Map: Our Overstretched National Guard

The Army National Guard’s 16 Enhanced Brigades are supposed to be able to deploy rapidly—fully manned and equipped—to respond to terrorist attacks or natural disasters on U.S. soil.

But the Guard and its equipment have been stretched so thin by overseas deployments that it is unprepared to respond to crises at home, such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Click below to explore an interactive map that illustrates the situation based on information in the recent Center for American Progress report "Caught Off Guard: The Link Between Our National Security and Our National Guard."



Yellow flags on this map mark Enhanced Brigades that are currently in Iraq or Afghanistan. Green flags denote brigades that are bound for a second deployment to Iraq. Blue flags mark brigades that have deployed overseas in the past and now find themselves unprepared to respond to possible emergencies at home, examples of which are marked with red triangles.

• Read "Caught Off Guard: The Link Between Our National Security and Our National Guard"