[OT] How does ANG provide CONUS Air Defence?

staff on a week or so basis to have always enough guys on active duty or what else?>

Without going into details, of which some are classified, be rest assured there is ALWAYS someone available, whether it be ANG or Navy/Marine/Air Force reserves.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. --Leonardo Da Vinci EAA # 729686 delete the word spam from email addy

Keep in mind that in the Air Guard squadrons at least 50% of the aircrew are full time guys. I'm not sure what part of the maintainers or FTS. There's more people for alert than you think since the great airline layoffs recently there's a lot more Reservist pilots available more often.

Pugs

Allen Epps wrote: [SNIP]

I've always wondered (pre-September 11) why the USA appeared to find it necessary to keep armed forces on permanent standby inside its borders?

(Post-September 11, of course, I understand it completely.)

But why was it necessary previously? Are the peons _that_ close to revolt that soldiery has to be kept on standby to suppress revolts?

I'm only slightly trolling here, it really is something I have wondered about, given that I live in a nation where it would take about a week to get an active regiment into any of the state capitals. Except for Darwin, but it's not a state capital and it's so small that the proverbial Boy Scout with pea-shooter could control it.

And all our fighter aircraft live at Richmond.

And the tripleys all live at Amberley.

Come to think of it, if the Indonesians decide to invade, that Boy Scout in Darwin might have a busy time of it!!!!!!!

Cheers, Gary B-)

G'day,

What's a tripley?

tia,

The Keeper (of too much crap!)

F-111...

The main reason that reserve and Guard units had so many people working in them and on standby in the 1950s was the fear that a BEAR would pop up having come in under the radar and nobody from NORAD would get to it in time.

After the missile units went on line and the bomber scare began to fade, the only major reason for much of the manning and activity was the very simple fact that unless set up for long term storage most military equipment will start to deteriorate and break down.

(I've been through active duty motor pools of Army equipment at night and you can actually hear things break, so I am keenly aware of it. My guys had to fix them so knew that most of the non-usage breakage was not their fault. It's just the nature of the designs and the will of nature.)

This is one way that the military has to be a good steward of what the Goverment (and hence the taxpayers) buy for us to use. Somebody's gotta keep that "$600 toilet seat" in operation with the "$30 hammer."

Cookie Sewell

read at dawn we slept....even safe neighborhoods have security guards and there are no safe neighborhoods.

somehow, i doubt a politician's toilet will ever be neglected. they are mostly full of it.

When we joke about being "peons", it's a family matter. *We* can call ourselves peons but we don't like foreigners doing so, any more than Canadians (and I'm close to being one) appreciate being called "Canucks".

As far as "supressing revolts" goes, there are from time to time those who pop up on newsgroups like talk.politics.guns and say things like, "You can't use your little popguns to fight the Army." If they stick around, they find out quickly that 1. we won't *need* a lot of guns to defeat the US Army, and

1. very few (if any) soldiers will obey orders to fire on their fellow citizens, neighbors, friends, and families in the first place. We're not Europe, Asia or the Middle East; here the citizens are armed, and that's the number one reason we're free.

The Soviet Union regularly used to fly Bear Bombers along the coastline and the Air National Guard regularly went out and escorted them. Other units were on alert to run intercepts as well from aircraft coming over the Artic and Canada.

....with F16s. What a dumbass question...

Ah, thank you!

Better than a chairful of arms! 8^)

Cheers,

The Keeper (of too much crap!)