Photo By Master Sgt. Zach Sheely | Air Force Gen. Steve Nordhaus, chief, National Guard Bureau, and Senior Enlisted...... read more read more
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INDIANAPOLIS (Aug. 29, 2026) – "Together, we need to lead boldly, and we can never be late to need." That's how Air Force Gen. Steve Nordhaus, the 30th Chief of the National Guard Bureau, challenged National Guard leaders to keep pace with a dynamic security environment. He described the Guard as a force that continuously adapts and modernizes while keeping its 435,000 Guardsmen and their families ready for missions at home and abroad.
Nordhaus and Senior Enlisted Advisor John Raines, SEA to the CNGB, addressed thousands of Guardsmen gathered here Saturday for the 148th conference of the National Guard Association of the United States and reinforced four priorities: warfighters and families, readiness, partnerships and modernization.
Together, these priorities form a strategy designed to keep the Guard ready for its dual role—fighting alongside the Joint Force and defending the homeland—while ensuring its Soldiers and Airmen have the resources and support necessary to succeed.
“Our warfighters are innovators,” Nordhaus said. “They work in their civilian careers while balancing military jobs. They bring all those skill sets together which provides incredible capabilities and a sizable return on investment for our nation.”
That is one of the Guard’s defining advantages.
A Guardsman may be a teacher, firefighter, business owner, cyber expert, electrician or other professional in civilian life while simultaneously serving as a trained military warfighter. Those experiences converge inside Guard formations, creating a force that brings capabilities from across the workforce into the defense of the nation.
“If you take a National Guard military police company,” Nordhaus said, “you don’t have just one military occupational specialty, you have 50 or 60 different skillsets residing in that one unit, in addition to their military training.”
Taking care of the force
For Nordhaus and Raines, modernization begins with the Soldier and Airman—not the weapons systems.
That philosophy is shaping the Guard’s efforts to address personnel and family needs while pursuing legislative initiatives designed to boost readiness. Nordhaus referenced the president’s budget request as a signal of the nation’s commitment to rebuilding and strengthening the military, noting that the proposed increase for the National Guard is the largest in decades.
That investment would create an opportunity to grow the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard while providing the resources needed to build ready, capable units for both homeland defense and combat operations.
Nordhaus said the NGB supports the Department of War’s and the service’s legislative proposals to grow the force, including a dual-status technician conversion intended to address vacancies and improve the Guard’s ability to retain capable troops.
Another is the National Guard Equipment Reimbursement initiative, which would help states recover costs associated with utilizing Guard equipment during State Active-Duty missions.
When hurricanes, floods, wildfires or other disasters strike, states frequently rely on the Guard to respond immediately. Returning those resources to the states would allow equipment used during those missions to be repaired, restored and ready for the next call.
These legislative efforts reflect a broader principle: readiness for combat equals readiness for homeland response missions.
This year, Guardsmen have responded to major winter storms, wildfires, hurricanes, floods—including here in Indiana—and other emergencies, while simultaneously supporting law enforcement efforts in American cities and contributing warfighting forces to Operation Absolute Resolve and Operation Epic Fury.
Additionally, Air National Guardsmen patrol the skies above America every day through Aerospace Control Alert units. Army National Guardsmen provide the nation’s primary ICBM defense from within missile defense nodes in Alaska, California and Colorado.
For the service members comprising the National Guard, however, the measure of readiness extends beyond equipment and operational statistics.
It comes back to families, Raines said.
“Families are critical to everything we do,” he said.
He added that the Guard recruits individual service members but retains their service through their families. Leaders, he said, therefore have a responsibility to ensure that service remains sustainable for both the warfighter and those waiting for them at home.
That includes the civilian employers who make Guard service possible.
Raines described the relationship between the service member, family and employer as a critical triad. A Guardsman thrives, he said, with the support of family and employers who understand that military service may require them to leave their civilian lives on short notice.
Ultimately, he said, taking care of warfighters means preparing them to survive.
“You need to train them hard and make them hard to kill,” Raines told the audience of Guard commissioned leaders. “Therefore, they can come back and spend a lifetime with their family.”
Modernizing at the speed of relevance
That principle—never late to need—drives efforts across the Guard to rapidly transition from emerging technology to operational capability and modernize platforms concurrent with the Army and the Air Force.
The Guard is increasingly focused on artificial intelligence, offensive and defensive unmanned aircraft systems, cyber capabilities and other technologies that are changing how military operations are conducted.
Based on the Guard’s success implementing the AI-enabled MAVEN Smart System during support to the FIFA World Cup, Nordhaus said the Guard is looking to expand that capability across the enterprise.
But modernization is about more than buying new equipment and fielding new tools. It’s about changing the way the Guard identifies problems, tests solutions and puts capabilities into the hands of warfighters.
Technology Readiness Experimentation, or T-REX, is one example.
T-REX brings engineers, acquisition professionals and industry partners together to rapidly equip National Guardsmen with emerging technologies to test in realistic operational environments and provide real-time feedback.
The objective is to bridge the gap between an idea and warfighter capability.
Through T-REX and the Rapid Assessment of Prototype Technology Readiness (RAPTR) Task Force, the Indiana National Guard exemplifies this by connecting operational requirements with industry and senior defense leaders to advance promising technologies.
In addition to testing and fielding nascent warfighting equipment, the Guard continues modernizing across its existing force structure.
Upgraded platforms—including the F-15EX, KC-46, C-130J and F-35A Lightning II—represent significant investments in the Air National Guard.
Aligned with headquarters-level Army initiatives, the Army National Guard is rapidly transforming its ground maneuver elements. This was demonstrated during Joint Readiness Training Center Rotations this year, as Army Guard infantry brigade combat teams transition to lighter, more agile mobile BCTs.
For the National Guard, modernization is not a buzzword. It is about ensuring that Guardsmen have the right equipment at the right time for the right mission.
Ready to fight, ready at home
As a critical component of the Joint Force, the Guard provides almost 40% of the Army’s operational capabilities and 30% of the Air Force’s, while maintaining the ability to respond domestically.
Large-scale exercises, like Northern Strike in Michigan, provide opportunities to integrate Guardsmen with Joint Force service members and foreign counterparts in increasingly complex combat-training scenarios. Cyber Shield in Arkansas brings thousands of National Guard cyber professionals together with partners from across the states and around the world.
The same readiness is being built through partnerships.
The Department of War’s National Guard Bureau State Partnership Program now encompasses 117 partnerships, connecting states, territories and Washington, D.C., with partner nations in every geographic combatant command.
These partnerships create more than diplomatic ties. They bolster military interoperability, foster enduring relationships and establish a common operational understanding that can be leveraged before a crisis occurs.
The Guard applies the same philosophy with partners at home.
Raines explained how the newly funded National Guard Response Force initiative provides more than 22,000 Guardsmen from across the 54 states, territories and District the opportunity to train alongside first responders and interagency partners before emergencies ever happen.
The goal, he said, is simple: know each other before the disaster strikes.
“We don’t want to get to know our first responder partners when something bad happens,” Raines said. “We want to train with them. We want them to know them before we ever get out there.”
Stronger together, stronger tomorrow
For Nordhaus and Raines, the Guard’s strategic direction is centered on building a force that’s stronger tomorrow than it is today.
That requires investing in warfighters, sustaining readiness, building partnerships that extend from local communities to the global stage and modernizing to keep pace with the changing character of warfare and.
These priorities are interconnected.
A next-generation aircraft is only as effective as the pilot flying it. A highly trained unit is even more capable when armed with the most lethal equipment. A response force is only as strong as the relationships it has built before an emergency. And a Guardsman’s readiness is inseparable from the support of a family and employer.
For a force whose mission dates back to the colonial militias, the core task hasn't changed: defend and secure the nation and be there when citizens need help.
Nordhaus and Raines charged the National Guard leaders gathered here to meet that challenge head-on.
“Our vision for the National Guard remains unchanged,” Nordhaus said, “To be an elite and lethal warfighting and response force—stronger together, stronger tomorrow and ready for whatever our Nation asks of us, whenever and wherever we are needed.”
| Date Taken: | 08.29.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 09.02.2026 15:18 |
| Story ID: | 573806 |
| Location: | INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 19 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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