About the Air National Guard
National
Guard aviation emerged early in the twentieth
century during a period of enormous organizational
and technological ferment within the American
military establishment. Reformers were bent upon
transforming it from what amounted to a small,
constabulary focused on such tasks as policing the
Indians and developing the nation's infrastructure
to a modern force whose primary role was to engage
in combat against other major industrial powers. It
was also beginning the difficult task of determining
how to incorporate such startling new developments
as radios, automobiles and trucks, machine guns, and
aircraft into its doctrines and operations.
The Air Force has long been recognized as a
leader within the Defense Department in developing
and creatively employing its reserve components.
This history sheds a great deal of light on why and
how that has happened. It also suggests how
citizen-soldiers have adapted our nation's venerable
militia institutions to the demands of high
technology air warfare in the late twentieth
century.
