Future of the Air National Guard / AF Reserves

I don’t think we’ve discussed this before, but the future of the ANG/AFRC as we know it (with it’s own aircraft) might well look pretty bleek. On their way from being an independent force to be little more than spare crews for active units? The latter is of course already happening, most notably in the transport community.

Article at http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_10572.shtml
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Transformation Will Gut the Air National Guard
By Paul Connors, DefeseWatch 12/2/04
Feb 22, 2004, 09:54

While the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve are, for the short term, still being tasked with supporting troop and unit rotations into and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, recent announcements within the Air National Guard major changes have left many senior leaders and their subordinates scratching their heads and wondering what’s next.

What’s next is apparently the destruction of the Air National Guard as we know it.

As currently structured, the Air National Guard contains 88 flying wings (with various missions) and assorted supporting units throughout the 50 states and territories. Each state has at least one flying unit while others, including New York, California, New Jersey and Ohio, have more.

The potential impact on New York state by the Rumsfeld initiative offers a good case in point of how drastic the proposed “reforms” will be.

New York State has the distinction of having five ANG flying wings, more even than California with twice its population. With no active-duty Air Force bases remaining within New York State and Rumsfeld’s edict that wherever and whenever possible ANG units are to be moved or co-located to active-duty installations, it is quite obvious New York may lose one or more of its flying units.

Apart from the economic impact and job losses, what should concern Air National Guard supporters in general and New York in particular is that three of the five flying wings are specialized units. They are:

[li] The 106th Rescue Wing: Located at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., this is one of only three combat search and rescue (CSAR) units in the ANG. Its sister units are the 129th Rescue Wing, CAANG and the 210th Rescue Squadron of the 176th Wing, Alaska ANG.

Along with the rescue wings of the Air Force Reserve Command, almost 40 percent of the Air Force’s CSAR capacity is located within the reserve components. Specialized units such as these are known as “high-demand, low-density” units. That means that their services are always in demand, but there are few units to call on. This keeps their operational tempo and deployment rates extremely high. With this much capacity in ANG and AFRC, is it any wonder that such missions are targets for reversion back to the active Air Force?

[li] The 109th Airlift Wing: Based in Scotia, N.Y., this is the only ski-equipped C-130 unit to be found anywhere in the U.S. armed forces. The 109th Airlift Wing supports the Arctic and Antarctic missions of the National Science Foundation, and its aircraft and personnel range from the suburbs of Albany, N.Y. to McMurdo Sound and the South Pole in Antarctica from facilities in New Zealand. The wing took over this specialized mission when the U.S. Navy deactivated a C-130 squadron that previously carried out the mission.

[li] The 105th Airlift Wing: Located at Newburgh Airport, not far from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, this is the only C-5 Galaxy wing to be found in the Air National Guard. Given an ongoing Air Force study considering the retirement of half the C-5 Galaxy fleet in favor of procuring more C-17s, it seems likely that this unit will face deactivation rather than a transfer to the active Air Force.

The two other flying wings are more conventional in their mission responsibilities. The 174th Fighter Wing, located in Syracuse, N.Y., is a general purpose F-16 unit and the 107th Air Refueling Wing in Niagara Falls, N.Y. is one of many aerial tanker units to found in the ANG and Air Force Reserve Command.

New York State is also home to the Northeast Air Defense Sector located on the now closed former Griffiss AFB in Rome, N.Y. NEADS is staffed by a combination of full and part-time members of the NYANG.

Other heavily-populated states like California and Ohio also have several ANG flying wings. Despite their large population bases, you can rest assured that the sword of Damocles hangs over their heads as well. Because Rumsfeld believes far too much of the support infrastructure for the active Air Force, such as CSAR, air refueling and military airlift are contained within the state ANG flying units, he seems to have targeted these ANG capabilities for elimination.

But that is far from all.

Within the ANG, recent announcements have also revealed that as much as 25 percent of the ANG fighter force will be eliminated. Based on the total number of Primary Assigned Aircraft (PAA), as many as 179 airframes (F-15s and F-16s) will either be retired or returned to the active Air Force. Air National Guard fighter wings that are eliminated in this fashion may or may not see an alternate mission and in most cases, probably will not. Where no mission conversion is offered to the wings losing their fighter aircraft, it is most likely that the wings will be inactivated.

Other possible ANG cuts include a minimum of six C-130 airlift wings and many of the current air refueling wings – which will be blended into “super wings” with their aircraft and personnel reorganized into nothing more than detachments scattered around the country at other sites.

It has long been presumed that some of the new C-17 Globemaster II airlifters entering service would find their way into the ANG, but that remains to be seen.
Note from Arthur: The first ANG C-17s have already been delivered to the Mississippi ANG, so this bit of speculation goes astray

The Air National Guard currently has 109,000 part-time and fulltime members. ANG members from around the nation were on active duty prior to 9/11, and thousands more volunteered or were recalled to active duty as the nation launched the global war against terrorism in late 2001. Thousands more stepped forward or were mobilized to support Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

With the wholesale inactivation of many of the Air Guard’s current flying wings without mission conversion, thousands of fulltime and part-time personnel will have nowhere to go. Smaller states with only one ANG unit will invariably find that they will no longer be authorized an Air National Guard component within their state military forces.

The volunteers who make up the current Air National Guard roster – the same friends, neighbors and co-workers who have selflessly given up their time to help defend the nation or support their communities and states in times of natural disasters – face a bleak, uncertain future.

Many people who have dedicated their lives to a career with the Air National Guard will not be able to complete them. The lucky few in units scheduled for transfer elsewhere will face a Hobson’s choice of having to relinquish their ANG work or relocate their families and households to a different state. In either case, the Air Force is going to lose a significant amount of its reserve capacity.

The question remains, why is the defense secretary adamant in tearing down the ANG and other reserve component organizations?

After all, this is not the same as the aftermath of the Cold War, when the government ordered huge cuts in the active components to create the “peace dividend” that has come back to haunt us. With the military still serving in two war zones and engaged in the war against terrorism, the outcry in Washington, D.C., is to expand the U.S. military, not shred it.

It would seem that Rumsfeld, embarrassed and infuriated that so much of the Guard and reserve was needed to fight in Iraq, has decided to undo 30 years of the post-Vietnam “Total Force” concept. This concept intentionally transferred key warfighting missions from the active force to the Guard and reserve for the express purpose of preventing military adventurism without the consent of the American people.

”Total force” was an explicit “lesson learned” from the Vietnam War, where President Lyndon Johnson knew that to activate the Guard and reserve would have cost him the popular support of the electorate and endangered his pet project, “The Great Society.” Instead, he exponentially increased the size of the draft and wound up fighting in Vietnam with a military composed in large part of unwilling conscripts.

In that vein, the Rumsfeld plan is far more perilous than even its negative impact on thousands of ANG personnel and their families. In the name of reform, the defense secretary is apparently trying to distance the U.S. military from the civilian society it is sworn to protect, and free himself and future DoD leaders to march off to war without the troublesome bother of justifying it to the American people.

Source:2004 Ocnus.net Top of Page
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