By: Phillip Swarts (Air Force Times), September 11, 2016
BALTIMORE — Of all the organizations that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, impacted, it may have affected the greatest change on the National Guard, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said.
“There’s no single institution that has been transformed in the last 15 years as much, I think, as the National Guard has been transformed,” said James, speaking Saturday to the National Guard Association of the United States annual conference.
Once considered to be a back-up for the active component, the Guard has instead become an integral part of military operations worldwide, the secretary said.
“During the Cold War, the Guard was a strategic reserve; but, of course, today you are fully an operational force by design, moving toward even more seamless integration with the active component,” she said.
“Since 9/11, you’ve had nearly 700,000 individual deployments to the CENTCOM AOR, and guardsmen are there right now as we speak, and they are bringing the fight right on home to Daesh,” James continued, using an Arabic name for the Islamic State terrorist group.
The Air National Guard is much more integrated with the active component than it was 25 years ago, James said, close to the time she was serving as the assistant secretary of defense for Reserve Affairs.
“And tomorrow’s Air Force will continue to move more and more and more in that direction,” she added.
A key area the Air Force is looking to expand Guard involvement is with cybersecurity.
“One area where we know the Guard has unique skills and capabilities is in cyber, because of your close work with the states, and in some cases because of your civilian jobs,” James told the audience. “Some of you have gained experience every day that we can leverage better in defending critical cyber infrastructure.”
The Air Force’s plan going forward will including standing up new units.
“It’s no surprise that we’re going to rely on the Guard more in this area,” James said. “By 2019, we expect to have cyber units in 34 states in the National Guard, consisting of almost 3,000 cyber trained service members.”
The Air Force is also studying increases in Guard involvement for mission fields like space operations, aircraft maintenance, and remotely piloted aircraft flights, James said.
Looming on the horizon, however, is the likely passage of a continuing resolution, which would keep Air Force budget levels at those of the previous year, impacting service efforts to grow and expand.
CRs get passed when Congress can’t decide on a full budget. If one is passed this year, James noted it would be the tenth straight year that lawmakers have failed to pass a complete defense appropriation by the start of the fiscal year, Oct. 1.
No matter what happens, James said the ANG would have input on any fiscal decisions.
“We’re committed to making sure that the Guard and Reserve get a seat at our decision-making table for all the processes, including the budget processes,” she said.
And while the Air Force might have trouble getting money from Congress, James vowed that guardsmen shouldn’t have trouble getting money from the Air Force.
“Airmen, after all, shouldn’t have to have a PhD in IT or accounting to get through our systems and to get paid,” she said.
The Guard is an increasingly important part of the force, and has started to pick up many missions from the active component, James said.
“Our active duty force today is the smallest it has ever been since we became a separate service in the year 1947,” the secretary said. “Our active duty end strength is 200,000 people fewer than it was back in the 1990s.”
With such a reduction in end strength, communication and cooperation between the different parts of the Air Force has become key in meeting all mission demands, James said.
“We are making ends meet with this much smaller force precisely because today’s Air Force is more integrated across the active duty, the National Guard and Reserve,” she said. “We are asking more of you, we are utilizing your talents more now than ever before, and I would say that’s precisely because we need you now more than even we did before.”