AUSTIN, Texas -- Time and money were the hot topics at the first Army National Guard 8 & 28 Commanders Conference hosted by First Army at Austin's Camp Mabry last weekend.
The words popped up again and again as senior Guard leaders discussed how to make the most of limited quantities of both to provide the readiness training their units want and need.
"Training readiness is not an option. If you've got the structure, you'd better get it trained and ready," said Lt. Gen. Michael Tucker, commanding general of First Army, the unit whose primary mission is the training of Army National Guard and Army Reserve units.
Named "8 & 28" for the Army Guard's eight divisions and 28 infantry brigade combat teams, the conference brought together the generals and colonels who command those units, the division command sergeants major, plus a host of senior representatives from First Army, National Guard Bureau, Army Reserve, and U.S. Forces Command and other active-duty Army units.
"This is an opportunity for commanders across the National Guard … to get together and share ideas about how to generate and sustain readiness in our Army," said Maj. Gen. James "Red" Brown, a Texas Army National Guard Soldier currently serving as First Army deputy commanding general for support. "[Working within fiscal constraints] is a big part of this. And, because of the limited available training time we have, we have to maximize every opportunity to train our Soldiers and leaders at every echelon."
Maximizing every opportunity to train is how First Army proposes to make the most of the Guard units' time and money. "Maximizing" may entail multiple National Guard units training together, National Guard units training with Reserve and active-duty units, creating new cost-efficient training exercises, or stepping up the intensity of existing exercises.
"Money's not falling out of trees, so what [training] we do get, it's got to be good," Tucker said, adding that he wants Soldiers going through training to take their boots off at night and say, 'This is dang good training. This is worth my time. I've increased my confidence in my leaders, my training and my equipment, and I'm a better Soldier today because I'm at this exercise.'
Tucker told conferees he was open to any suggestions.
"I don't care who gets the credit," he said. "If we hit increased training readiness, we're a go."
The Army's Total Force Policy, enacted in 2012, mandates the integration of its active-duty component and its reserve component -- the National Guard and Reserve -- into a "Total Force" and directs the components to train together. As the coordinator of reserve component training, First Army is eager to help build relationships between Guard and Reserve units and their assigned active-duty "partners."
"I'm at the very beginning stages. I just met my counterpart, who's the 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry commander [at Fort Hood, Texas]," said Col. David Webb, commander of the Texas Army National Guard's 56th Infantry Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Worth. "The attitude is there -- the willingness, the desire on both sides. That's half the battle right there."
The partnered brigades will be able to help and learn from each other, Webb added.
"In my personal experience," Webb said, "any time I've ever worked with active-duty, whether it's on deployments or what-have-you, they've honestly always elevated my level. Whenever I'm around those people who do this every single day as a profession, they tend to raise me up to a little bit higher level."
Partnering reserve component and active-duty units is a "'This makes so much sense, why haven't we been doing it forever?' kind of thing," said Col. Andrew Harris, deputy commander of the Vermont Army National Guard's 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Mountain) out of Jericho. "Wouldn't it be great if we could get to that end state where everybody just views the components as seamless?"
Partnering has challenges, though, said Harris, referring to a map of Army National Guard units that shows concentrations especially in the eastern and southern continental United States.
"[Active-duty units are] spread out a little differently," Harris said. "I think some elements can naturally partner in the way that's being discussed, just because of geographic proximity; others are going to have a little more difficulty doing it at a really high level. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think anything we can do to narrow the perceived gap in what we are as an organization -- active, Reserve, Guard -- is a benefit."
Thanks to their formal partner assignments, most of the National Guard brigades have already started reaching out to their active-duty partners, said Col. Damian Donahoe, commander of the Iowa Army National Guard's 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, out of Boone.
"The other piece that really needs to happen next is how we work better with Army Reserve," Donahoe said. "That's a piece that historically has been challenging, simply because we don't always take the time to find those synergy events or to even try to understand each other a little better. There are great opportunities there."
In the past, Donahoe's unit has trained with Reserve units, but only because "somebody knew somebody," he said, and realized they could share resources to make a collective training event work better for everyone.
"It's much more ad hoc when you work through relationships," Donahoe said, "rather than actually using an opportunity like a conference like this to see what is out there. Many times units miss out on participating simply because we don't know who is going to be there when, and how we could benefit from sharing those resources."
First Army has a lot of ideas to leverage the Army National Guard's time and money, Tucker said, but he is only offering options and suggestions to the unit leaders.
"You're the ones who have to say, 'Hey, slow down there, cowboy, take a knee. That sounds good, and it reads good, but it just won't work, and let me tell you why.' But I can tell you this: we are 100 percent committed to helping you achieve unit training readiness in your formations."
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