WASHINGTON: “Trust, but verify.” On Gus Hargett’s last day at the National Guard Association of the United States, that’s the advice the long-time NGAUS president gave his successor, Roy Robinson, on dealing with regular active-duty leaders. “I think these guys want to do the right thing,” said Hargett, particularly praising the Army Chief of Staff,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.New Army mounted system won’t play favorites when it comes to C5ISR, EW and A-PNT
The CMOSS Mounted Form Factor will facilitate tech insertion for new capabilities while co-existing with the Mounted Family of Computer Systems.
WASHINGTON: Who is Mark Green, really? Donald Trump‘s new nominee for Army Secretary has much more experience in uniform and in government than Trump’s first try, West Point-educated billionaire Vincent Viola. Even some Democrats I talked with noted his “impressive resume.” But that doesn’t mean Green’s confirmation will be easy. Yes, Green knows the Army. He…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: The powerful National Guard Association of the US spent a year and a half battling the last Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, over everything from Apache gunships to readiness. NGAUS president Gus Hargett has a very different take on Gen. Mark Milley, who replaced Odierno August 14. “I found him to be…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: A major battle is brewing between the regular Army and National Guard. While Congress has frozen the planned transfer of the Guard’s Apache gunships to active-duty units, the Army is already taking steps that may make it much harder to keep the helicopters in the Guard. The Aviation Restructure Initiative calls for all Apaches to be moved from the Guard…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATED: Includes Link To NDAA Language Filed Late Tuesday; SASC Weapons Summary CAPITOL HILL: If you want to get some idea just how hard it will be to reduce the yearly increases in pay and benefits that have marked the last 13 years, look at the new defense policy bill out today. The senior leadership of the…
By Colin Clark
After more than two months of escalating conflict, the powerful National Guard Association of the US downshifted today and took a markedly more conciliatory tone towards the Army leaders it had been savaging just last week. As Army Sec. John McHugh and Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno testified before the House Armed Services Committee,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Enterprise-wide training: the Army’s $3.5B program for multi-service combat readiness
The competition for Warfighter Training and Readiness Solutions will bring together training networks, combat training centers and live ranges across the DoD enterprise.
WASHINGTON: Late Friday, the powerful National Guard Association of the US escalated the already bitter conflict between the Guard community and regular Army leaders by another notch — and they did so in response to something an Army general told Breaking Defense. On Tuesday, Breaking Defense published an interview I’d done with Maj. Gen. John Rossi,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The battle between the regular Army and the National Guard, which we all knew would blow up one of these days, has blown up. At 3:30 this afternoon, the spokesman of the 54 state and territorial Guard commanders, Kentucky Adjutant General Ed Tonini, raised the standard of revolt against the active-duty leadership who had, he said, “slammed their…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The National Guard has lost the budget battle inside the administration. But it has hardly lost the war. “We are disappointed by today’s budget preview, but we are not surprised. Nor are we defeated,” declared retired Maj. Gen. Gus Hargett, president of influential National Guard Association of the United States, in a statement released shortly…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: When the armed services come here to make their case to Congress, the Army tends to be the elephant: huge, grey, and kind of clumsy. But this year, as the regular Army heads into what will likely be a bitter battle over fiscal 2015 funding with the Army National Guard, the service’s leadership…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The war hasn’t started, yet. But unless the regular Army and the National Guard can resolve their differences behind closed doors before the president’s budget request is publicly submitted sometime in February — and prospects are dim — there will be open, brutal conflict on Capitol Hill on a scale not seen since the 1990s.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Both chambers of Congress have resoundingly rejected the administration’s proposed cuts to the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve – but the language that the House passed is so sweeping that it may inadvertently block the modernization of the very Guard and Reserve forces it was written to protect, according to Hill sources…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The regular Army and the National Guard are increasingly at loggerheads — not because they don’t respect each other, but because both want to protect their funding, their mission, and their people from zero-sum budget cuts. We asked the chiefs of the two leading advocacy groups involved to present their very different views for the way…
By Gus Hargett