Georgia Army National Guard The Georgia Army National Guard consists of more than 11,100 Citizen-Soldiers training in more than 79 hometown armories and regional facilities across the state. Georgia’s Army Guard is the 8th largest in the nation and includes combat, combat support and combat service support units. The Georgia Army National Guard is organized into five major subordinate commands: the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of Macon; the 78th Homeland Response Force at Clay National Guard Center in Marietta; the 78th Aviation Troop Command also at Clay; the 560th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade at Fort Gillem; and the 648th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade in Columbus at Fort Benning. The organization’s mission is to provide ready forces to the Governor or combatant commanders in order to support homeland defense and overseas contingency operations. In 2010, the GARNG succeeded in all its endeavors by meeting all federal and state requirements including the deployment or redeployment of over 4,000 Soldiers while simultaneously conducting multiple state and regional homeland contingency exercises. The GARNG’s four priorities ensure continued preparedness to meet all missions: quality strength; logistics excellence; preeminent facilities; individual and organization learning, innovation and growth. Relative to quality strength, the GARNG’s success in the Recruiting and Retention Force continued in 2010, as the battalion enlisted more than 1,790 quality recruits and officer candidates. These new accessions, coupled with key programs initiated or piloted in the state including Personnel Services Delivery Redesign, decentralized medical services, dental contract improvements, and other services, have empowered
human resource personnel and yielded outstanding ratings in various measured programs of the 54 States and Territories (3rd in End-Strength, 3rd in Medical Readiness, 2nd in influenza vaccination, and 7th in Dental Readiness). Additionally, the quality strength focus provided greater impetus towards qualifications improving our duty qualification rate to 14th among our fellow states and territories. These accomplishments continue to set the conditions for the GARNG to be in a position of strength for increased federal funding, future force structure, and fulltime manning. The GARNG’s logistics excellence focus was tested in 2010 during a significant external evaluation of all facets of logistics, maintenance and physical security by the Combined Logistics Review Team. The comprehensive evaluation of 14 areas yielded one noteworthy and 10 satisfactory overall ratings. The year was one of the busiest relative to equipping the organization, with the GARNG receiving a tremendous influx of high-tech and dual-use equipment including communications, operations centers, vehicles, updated HH-60M Blackhawks and three of the four LUH-72 Lakota Helicopters. These platforms provide the state the dualuse capabilities for projecting forces internally to support homeland defense or externally to support overseas contingency operations. In support of the GARNG’s third priority of Preeminent Facilities, nearly a dozen projects were placed into or under construction in 2010. Leadership, Innovation and Growth are hallmarks of the continuous improvement mindset we expect of our personnel. Numerous initiatives were developed and championed by members of our team in 2010. Some of the most noteworthy efforts were partnerships with the National Guard Bureau to expand our Regional Training Institute to increase Military Intelligence specialty throughput and the activation of a modern Signal Academy.
Maj. Gen. Maria Britt Commanding General Ga. Army National Guard
Command Sgt. Maj. James Nelson State Command Sgt. Major Georgia National Guard
The development of the Georgia Language Training Center has placed a critical language and cultural training facility on the East coast for the first time. Experiences are critical for growth and development and numerous overseas deployments were executed to provide challenging joint and multinational environments for Soldiers and units to exercise including: England, France, Germany, Italy, Kosovo, Georgia, Mali, Mauritania, Uganda, Pakistan, Korea, and Japan. The organization continues to foster a climate of development of senior leadership through professional military schooling, career management boards, and assignment committees designed to select, assign and promote those who role model the values and continuous improvement actions expected of highperformance personnel.
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