National Guard Excels in U.S. Army Small Arms Championship

COL Randall C. And our enemies have even said we don't do it the way our doctrine wants us to, so what good is planning. BWAHAHA!

LTC Trent Klug - Yep. As the story goes, a German officer during WW2 (or was it a Soviet observation during the Cold War?) said, “One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”

My last active army assignment was with a Readiness Group -- for those who haven't had that experience, the mission of a Readiness Group is to advise and assist National Guard units in their area (the advice is mostly ignored). I was with the Armor Assistance Team at Readiness Group Atlanta, we covered Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico, and parts of Alabama and Tennessee. None of the units we worked with had the same TO&E, and especially the Cav units each had a TO&E that looked nothing like the Active Army TO&E for a Cav Troop.

Three experiences stand out as examples of the interaction between the Active Army and the reserve components, but I'll share one today

We were trying to assist a National Guard tank battalion with their mobilization plan. Part of the plan required moving each of the tank companies from their home station armories to the active army post where they would conduct mobilization training and then deploy. Each tank company had two tanks at their home armory. Those tanks had to be transported from the armories (scattered around northwest Georgia) to Fort Stewart over 300 miles to the southeast. This required expensive contracts with civilian trucking companies for heavy equipment hauling and permits from the state department of transportation for the oversize loads.

Surprisingly enough the state DOT actually understood mobilization. Part of their permitting process was set up to coordinate the permits in terms of mobilization days to avoid units moving on the same roads at the same time. The NG tank battalion was required to be ready to move their tanks by M+2, which wasn't any problem. BUT they couldn't get a permit for the move until M+4, because there was another unit that would be traveling the same road with oversize equipment on M+2 & M+3. We didn't know of any other heavy unit that would be so we checked with the state DOT. The reason we didn't know about the other unit was that the other unit was US Army Reserve and we only dealt with the National Guard. It turned out that the unit that would be using the road was a USAR Transportation unit. They had the oversize permits for their Heavy Equipment Transporters.

Yes. We had to wait to have civilian trucks transport the tanks because a USAR unit with HETs was going to be on the road to Fort Stewart...
... and they were going to be E M P T Y !

The Army could have saved many thousands of dollars and gotten the tanks to their mobilization station at least two days sooner if they would just have the USAR HETs pick up the tanks on their way. But, of course, that couldn't happen. We found that it was absolutely impossible to get the Army, National Guard Bureau, and the Reserve Command to all talk to each other.

But we did find that the HETs were needed at Fort Stewart, because they were going to be used to transport those same tanks from Fort Stewart to the port at Savanna GA when they were ready to ship out.