A Guardsman for the JCS?: Resurrecting a battle fought and lost eight years ago, two Senators plan to introduce legislation that would make the chief of the National Guard Bureau a four-star general with a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is not a new idea. The same move—led by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)—ran to ground in 1998 during the last bout of trouble between the Army Guard and the active Army. (Read our 1998 article “Guard Controversies.”) The latest initiative—led by Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)—again focuses primarily on Army troubles, but it also follows on the heels of Air National Guard discontent over the Air Force’s BRAC 2005 decisions and, more recently, plans to cut ANG end strength.
The U.S. continued to move a significant amount of airpower toward the Middle East in recent days as talks to forge a nuclear deal with Iran hung in the balance. Flight tracking data indicate there was unusually heavy movement of dozens of fighter jets and other assets that might be…
