and get one free. or, buy a blackberry curve 3g for $49.99 and get one free. next on this week in defense news, the first four star chief and the national guard welcome to this week in defense news, i'm vago muradian. today we're focusing exclusively on the national guard, an integral part of the u.s. arms forced that has bourne a burden in combat operations since 2001. a decade of war has challenged the national guard like never before. tens of thousands were called up after 9/11 and thousands of troops in iraq were members of the guard. no longer derided at weekend warriors, the guard's 470 soldiers and airmen measure up to active duty forces and integral to army and air force rotations in iraq and afghanistan. but suicide and divorce rates are rising, the strain on civilian employers is papable and there is need for disaster assistance that is unabated. now as congress and the military begin to prepare for life after iraq and afghanistan, pressure is mountaining on the guard again. with active duty force cuts appearing ever more likely, the guard's operational tempo could increase again. here to talk about the future of a force that traces the history back to 1636, is the first four star chief of the national guard, general craig mckinley. we're honored to have you on the show. >> thanks, vago, it's a pleasure to be here. >> over the past ten years the guard has endured something it was never designed to do, which was to sustain operational deployments to iraq and auvergne a back to back basis. what is the impact of these deployments on the guard? >> most of us are looking at the guard from a cold war model. most of us grew up in the cold war. the size was set for a large conflict with the former soviet union. i'm not sure that the guard wasn't designed for these conflicts that we are in today. the founding fathers believed we needed a community-based force, which the guard has been for, as you say, almost four centuries now. but these two wars have created a climate by which most guardsmen have served, over half have served now, and at the force of about 460,000 are continuing to serve at a rate that is unprecedented it. hasn't created any types of gaps or weaknesses in our forces. we still provide services to our state, territories in our district. the governors of our states require the services of the national guard quite frequently and this force is resilient and has done a magnificent job over the last decade. >> but do you think from a recruitment and a retention standpoint, you can sustain this pace of operations going into 2015 as folks are saying through the afghanistan mission and then obviously large numbers of troops may still be required, for example, in iraq where large sizable numbers of troops may beyond 2013? >> senior duty lead erdship are asking -- leadership are asking those questions and would you tell you that all of the indicators that for the foreseeable future the national guard can provide a force of 50,000 to 60,000 airmen and army guardsmen continually. that's what we've become over the last ten years, a force that wept from a strategic reserve to an operational reserve, national guard. and right now we are set if we can get our dwell rate, as general casey would talk about, to about a one to five. we think we can sustain this for the foreseeable future. >> where are you on your dwell rate currently? >> depends on the mission set or supplying missions to the air force or army but at average we're a one to two and one to four ratio. some of our units are at a one to five. but most army guard units are down to the one and two and a half to three and general casey is working closely with us to get that dwell to a point where we can sustain over time the force at its present rate. >> how do you balance that young and yang? you have specialties that are in need? >> we do. and that's the balance achieved over the last three decades. the national guard of today was formed and shaped in the mid- 80s. and as we went through desert shield and desert storm, we learned an awful lot. and as we fought in the ball kins we fond more and by the time oef and oif rolled around, the national guard has been through many different variations and the service chiefs and the secretary of defense has given the guard an opportunity to balance itself so that it is ready and capable to perform the duties in our federal mission to the combatant commanders overseas. >> you mentioned the first gulf war and the army guard came under criticism for being out of shape and difficult to integrate, that's obviously changed. how has the last ten years and how have iraq and afghanistan changed the way you interface with the active duty army and what are the broader lessons you've learned from ten years of intense work. >> well history is replete. and i go back to korea following world war ii, maybe following vietnam, where the guard and reserve have been somewhat put back in a can, put on the shelf and told to go back and just be in a hold status. well we've learned in 9 and a half, ten years of conflict, is that if the national guard and reserve are continually exercised, they can maintain their standards, they're readiness and equipped properly as we've seen the last four or five years, this is a magnificently integrated force with the army and the air force counterparts that we work with. >> but how do you respond to those folks who say, for example, you do have a rising suicide rate which has been a challenge for guys in the guard rather dramatically. and there are folks who say, look, the active duty component does have hospitals at the base to support them and guard units are scattered all over the country in small pockets that don't have the amount of counseling and other facilities available to sustain that pace. >> these are huge problems and i will give the army and air force great credit for walking with us through this process. granted, we are not at large locations. when you look at our cone of operations, most of our active duty operations are in 12 places around the country. we're in 3300 communities around the nation. our governors and those responsible for the national guardsmen when they are demobilized are doing magnificent work to make sure we care for every airman and soldier and their family. was it immediate from the start of the conflict? no. but what we've adapted to over the last four to five years is a magnificent support network sponsored by the army and the air force, which gets our forces mobilized and demobilized and then we've created systems in our stace -- in our states to monitor the guards. our metrics are leading us to believe we need to do more. and pete correlly and howie chandler, the two vice chiefs of the services, are working closely to make sure we can do everything we can to take care of the returning airmen and returning soldier. but what we are finding in suicide rates is many of the suicides are members that have not deployed. that's societyal pressures, the fact that the economy has turned sour for many people who don't have jobs, for family problems, for relationship issues. those are society challenges that will continue to press us. but vago, i can assure you, there is no lack of determination to make sure that we take care of these young men and women. >> stay tuned for i'm back with general craig mckinley, chief of the national guard bureau. sir, what is the condition of your equipment after ten years of war? >> the services provide our equipment and they program for it and so we have been totally integrated with the army and air force budgetary cycles. i'm pleased to say that the condition of our gear is excellent and the quantities are at some of the highest levels ever. not to paint too rosie of a picture because both the air guard and army guard need to grow, but we've seen a great number of equipment coming to the motor pools and flight lines of our national guard units. and a great credit goes to congress for helping fund those types of programs that allow the national guard to modernize on an equal basis. >> what are your modernization priorities at this point? >> the army national guard was deficient in a number of wheeled vehicles. and i'm talking about eight to ten years ago. they were older, they were maintenance-intensive. and what we've seen over the last three to five year is the army national guard is getting the same type of equipment as the united states army and i give credit to general casey and the army staff. on the air national guard side the conditions mirror that of our air force. our aircraft generally are aging. they are older than average of some of our air force counterparts. but we have a recapitalization strategy that marchs hand in hand with the air force strategy. we have to continue to modernize our fleet that will time out over the next five to eight years. >> exactly. and certain program delays, strike fighter compounding your challenge on that front. how do you respond to folks who look at where the guard has gone recently and say, look, it's time to have a really fundamental review of guard missions at this point. because it has a lot of the resurgencey capabilities that reside in both the active duty army and in the marine corp. how do you respond to that? >> secretary gates and admiral mullen, our chair men, have done a great job of focusing the department on just what you asked, vago. do we need somewhat of a goldwater nickels for the guard and reserve? i will reach back to the commission on the national guard reserve, chaired by arnold penaro, who did a great job of looking at the force, the leadership of the force and how to make it more successful for the 21st century. but i think we're at that pivot point in history where the building is looking at exactly what role the guard and reserve will play for the next 10-15 years. those reports are coming due. secretary gates i'm sure will review them. i'll be consulted and it's time to reshape, if necessary, the guard and reserve for this next decade which is going to be a dangerous decade, an era of persistent conflict and we need to be ready and sustainable so that we can perform our job over time. >> what do you think -- do you think that your modernization should be delayed until your done with that process, to keep from buying stuff that you might not necessarily need? and what shape do you want that guard force to look like ten years from now? >> i get a lot of advice from our general, the leaders in the states that work for their governors, we can't forget the domestic mission that the national guard has performed for four centuries. we are responsible to the governors in the various states, territories in the district, to be ready at any time for a crisis by nature or a man-made crisis. so we've got to retain our core competencies and then the department has helped us shape the force that will assist in large scale crisisies in the future. these are homeland response region and we're becoming integrated with our interagency partners so we can assist fema and the natural disasters that will come. and we know they will. and god forbid a man made disaster, we have to be prepared to go in tonight for large cities as the military first responder for the governor as we saw in hurricane katrina. >> do you think as some suggest that it's time to shift and -- there are two sorts of arguments. one said you should be a homeland security security force given that things have increased beyond a natural disaster or there are thoses that say the guard is the perfect place to put the high- end capability, put air superior there because you don't need them most of the time. how do you view these two demands? >> i think secretary gates says it best. we have to maintain a balance. so the national guard can perform the domestic mission to assist in a large-scale natural disaster and to integrate in the title 10 mission with our air force and army and that means having equipment that is suitable for the types of conflicts that we may find ourselves in. that's going to require an awful lot of cooperation, but the national guard over the last five years has seen cooperation at a great rate we're back with general craig mckinley, chief of the national guard bureau. sir, under law guardsman are not allowed to lose their jobs, but the challenge has been that oftentimes guys will leave jobs that are more lucrative when they get mobilized and then there are folks who are self- employed who lose businesses and practices when they get deployed. what are changes we need to make in order to be able to sustain a citizen source into the future? >> i think the law is sufficient. and i've had very few issues where we've had to use and om buds man to work with an employer. in fact it's the opposite. we're getting employers contributing to the insurance fund, taking care of families while they are deployed. >> picking up the slack? >> absolutely. so i'm proud of these employers because they are carrying and helping our force but it is today. >> but you also have the unemployment rate twice the national average because folks are coming back and businesses are gone. how and what can you do for that? >> that's a huge challenge and i've asked the advocate generals in the states that if there is a region of the country feeling the pinch more heavily than others and we've seen this in the midwest and ohio, that we can work with the state to give credit to our returning veterans, our guardsmen returning so they can have first -- first dibs on jobs available and we've received support from the employers and state agencies to help returning vets. but that is a tremendously large problem that we have to deal with for the next several years and one of my highest priorities. >> when we talked about in terms of you wanting to extend the dwell rates of those spending more time before getting sent back out on deployment. there is discussion in terms of saving money to reduce the active duty forces again. how is that likely to impact you and are you actually going to end up getting far busier before you get to a lower -- better dwell time? >> we haven't had the discussions yet about how the national guard will fit in to some of the overseas deployments that we may see reductions in. i mean iraq. we still need to see whether guardsmen and women will be needs as we've seen in the belkins and in kosovo. we have the skill sets from our civilian jobs to do things in a post kinetic assessment. and we can do what the department asks us to do while still being able to respond at home in times of crisis. >> you are a extremely distributed force and you mentioned the 3300 sites across the country and how do you make the force more efficient? >> just like the department of defense and secretary gates guidance to the service and the major commands and the co- commands. we have to take a hard look at our own force structure and look at where our organizations are located, the age of our facilities. i've been very impressed on some recent trips to see dual use facilities so we might have an armory in part of a school so the buildings are used more than just on weekends. those are the types of things that i've challenged or leadership with and getting very good results on that. >> one question on more broadly and in the event of an attack on the united states, there are some that say the guardsmen will have trouble keeping neighbors out of the hospital. but in the 30 seconds we have left, is the training sufficient for those kind of scenarios? >> we are confident in the needs that governors will have in a domestic crisis, that our national guardsmen and women are prepared to do the kind of work in state status for the governors or federalized under the control of the president to do the kinds of things that will re-establish law, order and civility to any kind of a crisis. we think that the training we have to be good air force members and army members gives us the capability to transition that to working here at home with our governors as the commander-in-chief. >> sir, thank you very until the u.s. air force sent the wrong technical appraisals to the two bidders in the high stakes competition for new tanker planes, the latest contest was seen as a model effort. now the future of the $35 billion program has again been clouded. the air force maintains all is on track to make an award soon despite the gap and both boeing and a.d. said say they haven't benefited from the information they received. experts say the company may know more about the rival assessments than they are admitting. some say it is only a factor if they get a better price. maybe, but it gives reason for a future protest after the award is made in a couple of weeks. the question is this, if the latest award is over turn whether the information disclosed gives future taint. the government's risk assessments had a major contract. the air force must press ahead to an award. the loser has the right to protest. but if this is overturned as it was the last one, the next tanker competition shouldn't be run by the u.s. air force. thanks for joining us for this week in defense news. i'm vago muradian. you can watch this program online at defensenewstv.com or e-mail me at vago at defensenewstv.com. i'll be