I agree with Webstral's post, at least in regards to conventional units -- assorted unrealistic or irrelevant annual taskings undermine the ability to train to even a modest standard in peacetime, and then pre-deployment training once activated is just shoddy (at least the pre-deployment training I got from a USAR unit mostly featured instructors wearing clown shoes -- I'm sure there is a range of quality, and there simply has to be better out there than the incompetent jackasses I dealt with).
On weekend drill status basically I just can't train my Joes to do anything between Regular Army requirements that usually aren't even tailored to the reality of the National Guard and a National Guard chain of command geared towards pretending we're Regular Army two days a month.
Quarterly, I've got six training days or so to work with. Of those six training days, I lose a half day or so to Suicide Prevention classes, mood assessments, SGLI benefit and GI bill briefings and assorted other stuff that does nothing to help build survivable trigger pullers.
I lose another day or so, total, to PT formations where my chain of command says guys have to dress up in APFT uniforms and do Regular Army style PT -- which at two days a month does nothing to help their actual PT scores. My argument that I can accomplish the same calorie burn by putting my guys in full kit and have them do IMT, casaulty carries, bail out drills from our vehicles, and assorted other stuff that does build competence, muscle memory, and reflexive knowledge needed to be survivable trigger pullers pretty much falls on dead ears because my career minded chain of command is afraid higher ups will only see that we don't suit up in PT uniforms and do side straddle hops and conclude that PT is not a priority.
Figure another training day per quarter, total, is blown drawing vehicles, turning vehicles in, and loading and unloading BII, because the full-time guys running the CSMS won't just give up an extended dispatch on vehicles so every weekend I've got Joes on the trucks they have to draw and turn them in. The Regular Army doesn't do extended dispatch for vehicles that will just sit in the motor pool, so the NG won't do it either.
Take another quarter to half day off the calendar for accountability layouts of TA-50 either to make sure the Joes don't show up to drill in mid-winter without their issued cold weather stuff or to make sure the books are squared away for the supply sergeant getting his books inspected.
Finally, figure another half day to day is wasted doing NCOERs, counseling for junior enlisted, and such that some leadership won't do on their own time because they aren't getting paid for it.
So when it's all said and done I've got maybe a total of 2-3 days worth of actual training time -- and that is even still sort of a misleading, since those days are mostly chopped up and shortened by all the above complications. And then a chunk of that time is still spoken for doing stupid stuff like getting everyone qualified on the current combatives program training them to roll around in ACUs and wrestling shoes and thinking that provides relevant skills for going hands on with eighty pounds of kit on and a rifle strapped to you.
Frankly, I may have gotten spoiled by too much time on the dark side where things work a whole lot better and the division between NG and AD isn't nearly as notable but it's just a mess -- and I actually think that nine years of war has made the system more broken, rather than exposed issues and lead to corrections.
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