Tension between National Guard and Active Duty Army?

Much difference between Active Duty vs Guard/Reserves. Started off with Reserves (Active) before going Active Duty and did not regret even once. Many part-time military never served on Active and still have their civilian mindset going on. Do find many break the barrier on height and weight seeing much part time military being overweight to obese and have a real hard time to grasp how they even pass the APFT. Which why most Guard and Reserves looked like soup sandwiches during OIF around us the 82nd, the 101st, the Marines and the Cavalry units.

I honestly have no issue with the National Guard or the Reserves. I served twice on active duty with a 20-year break between enlistments (1984-1987 and 2007 - 2013) and while I was deployed to Iraq we worked with a lot of National Guard and Reserve units. People don't realize that when the National Guard deploy, it is for a lot longer period of time than Active Duty. The Nation Guard have months of training before they are deployed and are usually gone for around 18 months where the Active-Duty Soldiers are gone for 12 months.

I served for 34+ years in the Army and had the honor to work with the Guardsmen, of and on, from when I was a company command until I retired. As a Combat Engineer company commander, with the 25th ID, I not only commanded my unit, I also was the liaison between my battalion and the state of Hawaii Combat Engineer Company. The state Combat Engineer Company, when Federally activated, became a company within the 65th Combat Engineer Bn. I also participated in the assessments of the unit. There met all the Army physical and training requirements. They were outstanding.

In later years, I had assignments in the Civil/Emergency Engineering side of the Corps of Engineers. As such I worked closely with the states during natural disasters and saw first hand how the Guard worked in Hurricanes, flooding, and earthquakes. Again, each and every time they performed in an outstanding manner.
When 9-11 occurred, I was assigned to the Chief of Engineers office, at the Pentagon. When the Guard were activated, there were several assigned to the Army Crisis Action Team (Army War Room), where I had my Engineer officers also working. The Guard worked along side the Active Army and you could not tell the difference between them. On a side note, I also met some of the Guard that were assigned to National Airport, who worked without pay for the first couple of months, following 9-11. They were not being paid, because of issues with the Army pay system for activated Guard. Even in that situation, the Guard did their job in an outstanding manner.

If Desert Storm hadn’t been such a resounding and rapid success, the men and women of the Guard and Reserve Medical Service Corps and Medical Corps would have been the main line of support saving the lives of those “Active Duty injured in the attack. I was one who mobilized many of the medical units of all types for the sandbox. They were some of the first ones activated, even when it was just Desert Shield, and often the last to return stateside after the battles were won. Do you know the havoc that is created in a rural town when a Guard or Reserve Evacuation Hospital is called to duty and many of the Doctors, Nurses, and Med Techs are pulled out of that town’s hospital.?Devastating! Do you know the impact on a Doctor’s civilian practice when he disappears for a year? So do all his patients. I never heard a single complaint, from the 64 year old Neurosurgeon who never dreamed he would be called up, to the husband, wife and two sons who were all activated. Then when it was all over our beloved President said, thanks but no thanks, we don’t need you anymore and we’re deactivating your unit. Go find another medical unit to drill with. Like medical units are over the place!

My personal experience in the maintenance field with active duty? Disappointing to say the least. I have 6 Active Duty, a year in Vietnam, Army watercraft engineer. 27 years service National Guard on Army Watercraft. I retired MSGT, on the CSM promotion list. Here's just one of many examples.
We were invited to Camp Dodge, Depot Maintenace facility. 17 days. We arrived under a lot of needless harassment by Active Duty personnel. We were given small tasks of rebuilding a couple components which we did in unheard of record time, and no failure rate. Given several complete engines, we performed our first complete teardown, inspection, cleaning and complete rebuild in a matter of one and a half days. Placed on the dyno and zero defects. It took the Active Duty personnel 4 days to rebuild an engine which blew up on the dyno. Their second one had major defects and needed a lot of re-work. They were still working on number 3 when we left for home day 17. We rebuilt 6 engines total and zero defects, plus a dozen or so sub components for spares.
Our schedule was, we were at the door when the facility was open 8am. We went straight to the tools, got them out, looked at the list to do and got to work. Active Duty arrived a little after 9am, they stood around and gossiped and drank coffee. was probably 9:30 before the tool box even got opened. They left at 11:30, came back at 1300. We sent one person to the local choke and puke and ordered a few things, came back. We took a 30 minute break and ate in the facility break room and back to work. Just like real world "civilians" do. They left at 1500, putting everything away and standing around for 15 minutes. We stayed until the facility closing time of 1700. BTW we had no failures in our rebuilding engines or components.
Of course we had an advantage. On our team, Detroit Engines West Coast factory troubleshooter, Caterpillar factory rep. Two ASE certified master mechanics. One guy who is a parts specialist for Detroit Diesel. Yes we had a couple that were not overly experienced but they got their hands dirty just like the rest of us. I was a WG-11 Marine Machinery Mechanic, and had just been promoted to MSGT, and told only to supervise, but I felt out of place and ended up rolling up my sleeves on a few pumps and a transmission.. People who actually earn a good living being a mechanic.
The second week the supervisor of the facility gave me the keys to the place. We showed up at 7am, and worked the entire day as if it was a civilian job. Our 1st Sgt insisted we do an APFT during our time, we took a half day off for that and everyone legitimately passed with by the way, including height-weight. Active Duty supervision administering the test.
Perhaps some might say we were an exception, but still we were bad mouthed by the Active Duty personnel that came there to do the same thing, and failed miserably.

I used to be that guy who complained about “Weekend Warriors” until I became an AC/RC Advisor in First Army. That is when it dawned on me that we had too high of an expectation. We expected the RC units (USAR and ANG) to be able to perform every task to the same standards as those AC counterparts, with only 39 training days a year and some of those were blocked out for state requirements.

After that I became much more of a coach and mentor than as the AC evaluator.

OneArmy and one fight! A soldier is a soldier. What an honor to have served with all three parts of the Army! Best wsihes, Larry

In my deployments the only thing I cared about was which direction the other guy’s rifle was pointing.

That is an easy question for me to answer Respect the Uniform. While i was at Ft. Hood, we trained Army Reserve and National Guard back in the 70's.

Like ALL of the military, some units are better than others.

The national guard goes through cycles -- most of the time, the Army leadership looks at the National Guard as the red-headed step-children of the army, and many National Guard units accept that role, choosing to not take themselves seriously. Other units have better leadership, high morale, maintain their equipment, and conduct serious training. During times of high OPTEMPO, the Active Army suddenly discovers that the National Guard can be useful.

Most of the time, the National Guard has inadequate quantities of equipment and whatever equipment they do have consists of obsolete or worn out hand-me-downs. It is hard for a combat arms unit to take their mission seriously when all their equipment has been declared not good enough for "the real army" to use.

Army top level leadership does things to the National Guard that no one would ever consider for the active force -- would we really take an infantry company, issue them tanks, and tell them to figure out how to use them without any training support from the Armor School or anywhere else in the active force, including the active unit they were supposed to be the "round out" for. Interestingly enough the active force was a bit surprised a year later when the former-infantry now-tank company finished annual gunnery not only as the high company in their National Guard tank battalion but well above the scores of the two active army tank battalions in the division.

During the peak OPTEMPO years of GWOT many active units adopted METL that completely ignored their branch missions in favor of door-kicking and other "more relevant" tasks. One unexpected but easily understandable result was that various National Guard units won several major national and international military competitions easily beating the active army teams that entered.