Zero and the Defense Department in their ultimate wisdom is dumping all helicopter assets in the National Guard and is replacing them with a few aging Blackhawks. The Army is taking all of the Apaches for themselves.

So much for a check to Federal Power and our national defense. *And yes, I know the Guard is a federalized force, but it's still under State control and direction. And can be used to check a run away Federal government in the worse case scenario.

Maybe the government could dump the drone program that's suppose to watch "us" and give us our defense capability back.

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/01/budgets-betrayal-national-guard-fights-to-keep-apache-gunships/

Guard is a lot harder to control then the Active Mil.

Can't have the states able to repel the feds if push comes to chove.

[/tinfoilhat]

sounds about right to me

It's going to be a costly decision, too:

2007 Greay Beard study (unpublished) estimated that ARNG formations on the aggregate, cost approximately 31% of Active forces. (EE, MM, SS PEG dollars - Excluding OCO/T10 OPTEMPO, in which case they become equivalent)

This is a dumb decision, and likely to have some backlash in the Legislature. Recall in 2004 "Hill Billy Armor", in which it became clear that the AC was not equipping the ARNG properly, leading to Guard units deploying with old or insufficient quantities of equipment. This led to a push from 2005 through 2008 to equip the Guard to S1 levels of readiness, and in 2008 exceeded $13B in new procurement for the Guard.

It's going to happen again...NGAUS is going to push this issue in the Congress, and the Army is going to be forced to buy new stuff for the Guard.

IMHO, this could all be avoided if the ARNG was given its own procurement appropriation (not NGREA), for which it POMs and executes according to its own equipping priorities. Procurement is the only appropriation that the Guard does not have, and since the ARNG's requirements are commensurate with those of the Active Army, buying power would be preserved if such an appropriation was made available for COMPO 2 to execute on its own behalf.

Can the Guard at least keep all the anti-air capability?  

yep. Another move on the board from Zero towards trying to control it all.  Thank God we have dancing with the nitwits and American False Idol on to distract us from the power grab.  I fell much better now

Gets to kill more jobs, too!

The Army needs a new attack helicopter program to compete with the F-35 and LCS and if it don't cost $1 trillion it ain't shit.

It's a twofer! Reduce NG forces and save money by not ordering more Apaches.

I was thinking the same thing. The exact same thing.

The remaining Blackhawks are going to be maintained by a Chinese company named "some ting wong".

FPNI....