Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 39

SUSTAINING THE ARNG

The war dividend of leadership, knowledge,
and capabilities is critical to the future of the
ARNG. We must protect our investment in
our junior leaders by guiding, encouraging, and
affirming them as they proceed up the ranks.

Generate and Sustain
Individual and Unit Readiness
At a minimum, ARNG soldiers must be
individually ready (for example, qualified in
their military occupational specialty [MOS],
physically fit, and able to be away from their
family). Units must be proficient at platoon
level and staffs must be proficient at all levels. For our squads and platoons, this means
mastering the fundamentals. Can they operate as a team? Can they shoot, move, and
communicate? For staffs, proficiency means
being masters of planning processes such
as design and the military decisionmaking
process, orders production, and especially
of information networks and systems that
support mission command.
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2014

Meeting identified training objectives
within a modified ARFORGEN cycle is
crucial. Individual and unit readiness begin
and end with the commander and depend
on training. The commander is accountable for and must be the resident expert on
training management. However, continuous
deployments have limited opportunities for
junior leaders to gain training management
experience. Inexperienced commanders must
learn to employ training methods for collective training events to mitigate the effects of
fewer resources, fewer opportunities, and less
combat experience.
First, the ARNG must acknowledge that
requirements exceed training time available.
Therefore, the ARNG and the state National
Guards should prioritize training requirements and accept risk by waiving requirements that do not support the commander’s
unit status report—commanders prepare
and submit unit status reports to document
unit readiness, according to Army Regulation

U.S. Army soldiers
assigned to Troop
C ,1st Squadron
278th Armored
Cavalry Regiment,
Tennessee Army
National Guard,
participate in base
defense operations
and entry control
point training, 4
January 2010.
(U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Russell
Lee Klika)

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