In article ,
(B2431) writes:
From: "Kevin Brooks"


"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message


By contrast, the flying ANG units contained large numbers of full-time
specialists,

Ahh! The old, "you gotta be full time to be a real specialist" or to have a
good unit bit, huh? Ed, I have service time in the active component, the
reserve components as a part-timer, and one reserve component as a
full-timer, and from where I sit your argument does not carry much water.

A maintainer who only does his monthlies
and 2 weeks is nowhere near as skilled as one who does it full time. When the
ANG flies aircraft during the week the part timers are not there to fix them.
Just what would you do with an aircraft flown on Saturday that has a
malfunction that will take 4 days to fix? That's why the full timers are there.
I have seen 3 day repairs turn into 5 day repairs because they kept changing
the persons doing the job.

This is not an attempt to slam the Guard's maintainers, but 64 days a year is
not enough to keep your skills up.

If that were the only time you were applying those skills, that's
true. From what I've seen though, in units that require a high level
of tech skills, like a flying Squadron, or a Combat Engineer unit,
that the maintainers & operators are folks who are also doing it in
civilian life. Since Guard units also have a lower turnover in
personnel, and, usually, equipment, their folks tend to be more
familiar with the particuar quirks of a particular system than the
Regulars, on average. Which isn't to say that things can be drawn
out, or the job gets passed around. Of course, Guard and Reserve
units often tend to be on the dirty side of the Supply Stick, as well,
either because they are operating older equipment, or one-off stuff
that there isn't enough of a demand for in Regualr units (Our Guard
and Reserve Engineer units all got a batch of Unimogs about a decade
back that they haven't really used. They're aren't enough of them to
be particularly maintainable, and theu're too small for most of our
engineering tasks, and too large to make good Tonka trucks. Or, for
that matter, the New Mexico (It think, it might have been Arizona)
Army National Guard ended up with the U.S. Roland prototypes.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster