AC/RC Force Structure

[Infanteer]

I love how Wilf's article was right below one titled "Stabilizing Complex Adaptive Systems: Using Complexity Theory for Operational Design in Stability and Support Operations".

[Bob's World]

96% was the number I saw. Guard budgets are 96% federal, 4% state.

The state pays the other 4%, mostly armory maintenance, and a handful of state employees that essentially are there to manage that state interest. When a governor declares an emergency, he signs his state up to pay for whatever the costs of use are for this federal equipment and personnel (You should see the jaws drop when you hand a state bureaucrat a bill for 8 hours of blade time on a CH-47...). Expensive, but still a tremendous bargain to every state. Much like US foreign policy, civilian state workers are 100% tapped out in day to day efforts, so do not "surge" for emergencies (other than road crews, emergency workers, LEA - all for overtime pay), so when some crappy job, like standing waist deep in sewage filling sandbags, comes up, they turn to the guard as their only reserve of "extra" manpower that comes organized, trained and equipped for action. So the rally cry is always "call up the guard" (pulling men and women away from their civilian jobs and creating hardships for them, their families, and employers) rather than "shut down the bureaucracy and focus on the emergency this week."

Some states do this very well, and have an "emergency fund" to pay these costs. Oregon does not, so every physical emergency is followed by a corresponding fiscal emergency.

[Bob's World]

Ok, Ken has poked my training button. METL. Too often RC units carry a different METL than a like AC unit. METL is essential warfighting tasks, so they should be the same. Problem is that our training doctrine is written by and for the AC (with word "RC" sprinkled in, much like PC writing styles that say "He/she should then...") The fact is that

A. RC METL should = AC METL

B. RC units actually need what I called "mETL" for mobilization essential task list. A foundation of skills that a unit needs that are focused on creating skilled individuals and teams; and that are both atainable, and can be quickly buit upon once mobilized. Too many units attempt to train to larger unit collective tasks, which they invariably suck at, which also takes so much time that the individual and team skills fade as well. So upon mobilizaton a unit shows up that has to start from scratch. I told my general who was dead set that Brigade would do movement to contact and defend (but also thought that if every platoon could do those tasks, then the Companies, Battalions and the Brigade were a "T" in them as well" ) that upon careful review of the SQT manual for light infantry that I recommended that our focused task for training should be "Maintain Operational Security." (yes, I have always been that guy who can't just accept the status quo). It was, and I suspect is, the perfect pre-mob task for building that foundation of skills that prepares an RC unit to quickly ramp up to whatever mission it is that they have been mobilized to perform. (As the Brigade training officer I was then put to work developing lanes training on the high end collective tasks, with each lane being dumbed down to the point of irrelevance by our AC trainers, and with very few units getting "T"s even still because the AC Colonel convinced this same general that "all leader tasks should be "essential" tasks as well, so therefor any time a leader task was missed, the units would get a "U". Ok, I'm still pissed about both that lame general (who later picked up a second star before the Governor finally caught on and fired him), and the A-hole AC Armor Colonel who led the training bde and whose primary mission was to prevent Guard BDES from filling their CTC rotations, thereby denying some more worthy AC unit from getting an opportunity to go. I should let it go, but but guys who place their careers ahead of their nation really bug me.