ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

As it has done for more than 380 years, the Army National Guard will meet the mission, but the author of a new paper cautions that citizen-soldiers could be “overworked” if the component is made to mirror the Regular Army. 

Examining National Guard 4.0, a program launched in 2017, author Maj. Roye Locklear Jr. lays out the evolution of the Guard’s organizational framework since 1636 and the modern-day challenges faced by the Army’s second-largest component. 

Modernization of the National Guard and the Army Reserve is critical to balancing the Total Army as it transforms to meet the demands of future combat, said Gen. Andrew Poppas, commander of Army Forces Command.

Soldiers from the reserve components continue to deploy for missions around the world and respond to domestic missions, such as hurricane response in Florida, but “we’re also racing to meet another demand from the Total Army,” Poppas said Oct. 10 in remarks at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2022 Annual Meeting and Exposition.

In her second year as Army secretary, Christine Wormuth faces many challenges, but she is also upbeat.

“I think the Army is in a good place,” Wormuth said in an interview in the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2022–2023 Green Book.

Pandemic-fueled learning loss, a shrinking pool of eligible young people and a generation that is less likely to have a personal connection to the military have combined to create an “unprecedented” recruiting season, the chief of the National Guard Bureau said. 

National Guard recruiters have described “just how difficult the current recruiting challenges are that they’re facing,” Gen. Daniel Hokanson said during a Sept. 20 media roundtable. “For many of them, it's unprecedented in their time as a recruiter.” 

The National Guard has “brought hope to America when it needed it the most,” the Army chief of staff said Aug. 27.

Speaking in Columbus, Ohio, before the National Guard Association of the United States’ General Conference and Exhibition, Gen. James McConville heaped praise on the Guard. The Regular Army doesn’t “go anywhere or do anything without the National Guard,” he said. “We cannot do what we do as an Army without the National Guard.”

The world keeps changing, but the in-depth analysis in a 2016 report whose main theme was the importance of harmony among the Army’s three components remains relevant, the authors of a new paper assert.