I stand corrected. Our mission overseas is to promote traffic safety.
Guess I’ll do my patriotic duty and go buy that Kid Rock album now, then. Maybe a NASCAR ballcap or two.
Its like I said. If the local NG unit, is say, a maintenance BN and they get called up to deploy, they’re going. There is absolutely no guarantee that the NG will not get deployed, and they don’t have to deploy the entire unit either. So your friend could get deployed while others stay behind and vice versa.
Your friend must not watch the news too much. Lynndie england and that bunch? National guard. I’m not picking on them for being NG I’m just giving you an example of NG units that were and may still be deployed.
If this guys girl friend is thinking of signing up because she thinks she won’t get deployed she may be in for an eye opener. To be honest, she may have a better chance of NOT getting deployed on active duty.
If you signed up today it depends on some things. When are you going to basic, when are you going to be done, what kind of unit is it and who will be president when you’re out of training. If it’s McCain, you might be in for 100 years of crap.
This upsets me for two reasons. 1) I’m IN THE FUCKING **ARMY **NATIONAL GUARD! That’s like saying “Ravens have wings? Since whe? Isn’t that more like, I dunno, birds?”
2) “Warrior” isn’t a randomly chosen word. It’s part of Army ideology. That’s why we have the Warrior’s Creed and the Warrior Leader Course and Warrior Tasks. Since when? About 2003.
ETA: Dunno who said it about their son, but tell him to come talk to me. I’ll tell him all about the NG being deployed.
Well it seems the John Wayne “Armchair Patriot School of Military Service” is alive and well. (This is a favorite topic of mine).
Anyway, I just figured I’d do some searching and guess what? Kid Rock, **Dale Earnhardt, Jr **and **3 Doors Down **haven’t even served one day in the military. (Well, that’s no surprise to me - I like to keep track of this shit). But that should never be a deterrent from encouraging others to join.
Here’s an article about Dale Earnhardt, Jr. visiting the Great Lakes Naval Training Station to welcome some new recruits. (He flew his Lear Jet up there to see them. - read the article).
I’d like to see how these “patriots” would act if there was a draft and they were of draft age. :mad:
I just thought I’d state (as I’ve said many times before) that I am not anti-military nor do I have a negative view of veterans. It’s these “summer soldiers” and “sunshine patriots” (to use Thomas Paine’s expression) that strike me as being hypocritical.
Ignoring all the vitriol and trying to fight a little ignorance to answer your question, it used to be more that way than it is now, but it’s primary role is still homeland defense.
Don’t forget there are different flavors of ‘The Guard’ (Army and Air Force), as well as the Reserves which are sometimes lumped into the same subject when people talk about it (Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines all have Reserve elements).
I served in the Montana and Oregon Air National Guard (ANG) as well as active duty in the USAF in Germany and Korea. 7 years in green all in all.
Starting in the late 80’s, Air Guard units started being transferred into more supporting roles (along with AF Reserve) such as airlift and logistics, but the ANG was solely charged (until 9-11) with maintaining perimeter security of the airspace of the continental US. Now, that job is shared between active duty units and ANG units, and both active and ANG units have been further tasked with internal airspace security from a variety of bases throughout the US. AF Reserve units provide lots of logistics and long airlift support and form the ‘backbone’ of the AF Logistics Command but generally don’t have as many front-line air combat units (bombers and fighters) units as the Guard and regular Air Force. Several Defense Secretaries, including Rumsfeld, have changed the role of the Guard and Reserves somewhat, especially in the Air Force, to be more supporting. In order to fight a full-scale war, the Guard and Reserves became required forces to fulfill the logistics and transport requirements of the military as a whole; the regular forces focused more on front-line combat troops and aircraft whilst the Guard and Reserve formations filled in the logistics tail and leftovers were used for National Defense.
Army Guard are quite mixed-role - they run the gamut from ground-pounders to armor to artillery, as well as more supporting roles such as Military Police (the Abu Ghraib guards were Army NG IIRC) and logistics and support, much like the regular Army. Those are the guys that are pretty much guaranteed to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once during their 4 years served, pretty much regardless of role. They need dentists and xray techs in Iraq just as much as infantry and artillery troops, perhaps even more.
The traditional role of the Guard was to be sent in to maintain peacetime missions of the regular and Reserve force when it went to war. When we deployed USAF units to Gulf War 1, ANG units back-filled both within the Continental US to mainline bases such as Andrews as well as deploying to Korea and Europe to ensure that the peacetime commitments and treaty obligations were still met; the Guard and Reserve units slotted into vacated positions from the Regular forces. Additional Guard and Reserve units were sent to the gulf to bolster the regular forces in theater.
Additionally, as the Guard falls under the command of the State Governor rather than the President (unless federally activated with the Governor’s permission), the Guard is frequently used for state emergencies like fires and natural disasters. I was deployed with the Air National Guard to fight forest fires twice in 2 years during my 2-weeks-a-year, as well as deployed to Panama for drug interdiction missions in 1996 and Turkey for Operation Northern Watch in 1997, and during my 1 weekend a month was sent to help search for lost hunters as well as participated in a rescue mission on Mt Hood looking for lost climbers in the Portland ANG, and even was sent out to look for a missing child (who we found) in the Portland area. I actually averaged closer to 4 weeks a year, plus the obligatory 1 weekend a month, for my 4 years in the Guard.
Reserve units from all branches are generally more front-line in usage and roles - they contain the same mix of combat arms and support roles as their active duty counterparts, as well as sharing many of the same operational requirements and often serving aboard the same ships and from the same bases as Active Duty units (especially Navy and Marine reserves). The Reserve forces are often better trained and better equipped, as well as younger and fitter, than the Guard but that is not always the case - the Montana ANG regularly pasted both Reserve and Active Duty units in fighter gunnery competitions such as Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base. The Reserves are under the direct chain of command of the President the same as the Active Duty military, so are often sent into combat in a wartime situation faster than the Guard is, because the President does not need to seek authorization from State Governors to activate the Reserves. Technically the Reserves have the same commitment of the Guard, but the few I knew in the Reserves were basically active duty in all but name, spending the vast majority of their time on ‘Active Duty’. Of course, they were Pararescue Jumpers from Portland, so they did have a substantial peacetime role with at-sea rescues beyond the range of the Coast Guard, as well as a pretty amazing fitness regime to maintain. One or two were part-time paramedics as well as PJs, but that was the exception.
Oh and Kid Rocks sucks and motor sports are boring.