National Guard waves goodbye to its Airborne Battalions
While the 16th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was activated under the Army National Guard in 1960, and later separated into the 19th and 20th SFGs by 1961, which remain active and with some 2,000 members on their rolls each, the Guard has had few dedicated parachute-certified units.
Company D (Ranger), 151st Infantry, the “Indiana Rangers,” was Airborne qualified during its service in Vietnam, although they made no combat jumps during their hard-fought 1968-69 deployment to Southeast Asia.
Indiana Rangers: The Army Guard in Vietnam By Mort Kunstler
The old 1970s-80s Pathfinder Dets (typically just 6-12 men each) in the Guard morphed into long-range surveillance detachments (LRSDs), which in turn were disbanded circa 2006.
Shots of the 77th Infantry Detachment (Pathfinder)(Airborne), 73rd Infantry Brigade (SEP), Ohio National Guard, which was stood up in 1977 and disbanded in 1990.
At their peak around 2000, the Guard counted three 163-man LRSCs (company-sized units of three platoons aligned to Corps HQs on mobilization) and nine 56-man LRSDs (each organized into six six-man LRS teams plus support personnel) allocated to divisional HQs. While many of its members were Ranger-tabbed, and the teams worked up much more than standard Guard units, they still needed at least a 90-day workup before deployment and often ran as much as 40 percent under strength.
Then, in 2015, the Guard redesignated the 1st Battalion, 143rd Infantry Regiment (the old Texas 3rd Infantry) as an airborne light infantry battalion and the next year aligned it officially with the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade, which only had two active battalions. The 1st-143rd was comprised of mostly Texas-based units with one (Charlie) Company hailing from Rhode Island.
They followed up in 2019 with the 2nd Battalion, 134th Infantry Regiment, made up of five companies of Nebraska paratroopers and one from Indiana. Confusingly, they were assigned to the Oklahoma Guard’s 45th “Thunderbird” Division. While it would have been logical to align it with the Alaska-based 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division (which included an active-duty airborne battalion, 1st/501st), it seems that was never done.
Now, with the 4th BCT, 25th ID reformed as the very light 11th “Arctic Angels” Airborne Division, which includes two paratrooper battalions and two of “leg” infantry, and the Army looking to reduce the number of parachute-certified (and jump paid) personnel from a somewhat amazing 56,000 to around 33,000 soldiers, the Guard’s two Airborne battalions are losing their wings.
The 2nd-134th Infantry conducted their last jump over the weekend at the Husker Drop Zone. Last month, they made a breathtaking jump in front of Chimney Rock in western Nebraska.
The move is expected to save at least $40 million per year in jump pay alone, not to mention gas in planes/helicopters, and millions in lifecycle costs on the T-11 NMC parachute system.
Plus, the Army says it has a hard time passing enough new personnel through jump school every year, does not have enough assets to conduct the mandatory four jumps a year for everyone to maintain the certification, and has a dearth of empty billets in the parachute rigger specialty. Of note, 92R MOS riggers now have a $22K enlistment bonus.
On the upside, with the cut in 23,000 para positions, Soldiers in the remaining “priority formations” will see significant increases in training opportunities, with top-tier units executing up to 12 jumps per year—three times the current minimum.