every year. We just had our last one here in May. Our next one's gonna be in April, where we bring state, local, federal agencies together. And we also had some out-of-state participants as well. That brought their helicopters and whatnot. It's a lot of collaboration between the different agencies and build upon the lessons learned from the previous events and we get better and better at these training through the SAR-X and ARE-X to get better throughout the season. And of course, we like to do our

SAR-x and AREX prior to the summer season when we have a lot of the hurricanes, floods and whatnot. But glad to be here. Thank you.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Hey, if I just pull a thread here real quick, Julie, sorry to interrupt you. So as Rick mentioned, the SAREx are search and rescue exercises that they do in Texas. That's another great example of how we leverage lessons learned, but it's from mission partners across the United States. Other states have phenomenal programs and the communication and cross communication makes everybody's programs better.

Thanks, Rick.

Julie Lemay: Thank you, everyone. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Siemendal.

Lt. Col. Joseph Siemandel – Public Affairs Director, Washington National Guard: Hey, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. So in Washington, we are always preparing for wildfires. That is kind of the standard every summer. Really since 2014, the Guard has been an active participant in that. About 4,500 Guardsmen have done wildfire support to our Washington Department of Natural Resources in some way, shape, or form. Other that's whether it's on the ground, in the air, or just supporting the fight. Internally with our own folks working at our EOC here on Camp Murray. In Washington last year, we've had flooding, massive flooding up in northwestern Washington, which was pretty devastating. We had a lot of levees break this year. And then in the spring, we had an interesting incident in Longview, Washington. Many of you probably know about the incident that of 11 people at the chemical plant. That actually had parts of our homeland response force decontamination and fatality search and recovery out supporting those those local first responders trying to bring some closure to the families. Very devastating event but you know it's it's what our guys trained for it was very similar to what we experienced in Oso in 2014. With all of that happening World Cup has been on our minds Seattle is a host city we actually have a game tomorrow it's Iran and Egypt it's Kind of the big one we're all watching. Our 10th civil support team has been very engaged, though, with World Cup. They have it's very standard practice. They already do it for every Seattle Seahawk home game. They do sweeps around the stadium for air monitoring, any kind of chemicals that might be in the air. So it's no different than what they already are doing there with Seattle Fire and Rescue and just monitoring the situation here. We have elements of our homeland response force ready to go if needed, but really, it is kind of practice as usual here in Washington with how we operate. All that said, we have 200 guardsmen ready to go for wildfire season again this year. All of our aviation folks have already trained and are ready. We're monitoring the situation. There are a number of small fires in Washington. Usually July 1 is kind of our kickoff date. So happy to answer any questions when we get to we get to the questions part and thanks Julie.

Julie Lemay: Thank you very much. And next we have Lieutenant Colonel Ellis Parks from North Carolina. Thank you.

Lt. Col. Ellis Parks - Public Affairs Director, North Carolina National Guard: So I will echo what Major General Burkett said. Thank you so very much for giving us the opportunity to tell our story. And thank you for helping us amplify that story through you guys' channels. I am a little off a little bit because when you guys said hurricanes, I thought we were talking about the Stanley Cup and us bringing it home this year. So Julie, I will catch up eventually, but we're still celebrating that. I will pull out of memory, I guess, our events that we have from Hurricane Helene, but the North Carolina National Guard is like 10,000 soldiers strong and airmen strong. And we are right now about, we're in nine different countries, including our work, about 150 on the border mission. And then we're

supporting same coming in multiple ways, including air guard. Um When it comes down to our work, what we're looking for is our work with our EM partners and how we're working with those EM partners. I think that you'll hear a lot of that in this conversation today. We talked about it a little bit already with our search and rescue, but our Hilo and aquatic rescue teams here are constantly on standby waiting. We know during the hurricane season that will escalate. Those numbers will inflate because... North Carolinians just love getting out there in the rain. That's kind of like why we named our hockey team the Hurricanes. But then at the same time, we're here for those communities and building those relationships. And I think that that's one of the things that we have as an advantage as a national guard. And then also, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't say something, it was already stated a little bit about our cyber team and how our cyberteam is now integrating into the different municipalities across North Carolina and assisting. And making sure that those bad actors are not taking advantage of our domestic responses when we're most vulnerable. So we are constantly going back and forth with our communications and our work with cyber and looking at our misinformation, disinformation and how we can get ahead and just tell the story prior to before it actually gets out there in the bad actor's hands. So once again, to all the media teams that's out there, we're here for your questions. We appreciate you guys helping us amplify who we are as a Guardsman. And I turn it back over to you, Julie. Thank you.

Julie Lemay: Thank you so much. At this time, I will be opening it up for questions. I do have a list of attendees, so I will be calling on each of you in no particular order. Please be sure to identify yourself and your media agency before you ask your question.

Reporter: Question for our Florida National Guard. I was just wondering if you could speak a bit to, you know, if there is a hurricane that requires, you know increased response with other events going on. Basically, are you able to move members back to the state?

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett:. I'll take the initial stab at that, and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues. But Karina there's always something else going on. And so part of our preparedness in addition to the exercises is that we hold conferences, domestic operations conferences, emergency Management Assistant Compact Conferences. With the states to look at as we forecast our capabilities for the upcoming season, what other operational known operational requirements do we have? It could be things that are supporting here in CONUS, but it could also be, as has already been mentioned, our support for the warfight. So we'll look at those capabilities and I'll just take a couple. What aviation assets you still have remaining in the States. Where you think you have vulnerabilities, and then you talk to your neighboring states to see where they could potentially provide support to you. And then outside of your neighbors, in case they're also impacted, where you could get that support if you need it. But there really is always something going on. Advantage I think that a hurricane provides, at least early on, is you can see it coming. And so where we've got states that are supporting Puerto Rico is providing tremendous support right now to a surge that we have in DC for the Freedom 250 celebrations. And we are in hurricane season, at least on the Atlantic, everything has been. Pretty mild, other than Tropical Storm author that came along the Gulf Coast. It's been relatively calm, but if we see something coming in, then we can certainly make an assessment, talk to the adjutants generals within that state to see if we need to return their personnel to them, and then how we would make up for that in the mission within D.C. So we've got a lot of capability across the 54. And we'll watch these things closely, but I would say that it's our prudent planning throughout the year that best enables us to get in front of what we think could be

competing operational demands. And I'll just turn it over to my other mission partners if I've missed something.

Lt. Col. Ellis Parks: So this is Lieutenant Crone Parks, North Carolina National Guard. And sir, excellent point. You'll hear the terminology EMAC, which is your Emergency Management Assistant Compact. And what that does is when we say compact, we're talking about the different states around your area that are there to assist. So for us, we have 15 states supporting us and Hurricane Helene. And, you know, on our eastern half of North Carolina, especially the southeast half of it, We're ready and prepared to respond to hurricanes because we get hit with them so often. But we saw it was a little different in Western North Carolina. The last time that we were hitting Western North Carolina with that type of hurricane or any type of storm like that was in 1918. But what we did see was our states that were bordering that part of North Carolina respond very quickly. They stood up there. We had Chinooks coming from Connecticut. We had 101st our active duty side came coming down a second was pulled in from the active side over a thousand soldiers across the board so yes we're able to flex and pull some of those individuals that's you know supporting on the federal side if need be but we have enough within the states that we don't normally have to pull anybody back in i hope that answers the question I'm sorry.

Reporter:Yep, thank you.

Reporter: Okay, NPR. Hey, it's Kat Lonsdorf over at NPR. Sorry, I joined a little bit late, so apologies if this is something that was already talked about, but I guess I'm just wondering if anyone can talk about what, if any, strain this extended deployment in DC is putting on resources. I mean, there's almost 800 guard from Georgia here in DC right now. There's 230 from Florida There are 700 from South Carolina and these are rotating through and it's been almost a year. I've heard from people that there are, you know, this is putting a strain on training exercises and that kind of thing to stay ready. Um, is that something that you all are experiencing and could you talk to that a little bit?

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Kat, good morning. I'm Wim Burkett, and I'm the operations director for NGB. I'll take the initial attempt at answering your question. So when we were given this mission in August last year, Secretary Hegstedt made it a point for us to come back to him where we thought or that we were currently. Negatively impacting readiness or where we anticipated where we could negatively impact readiness. And so, we're watching this very, very closely. I am not tracking any concerns either from the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard in terms of an inability to prepare trained, ready, competent soldiers across our entire mission spectrum. So, I don't agree that we've had a negative readiness impact. What I think is seen, and to your point, we've got 4,700 soldiers that are supporting in D.C. Today. We've got missions in support of ICE. We've Memphis Safe and Beautiful and New Orleans Safe and beautiful. We've ongoing operations on the southwest border. But these... And these can also be seen as readiness builders because we're giving, as our formations respond, Blake mentioned this earlier, we get sets and reps. And actually getting out of your motor pools and getting out your armories and the benefit that that provides to our small unit leaders is immeasurable. That's where they have additional opportunities to build trust, to build cohesion within their formations. And those sets and reps are very valuable, not just to enhance our capabilities in the homeland, but that's the same trust and cohesiveness that we rely on when we're deployed abroad. So we will continue to monitor that very closely, but I have not seen a negative impact to date, but we are very busy. And then I'll turn it over to my colleagues for any illuminating comments, please.

Col. Blake Heidelberg: General and ma'am, it's a great question and obviously readiness is one of our core foundations that we're always concerned about and I agree with the general in the sense that it's actually helping us. If you look our soldiers and airmen that we are sending up, they're administratively ready. We're going through processes to make sure that all their administrative work is done. They're getting additional training before we send them up so they're qualifying on their weapon. They're doing our National Guard Response Force training so they are all level two qualified and then you get that that individual reps and sets like the general set. So in the big picture, I think it's helping our readiness. And then we're trying to use volunteers that are in their ready year. So units and volunteers that are in their Ready Year, that's who's rotating up so that they're getting those quote unquote deployment in their Red Year. So it's kind of working their cycle and we're rotating those units through. So as they come out of their deployment, they reset, refit, and then they're ready for the next evil civil support operation or deployment. So in long-term, I I think it'll help us in our readiness. For my sixth grade level. But the experts won't tell us eventually.

Reporter: Thank you so much for doing this. Kat kind of asked my question, but I just wanted to zero in on it. And you mentioned that these missions, like prolonged missions, whether it's a DC mission or the border mission, they're kind of readiness builders. Could you elaborate on that?

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Yes, ma'am, I talked about the small unit leader because I had the opportunity this past weekend to walk around D.C. And I'm just so enamored at the quality of the young men and women that just continue to make up our formation. They're fit, they are motivated, they understand their mission, and they're completely plugged in. But to Blake's point, I mean, this... This gives us an opportunity to, at a higher level, maybe more strategic level, to exercise our command and control systems, our coordination across states, our planning teams, the way we maintain a common operational picture, a common awareness, situational awareness. It gives us sets and reps at every echelon across all of what we refer to as our warfighting functions, whether it's command and control, maneuver, sustainment, all of these things come into play and we get opportunities through our responses, whether it is at the small local level or it's at a larger national level. Every set in rep gives us an opportunity to learn, gives us opportunity to make adjustments within our operating procedures. And I truly, after doing this amazingly for 40 years, it just keeps getting better. And the people that I'm doing it with keep getting better I hope that answers your question.

Reporter: What kind of feedback the NGB is getting from the soldiers and airmen on the ground in D.C. In regard to how they feel the mission is going? How is morale there? And, sorry, sir, there is a little caveat there. The same question for Southwest border. So go ahead and address DC.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Yeah, Matthew, thank you for working through the comms issues and putting your question into chat. So, you know, like I said, I was out there last weekend and I don't get many opportunities in my current job to get out there, but weekends and holidays are good opportunities for me. In August, when this mission stood up, just like any new environment that you come into, a new mission. There's some fog and friction that you have to work through. As you understand your mission, you bring people in, you initially give them the rules within the environment, the rules for the use of force, making sure that they understand their left and right limits. Who is it that we work for, what that chain of command is in that communications process? And then from my office here in the Pentagon, watching that come together, we currently have 19 states that are actively

supporting this mission. It's really impressive to see how we can take advantage of the things that we're doing well and sustain those, and then quickly adapt and change those things We, we. We need to improve on. And I think a good example of that is we've, initially we, all of our service members stayed in hotels and the DC National Guard and their logistics teams were having to look out even further to make sure that we got the people in safe locations in the right kind of lodging. We had transportation to move back and forth. And then after we were in this mission for about six months, it's like, hey, this has now been extended through January of 29. What efficiencies can we build into the processes that we have now? And the team has shifted to apartments. And so when I was out this weekend and I was asking the soldiers about their living accommodations, I was really happy to hear that there's no complaints. So, you ask specifically about morale, but they are very pleased and they can see how responsive and receptive their leadership is to meeting their needs. I did not, and I won't, to be quite honest. I won t hear people that complain. They're not going to give that to me, but you know when you're asking the right questions and people are very sincere about. Hey, I knew about this mission. I'd heard about it from friends of mine. They were on the mission. This is a great opportunity for me to complete courses at night. This is great opportunity for me to save money. This is the great opportunity to proactively spend my summer break before I go back to school. So there's really some good news stories that come out in terms of morale. But I... I've not seen anything that would indicate to me that we're heading in the wrong direction.

Julie Lemay: Thank you for that. Oh, I'm sorry. The follow up regarding Southwest border. I think it was or yes, Lieutenant Colonel Parks.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: All right, so I had the opportunity, and I'll turn this over to Colonel Parks and to my colleagues in Texas. I had to opportunity to be part of the Operation Lone Star mission a couple of years ago, and got to tour all of the locations that we had guardsmen. I was very proud of my time on the border and what I witnessed in terms of making incremental improvements to how we communicated. How we communicated with our mission partners, who the people that were there to support, the effectiveness of our contributions to that overall mission set, but just quality of life on the border. Working through and resolving pay issues, working through and resolving lodging or accommodation issues. It's matured a lot since then, so I'd love to hear what the current impressions are along the border, but there's more. States involved. This administration has brought in other National Guard and federal partners. Our support on the southwest border now includes direct support to CBP. So I think we're finding some greater efficiencies in what we do. But I'll turn it over to Colonel Park. Sorry two have jumped in front of you, but all yours.

Julie Lemay: I think his connection was dropped, but maybe Texas.

Mr. Greg Whiting: One of the ways the Southwest border, going back to one of the previous questions, is really helping preparedness for our small UAS operations that we have on the border. We have nearly 75 remote pilots that are constantly working, as General Burkett said, with CBP, with Texas Department of Public Safety, and local agencies. And we were able to use that experience and that skill set during the Kerrville floods. We had a lot of integration that was necessary for search and rescue and then search and recovery and learning how to integrate with the agencies to get that critical life- saving information to the local Incident commanders and people on the ground is challenging But it's one of the things that we've really developed with the soldiers and Airmen's that are serving on the border and how that translates into disaster response to help our our fellow Texans. The the curvil floods, it was the largest manned and unmanned

aerial response that the the nation had seen and learning how to deconflict that to work with the helicopters and the local agencies was extremely helpful for Texas.

Julie Lemay: Great, thank you. The next question I have comes from

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: I'm sorry, Julie, can we circle back real quick to Colonel Parks?

Julie Lemay: Oh, sure. Yes, I see him back on there. Yes.

Lt. Col. Ellis Parks: Sir, I just had another shameless plug. So I'm sorry I dropped off for a second there. Hopefully you guys can hear me, but if you want to really see or that's a great question when it comes to our Southern border mission, if you really want to see some of the pride or some of those great things that we're doing, just really go to our divas pages that's out there. They're telling those stories. And they're using the soldiers' words. And those words, you know, we don't want to overgeneralize. Everybody's not gonna be happy with their remobilization or deployment. But they recognize that they're doing something great. We just had something to post back, I think it was on June 2nd, Captain Pratt. And he posted the idea of saving someone's life after a snake fight. And to me, if you read that story, it just kind of illuminates kind of what they're doing while they're on that mission. And that's what we train for. We train for a purpose. And I think that this is just one of those opportunities whenever we're put on a mission like a southern border or any real mission that we have out there. You'll see that that's when we kind of step up and we do our thing. It's part of that war fighter that we're trained to do. And we are happy to be able to do it for the people that we serve here in the United States.

Julie Lemay: Thank you very much for that. The next question comes from Mosh Gaines, NBC. And he asks, I heard that in Washington state, it's business as usual ahead of World Cup. Wondering if there are any heightened operations for the other states. Also, can we get current numbers on how many National Guard from the states are doing border missions? So two parts, go ahead.

Lt. Col. Joseph Siemandel: Hey, Julie, can I take the World Cup piece real quick that I think of? So, so when I say business as usual, it's it's really because we had the opportunity in Washington in 2025 to do the club cup, which was the lead up to World Cup. So we learned a lot of lessons in 2025 that we carried into 2026 is World Cup, but, but this is also a credit to our phenomenal local state, county, everybody at the emergency management level, really putting a lot of work and planning into this. To ensure that we were already well prepared before we ever got to World Cup 2026 in Seattle. And that's what helps, right? It's having those partners at the lowest level working together to bring that plan together and everybody going into it. And I think that's, what's helped us kind of say, we already know how this looks, right. The 10th Civil Support Team does every Seahawk game, every major event in Seattle, we've had a lot of lead up with, as Colonel Park said they've just won the Stanley Cup, we just won the Super Bowl. Arts and civil support team every week knew they had a task ahead of them. I was securing the stadium and ensuring safety. And they do that with Seattle Fire and Rescue. And that is all about partnerships and they do it year in and year out with our partners across Washington state. So I think that's why I said kind of business as usual because it doesn't change what they're doing. They're doing exactly what they would do at any other major event.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Yeah, and you know, just to pull the thread on that a little bit in terms of partnerships. So Joseph's talked about the CSTs in Washington, and they're fantastic. We've got a CST team in every state, and what we're doing, and this is

partnerships. This i pulling elements from other CST from across the 54 to augment the local team so that you can sustain. Your coverage over the 30-day period that makes up FIFA.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: So additional behind the scenes that isn't actually out there but ready is each state has a National Guard Response Force, and our FIFA states have those. And so you look at, I'll take Washington or Texas, both of them are hosting games where Both states have 500 trained personnel that are ready to respond to the governor's requirements and that makes up their National Guard Response Force or NGRF. Additionally, they have a quick response force, both of those states, as part of our Homeland Response Force that adds another 200 personnel that can be activated very quickly to respond any additional security requirements, maybe crowd management requirements. That may result from either something known or expected during FIFA or something that happens where there was no notice. And I think you also asked, Julie, help me if I didn't get this right, but our current deployment to the Southwest border.

Julie Lemay: Current numbers. Yes.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Yes ma'am, so right now we have 2000 guardsmen that are under the command and control of governors, whether they're either in a state active duty or they're in what we would call a title 502F status. It's a federal status, but it keeps them under the command of the control of the governors. Additionally, and it hasn't been brought up yet in the discussion, We don't do any of this alone. We've got an incredible backstop in the Department of War. So NORAD NorthCom is a tremendous partner in the homeland. And they maintain that they will never be late to need either. And so there is a significant amount of preparation that we do in communication with NORAD, NorthCom.

To ready ourselves to support our communities in responses, large or small, across the

54. Specific to the Southwest border, there are Title X active duty forces that also support that number, sorry, support that mission. But I apologize, Moshe, I don't have the numbers for the Title X side of that.

Julie Lemay: And so that's something that we can follow afterwards. For the sake of time, we're going to also, there is one more question. Okay, last year's Hurricane Helene response in the Southern Appalachians highlighted the challenges of conducting rescue operations in extreme mountain terrain after roads, bridges, and comms were wiped out. At the same time, dramatic images spread rapidly on social media, some accurately portraying the devastation while other information proved misleading or difficult to verify.

Looking back, what are the biggest lessons the National Guard learned about both operating in those austere conditions and ensuring timely, accurate information reaches the public and the media during a fast-moving disaster?

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: If I could, can I go, I mean, so Helene started in Florida and it went up the East Coast and affected multiple states, I think eight states, and it was a varying degrees of impact. A lot of lessons learned, but I would prefer to start with North Carolina because that was, North Carolina and Tennessee, who's not on this call, absolutely significant and kind of a prolonged response to recovery period. So can I start with you, Ellis?

Lt. Col. Ellis Parks: Yeah. So yes. And excellent. Absolutely outstanding question. And I think there's multiple parts there. And so let's start with the lessons learned. One of the things that we're working on now is making sure that we are tied into our NGOs. You know, when you have a response like what we had in Helene, one of the difficulties that

we found is volunteers on the ground. And the reason I'm starting there with the Lessons Learned is because we knew we, I think when it came to imagery, and one of the things that was out there as far as like misinformation or possible disinformation was one of our helicopters, one of our Blackhawks was trying to land, and it looked as if it was blowing tents away. Our, our Major General, General Hunt went on news and he took, he took full credit for the incident that happened. And what we did was we saw within 24 hours how that that response and him taking ownership of it a situation like that coming about as one of the things that if we were just tied into our local community a little bit more, and when we say local community, we're talking about the volunteers that were on the ground. We can ensure that at least there's a place and space where we can communicate a little bit better. How do we tie in? So now we're being a little more proactive with some Maritans first who we know is going to be there. They're going to respond. They should have the right to respond, and we appreciate them responding. And any other group that would like to be able to help what we're trying to do is find some way to organize it so that it's a little bit more conducive to the environment and everyone having a chance to kind of respond. The next piece of it is doing situations or having situations like this. We started responding before Hurricane Helene actually made it to Western North Carolina. Like Major General Burkett said, it hit. Florida, and it started working its way up. And there is no such thing as a perfect storm, but at least because they had a political tie to it, there was some communication and information ties to it. And because of the physical aspect of it, Helene was one of those, for us, it was an opportunity to learn and build off of some of the things that we did right, and then to correct those things that we didn't do so well. So, what we are looking at now is the proactivity of communication. How do we make sure that those individuals who are in austere environments, and Western North Carolinians, a lot of people move to that part of the world, they don't want to be on the network. They're living in that space and that place because they don't want to be bothered with everybody. And unfortunately, whenever a situation such as the hurricane, like Helene came along, they all of a sudden found themselves in need. So there's a balance that has to happen. We have to give them their ability to live off the grid, but then be able to support them with both communication and understanding that we will be there. And so there's, we're still learning. There's still opportunities for us to do things a little bit better. And we actually have our governor's office, our Department of Public Safety, the emergency management. All of us are constantly going back and forth with our AARs, our action reviews, and the communications and conversations that we had during that time to make sure that we're building off of each and every one of those. So like I said, situations like this, and you guys, the media, telling our story and presenting it in a way that people understand that we are there. And mistakes will happen because we're not perfect. To us, that's a platform and a medium to say, hey, listen, your guard is your guard. And if you need us, please, you don't have to reach out for us, just please allow us to help when we can. I know that was a lot and I hope I answered some of your questions.

Julie Lemay: Yes, I think so. I'm checking chats. Okay, and let me check real quick to make sure. Is there anyone online who did not yet have an opportunity to ask your question? I just did get a question. Activity duty activation. If you could provide a little more clarity.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Um, so just to make sure that I understand the question, are we talking about active duty?

Julie Lemay: I'm sorry. Yes. Active duty troops? Question mark.

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Okay, so I do appreciate the question because we don't do this alone and we've got, I mean I have great partners on the joint staff that are very plugged into our domestic responses, how they can add assistance, how they work with the services to get us either equipment or people, or whatever it is to help our responses.

Generally, usually, at the local level, emergency managers, they rehearse, they prudent plan, they prepare for this, and they can handle a lot of different things. Kind of going back to the North Carolina scenario, where I thought Ellis was going to go with this, is typically when we do Atlantic coast hurricanes, we're focused on those counties that are closest to the water. In this case, if you're in Asheville, North Carolina, you don't probably do a lot of hurricane preparedness. But this was a different storm and a very different track and caused different concerns and a really significant disruption in all lines of communication. So, NORTHCOM looking at this is a great partner and looking at what they think we might need We being either the National Guard or we, the people that are involved in the response and their interactions with governors and mission partners at the federal level with FEMA to try to anticipate requirements, move resources forward. They do that and when we need to add people to the mission, they are they are ready to do that. And so I hope I'm answering your question. If not. Please redirect it. But they're standing by to activate and move forces forward, and they don't want to be late. So as Colonel Parker mentioned, the 82nd Airborne, the 101st in Tennessee, they were very quick to respond and did so very well. I'm open, I'm answering to your question.

Lt. Col. Ellis Parks: And sir, along with that, and sir, you led into the idea that we, through the modernization efforts that we have and the, we've actually, and this was something that was in play before, but we are moving some of our, or reactivating some of units to be a little bit heavier in the Western parts of North Carolina, our 119th and 120th is standing up there. But one of the things, one of things I will say is that we train with active duty almost every weekend or every day. We have our mic pod on the 82nd airborne. We have RTI, which is right there on Fort Bragg. We have

Maj. Gen. Win Burkett: Hey, Ellis. So, MICPOD, just think of it as a mission support element that ties into an active duty formation, and then RTIs, or regional training institutes, go ahead.

Lt. Col. Ellis Parks: Sorry, sorry, sir, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. But so what happened during Hurricane Helene, it wasn't like we all of a sudden started training with our active duty partners because of a domestic response like that. We do it every day.

They actually go to it. We host our active partners with Ed Butler, which is one of our training ground. And of course, whenever we go Title 10, go to our federal mission. A lot of us will fall under one of the co-coms. And it gives us a great opportunity and a great experience just to, you know, the interoperability between your national guard, your active duty and your reserves. So we had reserves on the ground, we have coast guards on the grounds at that time, and they're constantly in play. And once again, it goes back to the idea of just making sure that the public understands that that's a constant. It's not something that we just all of a sudden put together.

Julie Lemay: Great. Thank you. And we have one follow-up on DC at America 250, wondering if folks can explain any additional mission sets ahead of July 4th. The reflecting pool is one that has gotten some attention lately. Wondering if folks can speak to if there have been any occurrences of guard having to hold anyone on the mall for destruction of property.