Monday, August 10, 2020

The Guard Divisions Return

After reorganizing the Army National Guard into brigade combat teams to rotate through Iraq and Afghanistan to take some of the load off of the active Army, the Guard is reforming its divisions in case of combat against Russia or China. Let's check in with the Wayback Machine for my view on that in the late 1990s.

This is a good precaution in an era of great power competition:

The Army National Guard will move most of its brigades under the command of its eight division headquarters as it reorganizes its fighting formations to give the force more combat power and some soldiers new career opportunities, officials said.

I wrote in Army magazine about putting our Guard divisions into our war plans back when only enhanced separate brigades were even remotely considered.

To be fair, the whole war on terror thing interrupted my prescience.