How does the US National Guard deploy? I always understood it to be made up of a group of people basically on call that then report to their base in your city and then go out from there. Am I wrong?
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There are national guard bases/armories which serve as training centers when the guard unit is not active. The Federal government can, at times, call upon national guard units to serve as federal military forces (eg, deployment to Iraq) or as humanitarian relief (eg, hurricane relief/rescue). On these occasions, guard personnel will go to their bases for refresher training (if needed) and to get their equipment prior to deployment.
State governors can similarly deploy national guard as additional policing in cases where local law enforcement is incapable of maintaining order. The same general process as above is used; they go to the base, get their equipment, then move out to wherever they are ordered.
Not to complicate things, but people often mix up the National Guard and the Army Reserve. Reservists are part of the federal US Army and do not fall under state command.
It depends on what you mean by ‘deploy’. For overseas deployments, you would normally ramp up local training at the armory (where your unit trains on weekends) to prepare. At some point, equipment is loaded and shipped. Then you either leave from the armory (or fly from your home of record) to a training center for a couple of months, then fly overseas from there.
For extended training within the US, you might fly from home, or assemble at your local armory and draw equipment and vehicles, then convoy to the training base. Depends on where you’re going and what you needed to bring.
For emergency response, you normally assemble at the armory, draw equipment, and convoy from there.
In any case, most of a unit’s gear and weapons are stored at the armory (other than combat vehicles, which are at the nearest base), so that’s usually the first stop. Also so nobody is driving their own vehicle into a disaster area or anything.
Individual guardsmen also volunteer to deploy. My cousin is in the national guard and volunteered for two tours of duty. His day job is a nurse at a level one trauma center in Chicago so he felt those skills would be useful in a war zone.
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