GWB and the Air Guard

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 11:52:25 -0500, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 00:47:14 -0500, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
.. .
One must also make very clear distinctions between AirNG and ArmyNG.
While the Army NG became almost notorious during the conflict, the
AirNG was flying a lot of airplanes in a lot of missions and
maintaining operational readiness.

What is your beef with the ARNG side of the house? You might want to
brush
up a bit regarding the record of the seven thousand plus *ARNG* troops
who
deployed to Vietnam. There was one artillery unit from the KYARNG that
lost
*eighteen* (IIRC) men in one day's fighting when the firebase it was
assigned to came under NVA ground attack--I'd suggest you be careful
about
pointing out any such "clear distinctions" if you ever end up
traveliing
through the Bluegrass State. My question to you would be, why did you
feel
it was necessary to try and defame the ARNG in an effort to make the
ANG
look better? IMO, both organizations accomplished the missions they
were
given in that conflict.

I don't have beef with the Army Guard, but since it was a period that
I lived through and am very familiar with, I'll point out that the
Army Guard required six months of active training, followed by four
years Ready Reserve service. It was a haven for folks with low lottery
numbers or before the lottery with a high probability of selection
such as those with expiring deferments as they graduated from college.

First, if you check your facts I think you will find that the obligation
was
for a total of six years, active duty and RR combined. Second, that
"haven"
provided more personnel to Vietnam than the ANG, and a whale of a lot of
AC
Vietnam vets returned to serve in that "haven" as well.

I think you need to relax a bit. The fact is that the great majority
of ARNG units during the Vietnam war were a sanctuary for folks who
didn't want to get drafted into the active duty Army. The large
proportion were minimally trained back-fill units.

Your comments could just as well apply to *all* of the reserve components,
not just the ARNG, so why single the ARNG out? And that "sanctuary" had its
share of combat vets who returned to join the Guard, not to mention those
Guardsmen who had been serving for years before Vietnam was even a blip on
the radar screen (and were therefore not dodging anything). Why you do this,
I can't fathom--what is your point in making such claims? And what is a
"minimally trained back-fill unit"? Never heard of one myself.


It was official policy during the Johnson administration that Reserve
and Guard units were not called up.

Until Johnson changed his mind in 68 and called up some 23K Guardsmen,
another 6K USAR troops, 4K USNR Seabees, and an unknown number of USAFR
personnel (from what I have found, four tac fighter groups and an airlift
wing)--somewhere in the neighborhood of around 40K reservists, altogether.

The budgeting priority was to
equip active duty forces and that meant large numbers of NG and
Reserve units (all components) were under-equipped or fitted with
obsolete or obsolescent equipment.

Now that part you have right, to at least some extent. But the ARNG arty
units that were called up and deployed to Vietnam did have the same
equipment that their AC counterparts had at the time, as did a large part of
the ARNG's arty force at the time. The same can be said for the engineer
units.


There is no doubt that Guard and Reserve personnel were called up, the
proportion of Army Guard and Reserve personnel that were called or
were even vulnerable was exceptionally low.

Lower than it should have been (had the JCS had their way earlier), yes. But
the fact remains that thousands were called up, and a large part of those
that were found themselves rather quickly located in either Vietnam or Korea
(which at the time was a rather hot spot, at least for the ground troops in
the northern part of the ROK where firefights with the infiltrating NK's
were a not uncommon event). By all accounts the Guard units that deployed,
both ANG *and* ARNG, acquited themselves quite well. The only sore point on
the ARNG side was the fate of the higher level units (the mobilized infantry
brigade(s)), which did indeed find themselves broken up as sources of
individual replacements. Two reasons for this--the short duration of the
call-up period did not allow a lot of time for higher echelon collective
training (and as you did some time with the old 4th ID, you know what I am
talking about--even the AC units have a problem getting in enough collective
training at the BDE and higher levels; then MG Paul Funk, commanding an AC
armored division out of Europe during ODS, lamented the fact that his
division's brigades had virtually *no* collective training experience at
that level before they set foot in Saudi Arabia). And two, the shortage of
replacements in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive and resultant US
counteractions.



The Army Guard accepted people even when they had received a draft
notification.

I believe the other services did as well.

That is true. No disagreement there.

So what was the point of the statement?


The training requirements were exceptionally low and the
maintenance of accurate drill records for lower rank, unskilled
members was virtually non-existant in many units.

Really? And this compared to the record keeping in the ANG exactly
how...?

It compares to the difference between rated aircrew (remember the
discussion has been about GWB's service) and basic trainee grads, most
of whom didn't even complete combat arms qualification. Their units
were low priority and the poorly equipped.

Where do you get the idea that ARNG troops did not complete their AIT's?



This is not said in any sense to demean the service of the few Army
Guard units that were activated and served with honor.

Gee, I guess they just chose the "honorable ones" huh? The others lacking
in
that quality, by your description?

Don't go looking between the lines or under rocks for insult. There is
none intended. The sentence says that few Army Guard units got the
call. It does not state or imply that those who didn't get activated
were any less honorable nor does it suggest that not all that were
called were honorable.

If that is the case, fine; but I wonder why you used the term "notorious" in
an effort to set the ARNG aside from the ANG in the comment that caught my
attention in this thread.


And, it should
be noted, that the Army Guard and Reserve units today have a much
higher standard of readiness and a much more rigorous drill/training
schedule including a lot of activations and NTC deployments.

Yeah, and none of them got activated for Korea, Berlin, etc., either,
right?

What's that smell....red herring?

Didn't say that. Didn't imply that. Doesn't relate to what we were
talking about.

My point was that those previous Guard units did indeed get activated for
real world requirements, and did indeed perform their assigned missions, so
the alleged wide gap in capabilities (versus contemporary requirements) of
the ARNG then versus the ARNG now escapes me.



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.

I simply stated that since flying ANG units were often tasked with
active Air Defense Command missions, they did have lots of full-timers
and lots of training opportunity. ARNG units, with poor equipment,
parts of combat support units, and low priority did not have a lot of
full-timers, didn't have a lot of training opportunity, and didn't
maintain a high state of readiness.

I don't think you can make such a blanket statement. Indeed, some ARNG units
were better, and better equipped and supported, than others--the same is
evident today (witness the FSP program that identified higher priority units
for resources in favor of lower priority units). Which is why the Army and
ARNG initiated the SRF program during that timeframe, to identify those
selected units that were to be given additional resources such that they
would be ready for immediate activation and quick deployment. So what you
REALLY had was the same heirarchy of rich-to-poor that we have always had in
the reserve components, ANG included (note that the ANG F-16 community has
also demonstrated haves/have-nots symptoms rather recently, when some units
had the latest blocks and PGM delivery capabilities while others did not;
again, not a new issue, as it was not all that long ago that IIRC some ANG
units were still flying the F-86 while the first F-4's were going to other
units).


had operational air defense responsibilities and
conducted much more frequent operations. The F-100 ANG units did a lot
of SEA deployments.

Ever heard of Nike Hercules? care to guess who was running most of that
system at the same time you claim the ARNG was just not up to the exalted
level of the ANG?

Yes, I've heard of Nike Hercules. When I was growing up in Chicago,
the lakefront hosted a large number of Nike Ajax installations manned
by Reserve units.

By Guard units, actually; the USAR did not own any missile batteries in
ARADCOM.

Where were all of these Hercules units in '66-'73?

1964-65 saw the last ARNG Nike Ajax batteries replaced by Nike Hercules. The
ARNG had operated about one-third of the Ajax force (some 50 batteries) in
1960. When the switch to the more capable (and longer ranged) Hercules was
completed in 1965, the ARNG had 48 batteries standing alert, guarding 18
areas under ARADCOM control. It appears the ratio of Guard to AC battereis
remained largely the same, with the ARNG controlling about one third of the
Herc force; as the force drew down, the ARNG represented a growing chunk of
the Herc force. The Hercs left the Guard in 1975, leaving the last four
remaining batteries (AC) to serve in the Miami/Homestead AFB area until the
early eighties.

How many states had them?

Sixteen. Interesting history of ARADCOM at
http://147.71.210.21/vigilant/Default.htm (and BTW, related to an earlier
thread on the 75mm Skysweeper AAA, this site confirms that the last of those
weapons was retired from its CONUS defense operations in 1960).

I'm not sure it relates to the large number
of ARNG personnel that had low levels of mission tasking. But, I'm
available to be convinced.



An interesting editorial in this AM's Denver Post by Bob Ewegen who
points out that if GWB were trying to "dodge the draft" his choice of
an obligation with two years of intensive training, a clear linkage to
deployed elements flying the same aircraft and a total of nearly five
years of continuous service, he made a poor choice. He could more
easily have done six months of basic in a ARNG unit and gone home.

So now you are claiming that the amount of active duty training is
related
to ones level of honorable service? Gee, what about all of those
*enlisted*
ANG troops who went to basic and AFOS school and then went back home?

We are still talking about GWB's service. Another herring on the
table.

But for some odd reason you think the way to build Bush up is by tearing the
ARNG down, so you post stuff like the above, which does indeed ignore the
fact that most enlisted ANG personnel *also* returned home after completing
their basic and AIT (or whatever the USAF/ANG calls AIT). So the writer
could just as well have said "enlisted in the ANG" as opposed to "enlisted
in the ARNG", OK?


Did you go to the link and read the article? It is balanced and
addresses both Bush and Kerry's service. It makes some good points and
suggests the issue shouldn't be "mine is bigger than yours" but what
the candidates bring to the country for leadership potential.

You were doing pretty good in these arguments...right up until you had to
bite into the old, "Well, the ANG is of course oh-so-much more
professional,
and of course occupied by more dedicated and honorable men, than the
ARNG"
crap.

Brooks

I didn't say that, so don't interpret. I said that during the period
of the '60s and up until the end of the war, the ARNG suffered from a
lack of funding and mission in a lot of states.

Lack of funding did not make them "notorious", nor did it make the ARNG a
"haven" for draft dodgers (or at least not anymore than the other resercve
component forces, or in some ways for that matter the USAF and USN, which as
you acknowledged took their share of guys who had received notices).

It was, as a matter of
policy, not going to be deployed to the war.

That policy being shattered by the 68 call-up.


Don't seek to be offended. If I wish to do so, you won't have to dig
deep to find the insults. They'll be right up top.

I am not digging. I don't know if you just did not think before you typed,
or what, but you have tried to delineate the ARNG from the other reserve
components, with little success when one considers the points offered. It
served no purpose towards the debate in question.

Brooks



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8