The chief of the National Guard Bureau says units should be able to maintain their readiness and deployment capabilities indefinitely despite a murky federal military budget outlook.

Gen. Frank Grass told soldiers and airmen of the Kansas National Guard on Monday that the 460,000-member force is capable of continuing missions both overseas and domestically.

Grass is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He says while fewer soldiers and airmen may deploy in the coming years, those rotations will be for shorter durations than in the past decade.

Grass says the National Guard isn’t immune to the federal spending challenges facing the Pentagon, but any decision about cutting the number of reserve forces in uniform hasn’t been made yet.