Active Duty vs National Guard Green Berets (Part 2)
So individually, virtually no difference. At an organizational level it’s a different story. First, you need to understand how different the NG can be (from both AD and the Reserves). It obviously varies from state to state, but Guard units are notorious for being undermanned, under-resourced, and chock full of nepotism. The ‘good ol’ boy’ culture is alive and well, and that’s not always a bad thing. But in a community as purposefully insular as SOF, overlaying an additional strata of insulation can be burdensome and I’ve heard of countless tales of favoritism and partiality that you just don’t get on AD. It happens on AD, but it can be on a whole different level in the Guard. This is especially true for officers and the competition for commands and key billets. Very political and unpredictable.
The tyranny of time is real. AD units struggle to maintain the full depth and breadth of skillsets that are expected of them. Individual training, collective training, unit level stuff…there is just so much that needs to get done. This is doubly so for MFF and dive teams. Now imagine trying to do that on 80% less time, where your training resources and personnel are geographically dispersed. It’s absolutely unreasonable to expect that they would be the same. Officially, NG SF units are assigned the same mission sets, the same core competencies, the same deployment types, and the same operational expectations There is no official taxonomy of preparedness, but there is certainly an understanding of this dynamic. This isn’t to say that say that NG units are seen as ‘less than’ or deficient or JV, but there is absolutely a recognition of the likely limitations.
In the early days of the GWOT a NG SF unit was tasked to serve as the CJSOTF HQ in Afghanistan, not the entire unit just a reinforced staff to run the CJSOTF HQ mission for a standard duration. This was a couple of years into the fight so plenty of time to get up to speed. During the pre-deployment certification process it was clear that they were not up to the task. They were undermanned, unorganized, and overwhelmed. There were certainly some guys that were individually woefully ill-prepared, but organizationally they were simply not up to the task. Most guys were great dudes; willing but just not able. We had to delay the RIP/TOA and rally a robust augmentation team of AD guys in key billets just to get them out the door. We have since invested a tremendous of amount of energy and resources to avoid repeating that scenario (and have largely accomplished our goal) but that institutional memory runs deep. That’s a reality.
So, officially ND and AD are the same. This is certainly true at the individual level. If you were to put 10 NG and 10 AD guys into a room together you likely wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. But if you put 10 NG units and 10 AD units, even at the ODA level, into a training scenario/full mission profile then you would almost certainly be able to notice differences. Sometimes only subtle differences, and sometimes only discernable to the trained eye, but you would almost certainly see the differences. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that there are some missions that are actually better suited for NG teams. If the mission is to train a partner nation police force and you have an ODA made up of majority LEO, then they would be ideal for that mission. If you had an infrastructure mission and you had an ODA with a bunch of engineers and contractors and craftsmen then they would be ideal. But that’s a product of personnel, not a component of the organizational dynamics.
So, now you know. I should note that I never served in the Guard so I’m not an expert and I likely missed some key stuff. It can also be very unit/state dependent so there likely isn’t one single correct answer. I’ll ask my NG brethren to add to my assessment. Hopefully we can get a near complete accounting in this one post and simply point guys here instead of this slow trickle of whataboutism that we seem to endure repeatedly. I should also note that many of you are putting the cart waaaaay before the horse. You might dedicate a few months to prep and see how you respond physically to the rigor the mission set demands before you hang your whole future on the prospect.
