The National Guard Does Top-Secret Things—and Far Too Many Other Things

When the leaker of reams of top-secret intelligence briefings was exposed as 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira on April 13, national security experts reacted with shock. Even a former homeland security advisor to the Massachusetts governor professed herself baffled by the scope of Teixeira’s leak. How did a junior enlisted service member have access to these files—and an ostensibly part-time service member at that? But beyond the immediate damage of the leaked documents, Teixeira’s arrest reveals an even greater national security vulnerability: the state of the United States’ overlooked and overworked military reserves.

The U.S. National Guard and the reserve of each branch of the armed forces (collectively known as the “reserve component,” or reserves) are essential pieces of the U.S. military. The National Guard, whose origins are the 13 colonies’ militias predating the American Revolution, is staffed and controlled in each of the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and three overseas territories to respond to natural disasters and serious breakdowns in law and order but may also be deployed by the U.S. president. The reserve component constitutes 52 percent of the U.S. Army’s total force and 35 percent of the Air Force’s. (The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps lack National Guard components and have proportionately larger active-duty forces.) Two of the Army’s seven Special Forces Groups are part of the National Guard, as are 27 of its 58 brigade combat teams and some 1,400 helicopters—nearly as many as Russia was flying before the war in Ukraine.

Teixeira’s National Guard unit, the 102nd Intelligence Wing, is based at Massachusetts’s multi-service Joint Base Cape Cod. In addition to boasting the nicest gym in the area and a wide assortment of classic fighter jets that call to mind a James Salter novel, the 102nd has a global mission: providing “worldwide precision intelligence and command and control.” Teixeira, who had been on Title 10 orders (effectively giving him full-time military status) since October, apparently accessed and leaked highly classified information through his job as an information technology specialist. His unit is now the subject of an investigation by the Air Force’s inspector general, while its work has been passed on to other units.

In providing daily support to global military operations, Teixeira’s National Guard unit is not abnormal. Guard members and reservists ceased being weekend warriors and military correspondence course students many years ago. The war on terror fundamentally changed the nature of the U.S. military reserves. “Reserves” may not even be the proper term anymore.

The reserve component was initially intended to be a strategic reserve, available to fill out and scale up the military in the event of a major conflict, and serve as a bridge to military conscription via the Selective Service System. After the end of the draft in 1973, the Guard and reserves were consciously changed into an operational reserve. That decision was a response to the failed war in Vietnam, where reserve units had offered a sort of sanctuary from deployment and combat. U.S. national security leaders, especially in the Army, felt that operational integration of the reserves would ensure that the American people were fully on board with their country’s wars. Changes to the force structure required that reserve units be activated to make any sustained overseas military intervention viable.

The United States’ post-9/11 wars further changed the reserves from an operational reserve to an enduring provider of operational forces. By 2020, over a million reserve component members had been called up for active duty since 9/11. Guard and reserve units made up 45 percent of the total force sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. National Guard Bradley fighting vehicles even helped guard the final air evacuation from Kabul in 2021.

Guard members and reservists have also long worked in the secret world of intelligence and irregular warfare. The Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, where Teixeira worked, conducted cryptologic, cyber, and intelligence operations, among other missions. One of its subordinate units was tasked with processing imagery and other information from U-2 spy planes, RQ-4 Global Hawk uncrewed surveillance aircraft, and MQ-9 Reaper drones; it supported the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Members of the Air National Guard have also been on the lethal end of the “kill chain” for decades, conducting unmanned strikes around the world since the very beginning of the drone war in 2002. More than a few reservists pull double duty, working as civilians in the intelligence community and then donning their uniforms in similar military roles.

Other Guard members have been on the actual front lines of U.S. shadow wars, including counterterrorist campaigns in Syria, Niger, and other countries. In an hourlong battle in 2019 that didn’t come to light until three years later, New Jersey National Guard members fought off the largest attack on U.S. forces in Somalia since the Black Hawk Down incident in 1993.

This new normal for the Guard has had major impacts at home. When operating under normal state active duty or federal Title 32 orders—mobilized by their U.S. state for a domestic purpose like natural disaster response or riot control—National Guard units work for their state governors. These fairly mundane but critical missions have been impacted by the Guard’s overseas deployments. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, 59 percent of the Louisiana Guard was unavailable because it had been alerted, mobilized, or deployed to Iraq. Outside forces, including Marines, had to be dispatched to New Orleans to restore order.

Helicopter availability and readiness has been an endemic issue, especially when forest fires ravaged the western United States in recent years. With the frequency of fires expected to increase, the Guard’s overseas operational tempo will create further gaps and vulnerabilities at home.

In an era in which “everything became war,” U.S. politicians have looked to the Guard to solve just about anything. The National Guard rightly took a front-line role in the response to the COVID pandemic. June 2020 saw more National Guard members mobilized than at any time since World War II. But other domestic taskings are more questionable. Massachusetts activated 200 Guard members to drive school buses in 2021. Operation Lone Star, a border security operation launched by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021, saw Texas National Guard members secure private ranches dozens of miles from the border with Mexico.

The strain is showing, as reservists vote with their feet. The operationally rejuvenated post-9/11 reserves initially attracted men and women looking to serve, fight, and see the world. More than a few notional part-timers became “Guard bums,” hopping from deployment to school to temporary assignment, functionally on active duty for years at a time. But as the operational tempo remained permanently elevated, many reservists found they could not continue to serve and maintain stable families and civilian jobs. As a result, Guard members and federal reservists are increasingly drawn from among local, state, and federal government employees, who can mobilize frequently without major penalty or loss of civilian employment.

Even with this resorting, the reserves are struggling to recruit and retain personnel. The Army Guard missed its retention goal by 10 percent last year. Many Mountain West states largely met 50 percent or less of their National Guard recruiting goal in fiscal year 2022. The Army Reserve may be on its way to being a hollow force. Battalion command has long been seen as the summit of most officers’ careers, the coveted chance to lead and mold a unit of 500 or more soldiers. But the Army Reserve has received fewer applicants than there are slots for battalion command; in some cases, active-duty officers are being assigned to reserve command. There are corresponding, endemic shortages of mid-career officers and noncommissioned officers throughout the Army Reserve.

In 2015, Gen. Mark Milley, then chief of staff of the Army, admitted: “We cannot conduct sustained land warfare without the Guard and the Reserve. It is impossible for the United States of America to go to war today without bringing Main Street.” But the United States is not at war today in any meaningful sense. It seems clear that the United States now cannot conduct sustained global operations without the Guard and reserve. Whether guarding secrets at home or bases abroad, U.S. reserves are over-tasked. Either the total force is too small, or its missions are too many.