The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - Combining Air National Guard and Army National Guard headquarters nationwide will create needed flexibility as the nature of threats keeps changing, the chief of the reserve force told state Guard leaders Sunday.

Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum described his plan for what he called the most dramatic change to the National Guard in a century at the spring conference of the Adjutants General Association of the United States.

Significant changes are needed to update a force functioning much as it did during the Cold War, Blum told colleagues Sunday.

"Saying the baby ain't ugly and we love it just isn't going to cut it any more," he said.

Military analyst and retired Marine Jay Farrar told attendees the National Guard isn't as useful as it could be.

"The guard is losing relevance," said Farrar, the vice president for external affairs of the Center for Strategic Analysis and International Studies in Washington. "There's a Cold War atmosphere around some officers and that has led to atrophy and irrelevance."

Blum, who became chief of the National Guard Bureau last month, announced Friday that administrative staffs will consolidate in all 54 U.S. states and territories by Oct. 1, reducing the number of headquarters by two-thirds.

The 54 each have three separate headquarters: one for the Air Guard, one for the Army Guard and one for the "area command" run by the state's adjutant general.

Personnel from other military branches would be added to the joint force headquarters, making the guard more capable of coordinating military resources than it is now, Blum said Sunday.

Blum also stressed the importance of training units to work alongside first responders in emergencies. Medical units should be outfitted and trained to treat and decontaminate chemical and biological attack victims, and engineering units should improve their ability to perform urban search and rescue, he said.

Adjutant generals would command the centers and answer to governors or government leaders of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

A single headquarters would improve communication and reduce duplicated tasks, Blum said, adding no bases or armories would close.

Blum, who is responsible for federal appropriations to Guard units, said it will be up to individual states and territories to decide whether to reassign personnel in the consolidation.