The End of the Draft When the last Guardsmen were released from active duty in December 1969, a gradual process of "Vietnamization" had begun, designed to lessen United States military presence in Vietnam, especially in ground combat. But domestic opposition to the war increased, and a convenient target was the draft. Early in 1973 the draft, in effect almost continuously since the end of World War II, ended. For almost thirty years, both the active and reserve components had relied on a large pool of young men who were legally obligated to serve in the armed forces. When that legal obligation was removed, military recruiters found it difficult to fill their quotas. Between 1974 and 1979, both Army and Air National Guard strength declined.
In the 1970s, National Guard recruiters turned their attention to one source which had often been overlooked in the past: minorities, particularly blacks. The integration of the active components had begun in 1948, when most of American society was still strictly segregated. During the Korean war black and white troops fought side by side in integrated units, and the 40th and 45th Infantry Divisions had blacks assigned to them in Korea.
The Guard Integrates Black National Guard units had survived since Reconstruction in a few states. In 1946, New Jersey became the first state to officially integrate its National Guard, two years before the integration of the active Army. But many states in the Deep South with large black populations had no blacks at all in their National Guards. This could have been a problem during the civil unrest which sometimes accompanied desegregation in the 1950s and 60s. In 1956, President Eisenhower federalized the entire Arkansas National Guard for a month to prevent the segregationist governor from using it to stop the court-ordered integration of Little Rock High School. The scene was replayed in 1962 during the desperation of the University of Mississippi. In both cases, Guardsmen obeyed the President and helped to enforce the law.
Prodded by the National Guard Bureau, the states began to recruit more blacks and minorities, a process hastened by the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965. By 1984, minorities made up one quarter of the Army National Guard, and almost 10 percent of its officer corps.
Women, too, found a place in the National Guard in the 1970s. Because the Militia Act of 1792 and the National Defense Act of 1916 had both referred specifically to males, legislation was required to allow women to enlist. The first female in the National Guard was a nurse, commissioned in the Air National Guard in 1956. For the next 12 years, nurses were the only women in the Guard. A 1968 law authorized prior-service enlisted women to join the Guard, but the numbers recruited were small. In 1971 non-prior-service women were allowed to enlist. As all branches of the military began opening previously-restricted jobs to women, the number of women in both the Army and Air National Guard rose dramatically.
A Partner in the Total Force The impact of the "All-Volunteer Force" on the National Guard was not limited to minority recruitment. For the Army Guard especially, the end of conscription signaled its entry into a new partnership with the Active Army. The Air Guard had been integrated into the workings of the active Air Force for almost 20 years; now the Army, cut off from its source of cheap manpower, was forced to turn to its reserve components.
The "Total Force" policy was first articulated in 1970. In 1974, a program of "affiliation" between the Army's active and reserve combat arms units began. By 1980, all Army Guard divisions and brigades were spending their Annual Training with active Army partner units. The "Roundout" program, which began in 1976, assigned Army Guard units to augment Active Army units in case of mobilization. In order to train and, if necessary, mobilize effectively, the Army Guard began to get more modern weapons and equipment than ever before in its history.
Opportunities for realistic training increased. The first Army National Guard units went overseas to train in 1977. The first battalion-sized overseas deployment was in 1980, and in 1983 the first Army Guard unit deployed overseas with its equipment. In the winter of 1986, some 8,000 Guardsmen, including the entire 32nd Brigade from Wisconsin, were in Germany for REFORGER, NATO's major military exercise. Other overseas deployments sent Army Guard units to Korea for Operation TEAM SPIRIT and to Central America, where Guard and Reserve engineers joined forces to conduct major road-building exercises throughout the region.
The Air Guard continued to deploy world-wide to support Air Force operations, and in the 1980's those operations included combat missions. Air Guard tankers refueled our bombers when the United States conducted air strikes against Libya in 1986. When the United States invaded Panama in December 1989 to oust military strongman Manuel Noriega, Air Guard C-130 units, already in-country on a regular rotation, were quickly integrated into Operation "JUST CAUSE." A-7 aircraft from the 180th (Ohio) and 114th (South Dakota) Tactical Fighter Groups, also in the theater on a regular rotation, were the first from the Air National Guard to fly combat missions since the Vietnam War. Air Guard C-5 and C-141A transports in New York and Mississippi were alerted for the first of multiple supply missions to Panama.
War in Southwest Asia A little more than six months later, Iraq invaded the oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait. When Iraq positioned troops on the border with Saudi Arabia, King Fahd appealed to the United States for help. Air Guard transport planes began flying missions on 7 August 1990, the date United States troops began deploying to Saudi Arabia. They would soon be followed by contingents from other nations.
In this first real test of the Total Force Policy, Army Guard units were on active duty a little more than two weeks after Operation DESERT SHIELD began. A majority of the United States Army's combat service support units were now located in the reserve components, and the majority of the first Army Guard units to be mobilized were transportation, quartermaster, and military police units. Later, two field artillery brigades arrived in the theater, and three "Roundout" brigades were mobilized but not deployed.
Army Guard units were still arriving in the the Persian Gulf in January 1991 as the offensive against Iraq, DESERT STORM, was launched by the Allied air forces. In all, 62,411 Army National Guard personnel were in active federal service, 37,848 of them in Southwest Asia. Women made up 10% of the total.
The Air Guard's participation in this largest mobilization since the Korean War took a slightly different form than in past mobilizations. The Air Force called upon the Air National Guard for units, such as the 169th Tactical Fighter Group (South Carolina) and 174th Tactical Fighter Wing (New York), which flew hundreds of combat sorties in the air campaign which preceded the February 23rd ground offensive. Missions of Nevada's 152nd Tactical Reconnaissance Group were the first to reveal Iraq's deliberate spilling of oil into the Persian Gulf.
But in a new twist, the Air Force also called for the Air Guard to provide individuals, making this the first mobilization in which volunteerism played a major role. In all, more than 12,000 Air Guard men and women served during the Gulf War.
The End of the Cold War As National Guard units were helping to liberate Kuwait, the Cold War was coming to an end. The Berlin Wall, whose construction in 1961 had put thousands of Guardsmen on active duty for a year, was torn down as Germans and Eastem Europeans demanded freedom and an end to Communist rule. Finally, Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union itself, which quickly broke apart into its ethnic components.
The Cold War with the Soviet Union shaped United States military policy for almost half a century, and its end brought profound changes. Both active and reserve forces had enjoyed lavish funding during most of the 1980s, but the Soviet Union's military and economic collapse removed many of the justifications for high military spending.
In the early 1990s both the Army and the Army National Guard were reduced in strength, and the United States Congress once again took up a familiar debate: what should be the mix between active and reserve forces? Should the Army National Guard include mainly combat support units, as the active Army has proposed, or should the Guard retain its traditional high level of combat arms units? Similar questions were being debated in 1916, before the passage of the National Defense Act which did so much to create today's National Guard. Almost 80 years later, they are still being debated.
An Enduring American Institution The National Guard is one of the oldest continuing institutions in this country. It is many years older than the United States itself, many years older than the United States Army, and a great many years older than the United States Air Force.
The citizen-soldiers who make up the National Guard have fought in every major American war since the Pequot War in Connecticut in 1637. War has changed a great deal since 1637, and today's National Guard is trained to serve in a high-technology environment, using complex weapons and equipment. But the principles which underlie Guard service are the same as they were in 1636: to become full-time military professionals if the need arises.
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