Are active duty and national guard units interchangeable? Troops?

Having served in the Marines and the National Guard and Active Army, the active army needs to pull its collective head out of its ass and see that the National Guard and Reserve are an asset not a hindrance to their mission.

I'm in the Guard and I've been Regular Army.&nbsp; I agree that Reserve Components frequently aren't interchangeable with our active forces.&nbsp; We're a tremendous augmentation for them.&nbsp; But we can't replace them in total without a quality train-up.&nbsp; To say that we can is a case of ego, denial, or both.&nbsp; We're very good at a lot of stuff.&nbsp; But we are part timers.&nbsp; This is the only job I know of in which part timers angrily state that they're "just as capable".&nbsp; Just because you aren't "just as capable" doesn't mean that you're not of value.&nbsp; If we were just as capable, the USGOV would save a lot of money by making the whole DoD a reserve force.&nbsp; To get pissed at the CSA over this begs the question "don't you have something more important to worry about?".&nbsp; We have strengths and limitations.&nbsp; Everybody has limitations.&nbsp; Especially when you don't do this stuff constantly.<br>

SFC (Join to see)

I was an active duty officer for almost 30 years and have very strong opinion about the Reserve Components and their value to the Army.

My feelings about the Reserve Components (RC) took a dramatic change of course during Operation Desert Storm. Prior to that, the only experience I had with the RC was as a young captain/company commander at Ft Benning, Georgia, in the mid-70’s, and that experience was anything but good. However, my experience with the RC during Desert Storm and thereafter has been nothing but positive and I have become a big supporter of the RC.

At Ft. Benning in the mid-70’s, I was tasked with evaluating several Army National Guard MP companies during their Annual Training (AT). Almost without exception, the companies did not want to go to the field for tactical training and were only interested in performing garrison MP law enforcement duties and partying. I insisted they follow their training plan, which was mostly tactical training, and they openly resisted me. What they did accomplish in the field was unacceptable and that is how I evaluated them. I “failed” three of the four companies I evaluated and gave the other one a barely passing evaluation. That rankled a few feathers with the folks at the Reserve Components Training Division and I was asked to change the ratings, which I refused to do. It went all the way to the CG, USAIC & Ft Benning and I stuck to my guns. Needless to say, I had a bad taste in my mouth about the RC for years thereafter.

Flash forward to Desert Shield/Desert Storm. As a battalion commander, I had four active component companies and six National Guard companies (one each from Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia and Georgia and two from Puerto Rico). From the very beginning I saw how much the RC units had improved from my last experience with them. The soldiers were well trained, well equipped, professional and had outstanding NCO and officer leadership (with the exception of one company, which I quickly rectified). Although some of my sister battalion commanders did not do so, I assigned my RC companies the same missions and areas of responsibility as I did my active duty companies. They never let me down (OK.. one did, once … hence the leadership change mentioned above).

Another distinct advantage I found with having RC units assigned, which is a real plus when you are deployed, is that, besides being good soldiers, NCOs and officers, most of them had another profession that they brought with them. I had lawyers and judges, barbers and beauticians, heavy equipment operators, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, brick masons, social workers, corrections specialists, policemen, accountants, etc., etc…. What a great asset!!! There was nothing that I had to do that I did not have a ready-made cadre of people who could accomplish it; regardless of what it was. I became a big believer in and supporter of the Reserve Components and have told folks over the years that I hoped to always have them available if I had to deploy units again.

Following Desert Storm, I told my brother, who, at the time, was the two-star commander of a US Army Reserve Regional Support Command (RSC), about my change of heart. He asked me to write an article about it, which I did, and it was published in the Army Reserve magazine. I also gave several briefings about my experience, as I had an opportunity.

When I retired and became an executive in a large corporation, I continued my support of the RC by becoming involved in the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) and was very vocal about the change I had seen over the years and the value of such a dedicated and selfless cadre of people who make up the RC.

The Reserve Components are critical to the success of our military. We need to ensure they get the funding, the equipment, and the training they need to stay at an acceptable level and not revert back to what I saw in the early to mid-70’s.

I've been on both sides of the AC/RC fence. There are just as many ate up units in Active Army as there are in the Guard and Reserves. There are also just as many squared away units in the RCs as there are in the AC.

Me personally, I'd take a squared away RC unit over an AC unit on most days. In my experience, AC tends to be by the book and between the lines. In the RCs, you have people who have a life and a job outside the military that bring a huge wealth of knowledge and real outside the box thinking into the military. If you have a NG MP unit, most of the people in that unit will probably either be some sort of LE or Corrections.. or will be aspiring to be. Everyone else works in sales, food service, hospitality, construction, etc, etc. If given the resources, they could be pretty much self-sustaining because of all the different professional skills that they're bringing with them to the fight.

I'm a Guard baby, and have been for the last decade. From my interactions with the USAR and the RA, both stateside and on deployments, I think we all have different and tremendous roles. I am intensely jealous of the USAR having majority of Civil Affairs units, but I also have seen the roles the ARNG plays in stateside missions. My state's MAST/MART (air rescue) is extremely active in search missions  as well as during fire season. Perhaps my vision is tainted from all my experience in aviation (which gives me a positive view), but I will never claim that we have the same role and readiness as 'big Army'. However, in certain circumstances, we are leaps and bounds ahead of the RA, and they could follow our lead (this is specifically in regards to the medevac mission, for various reasons I won't clog up this thread with. Doctrine is finally catching up with standards that we've set in place years and years before now). There is a reason we aren't interchangeable, but that doesn't mean we aren't viable. We are prepared to do different things than the RA, and there is a reason for this. We can all combine and serve overseas together supporting the federal mission, but that doesn't mean we are necessarily interchangeable as a whole. I don't think the word interchangeable is an insult, but context is also important to consider. As long as we are not considered a hindrance, I am fine. There's a place for all of us, and I have seen a tremendous amount of excellence coming from active and reserve Soldiers alike. 

from a federal vs. state asset point of view no because USAR and AD as federal assets can not perform a NG state mission. Guard units from surrounding states will more likely be brought in before federal troops are provided to augment a state situation. A thin but mandated line.

This one is easy. Let's try and look at it objectively. On an individual basis, a Reserve or NG unit is far cheaper to maintain than it's Active Duty counterpart. If Active and Reserve/NG units were interchangeable, then the Active component would have been eliminated decades ago for budgetary reasons. The fact that we even exist, in all of our resource draining glory, is evidence enough that we exist for a reason, and we are not interchangeable.

I'm not familiar with the controversy, but it's quite true.

RA is not permitted to perform many of the roles that the NG does on a regular basis. The USAR is designed to fill a completely different role. There are 0 shower and laundry specialists in the RA, but I've got a unit full of them just down the street.

I would say kinda. First off we need to look at what each component is set up to do. AD is, well, AD and are "the first string" ready to go right away. Without the training cycles that AD units have, it is almost impossible to maintain this level of readiness. USAR contains the bulk of the Army's CS and CSS assets beyond the minimum we need to keep on AD to support the AD role. Note, there is only ONE CA unit in the USAR, and that is the 100-442INF. So in that sense, no, AD and USAR are not interchangeable. In this case USAR are designed to be an augmentation to AD when the long term support needs outstrip the ability of AD units to provide. Beyond the state mission, ARNG is the Army's strategic combat reserve, that has the balance of reserve CA and CS and CSS assets. So yes, while the ARNG can duplicate AD unit capabilities, this rolls into the next issue: unit readiness. AD has simply more time training their METL tasks than ARNG units. So AD units are more proficient initially, than ARNG (which makes sense). However, given equal training time, ARNG can and do eventually catch up. One advantage that the ARNG has now is that they have more stable unit cohesion and due to the high OPTEMPO guard units are now also seeded with combat vets (both AD going into the ARNG and guardsmen who have deployed with the ARNG), so the historic quality disparity is much lower than pre 9/11.