The National Guard and Army Reserve need continued investment to outcompete America’s adversaries, the components’ top leaders testified April 30 on Capitol Hill.

“Our nation’s investment in the National Guard comes at a pivotal moment,” said Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau. “Our strategic competitors are seeking advantages in every domain, [including] land, sea, air space and cyber. If we are to compete and deter successfully, and, if necessary, prevail in combat, we must invest in our people.”

In response, the Army is undergoing a “once-in-a-generation transformation,” said Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, chief of the Army Reserve and commanding general of Army Reserve Command.

Hokanson and Daniels, along with leaders from the other reserve components, testified before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee during a hearing on the fiscal 2025 budget request for National Guard and reserve forces.

The Army’s fiscal 2025 request projects an Army National Guard troop strength of 325,000 and an Army Reserve strength of 175,800.

Amid “the most challenging recruiting environment in decades,” Daniels said, “the Army Reserve’s end strength has remained above the fiscal year ’24 ... strength objective.”

The Guard and Reserve continue to push for duty status reform, which would ensure that reserve component service members who perform the same duties as active-duty troops receive comparable benefits. The reform “would streamline the process significantly” and “ensure that we no longer have disparity between service members,” Hokanson said.

In terms of readiness, access to health care is one of the biggest challenges the Guard faces, Hokanson said. “We have about 30,000 Guardsmen that don't have health care. We need them 24/7, not just for their overseas deployments but … emergencies occur in a community, [and] anytime we need them to be medically ready,” he said. “If they don't have health care or access to health care, then they can’t be ready, and then they can’t perform the job that we’ve trained them to do.”

To prepare for the future fight, the Guard will continue to deepen its ties with U.S. allies, particularly through the State Partnership Program, which pairs state Guards with a partner country, Hokanson said.

“We’ve actually spoken with a lot of former neutral countries,” he said. “Sweden and Finland … became members of the State Partnership Program, Switzerland recently submitted an application to be a state partner. We’ve also talked to other neutral countries yet to be named, but they have all expressed an interest that they need to develop a capability based on what they saw [when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022].”

Ensuring that the Guard and Reserve have sufficient funding is essential to the future fight, Hokanson said in written testimony to the subcommittee.

“The 2025 Department of Defense budget request makes responsible choices to prioritize operational readiness and take care of people, continuing to build a Joint Force that is lethal, resilient, survivable, agile, and responsive,” he said. “If we fail to modernize our equipment and force design adequately, we increase the risk of sending America’s sons and daughters into large-scale combat operations with equipment and formations that may not be fully interoperable with the active duty forces we serve alongside. “