GWB and the Air Guard

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: "Kevin Brooks"


"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message


By contrast, the flying ANG units contained large numbers of full-time
specialists,

Ahh! The old, "you gotta be full time to be a real specialist" or to have
a
good unit bit, huh? Ed, I have service time in the active component, the
reserve components as a part-timer, and one reserve component as a
full-timer, and from where I sit your argument does not carry much water.

A maintainer who only does his monthlies
and 2 weeks is nowhere near as skilled as one who does it full time. When
the
ANG flies aircraft during the week the part timers are not there to fix
them.
Just what would you do with an aircraft flown on Saturday that has a
malfunction that will take 4 days to fix? That's why the full timers are
there.
I have seen 3 day repairs turn into 5 day repairs because they kept
changing
the persons doing the job.

And the Army Guard also has a larger contingent of FTM personnel to handle
aviation maintenance. Beyond that you would have been comparing apples and
oranges in terms of trying to claim that the ANG was more professional
because they had more FTM personnel than the ARNG units. An infantry company
of that era did not need a bevy of FTM personnel in order to maintain its
level of professionalism--the one, two, or three FTM personnel it typically
did have were sufficient (I say were because the advent of more advanced and
heavier systems for that former leg infantry company, now mounted in the
rather complex M2 Bradleys, has resulted in a greater need for FTM
maintenance support in the OMS shops).


This is not an attempt to slam the Guard's maintainers, but 64 days a year
is
not enough to keep your skills up.

But when your equipment was likely limited to two or three deuce and a halfs
and a few M151 jeeps, those few FTM maintainers that were available at that
time, backed by the M-Day folks, were indeed sufficient.

Brooks


Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired