My understanding was the origin of the SOF to Guard was back in the early 90's when all Support units were transferred to the Reserves whereas all Combat units went Guard.
Clinton was in power and, as you know FF, it takes a village...
You're entirely correct. We inherited some 11th Group guys and while I understand the trait of most men to look back and maybe remember things as better than they were, I can say that talking to them led me to conclude to that the NG has no business in controlling SOF units of any form. They had far more training opportunities, even right up to the day they were disbanded, than the Guard. They never had a home station AT, 20th had so many they had a complex built for that purpose in AL. More money, less politics...and I can speak about Guard politics. The States don't appreciate SF units, many of them openly hate the Groups, and the States used to (maybe they still do) actively block/ steal USASOC funds and USASOC directed training. The States have the power, and they exercised it, to prevent the Groups from jumping or conducting higher risk training (fast-roping and demo) under the guise of "safety." They would routinely block our requests for aviation support because of "inadequate funding" and then we'd find out those same units spent their weekends boring holes in the sky instead of anything meaningful. When the AG for FL found out that we were sending guys out on a JCET and he had ZERO say in it he blew a gasket. I think my old unit had 3 IG inspections in a year. Seriously.
I could go on.
"Well, Free, this was back in Clinton's day, the GWOT has changed the Guard." It has? We'll know in 5-10 years after all of this budgetary nonsense has died down and every unit has felt the financial crunch. There is an inversely proportial relationship between funding and politics and that will show (again) in a few years.
They never could keep us....on the DZ and out of the trees that is. Cue chute recovery with chainsaw noise.
We were always stuck with an AFRES -141 unit out of Memphis and those guys could barely find FL, much less a DZ. The AD -130 crews from Little Rock were good though. The biggest problem is they couldn't grasp that some soldier knew more about jumping than the aircrew.
"This is a 20 second DZ and..."
"How do you know?"
"Well, it was surveyed and at 130 kts. the jump run is approximately 20 seconds."
"In what airframe?"
"Um, 130 kts. is 130 kts, it doesn't matter what airframe."
"Leave the flying to us. We'll tell you when you can jump."
