I tend to agree with Inch: we must not rush to judge. I am loath to second-guess the man on the trigger unless I am sure I know what I'm talking about: none of us really do right now. There is an almost automatic assumption that he was a reckless cowboy-how do we know this?
As far as the pilot being USAIRNG, it is not necessarily a reflection of his skill level, good or bad. He may have been an ex-USAF regular, or he may be a shoe salesman. He may have combat time over Iraq and Afgh, or he may never have fired a shot in anger. He may belong to a very active sqn (some AIRNG Sqns have a NORAD role) or his sqn may fly only what it needs to stay current. He may be a great pilot who made a mistake, or a turd who should be flying a desk.
Further, how can anyboy seroiusly draw a connection between Tarnak Farms and this incident, except that both pilots were USAIRNG? There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of good US missions flown for every ****-up like this one. Keep things in proportion.
Now, to the issue of how well trained the ARNG is (I can't really comment on the AIRNG). ARNG soldiers attend the same DP1 as the Active Army counterparts. After that, they will normally go back to take Active Army courses to increase their quals, but the ARNG has been working extensively on distributed training. For example, ARNG Bradley unit training can be supported by mobile Bradley simulators that are brought to the ARNG training centre on weekends, instead of having to haul the Guardsmen across the state to the MATES site where the Bradleys are stored.
During the course of a year, the average "traditional" ARNG soldier (="Class A" Res) parades one weekend a month and about two weeks each summer. On this basis, they do considerably less annual training time than our Res soldiers do. This is particularly noticeable at the senior leader level: our Res COs and Bde Comds put in hours that usually surprise their ARNG counterparts. It is not hard to imagine what becomes of skills learned at the School of Arm/Branch: they fade (as they would in any Army). I have been told by an ARNG officer that the Active Army considers ARNG officer training to be equivalent with Active Officers only to the rank of Capt: after that a gap begins to open. My limited contact with Guard soldiers suggests to me that they are probably not as good at fieldcraft and soldier skills as our Res soldiers, but I could be wrong (anybody want to chime in here........dglad?...). USARNG types seem to be universally impressed with the quality of our Res soldiers.
Now, this is not a static situation. The US Army has been forced to draw very heavily on the USARNG and USAR in a manner that was probavly never envisioned short of a general war. For example, here in Afgh, TF PHOENIX, which trains the Afghan Army, is almost all ARNG. The result is that there are now thousands of Guardsmen with recent refresher training and operational experience. As well, the US Army has seen quite clearly that it has some problems in the USARNG and USAR, and is working on fixing them.
Cheers.
