Foundation Forum

Major General Donald W. Shepperd
Director, Air National Guard
Global Presence--The Air National Guard Perspective
Mid-America AFA Symposium
St. Louis
May 3, 1996

It is a pleasure to be here in St. Louis. Besides a briefing on what the Air National Guard is, I want to describe what the Guard does. Then I'd like to talk to you about the budget, a couple of predictions for the future and then finish up with the "CyberGuard," which is how we are preparing the Air National Guard of the 21st Century.

The Air Guard is part of the National Guard of the United States, a large organization with about 400,000 people in green suits and about 109,000 in blue suits. Three years ago, the Air Guard was at 120,000 and will be down to 106,000 shortly through cutting out the supporting forces of the Cold War.

But what are we going to look like in the future? I predict the Air Force is going to place more capability into the Guard and Reserve in the future than we have now, and our size will be somewhere between 80,000 and 135,000. I can ensure you that no one knows the answers to those questions until we have a national strategy review.

The Air Guard today has 88 flying units with 1,200 airplanes. When I started out, we had 1,900 airplanes. We have transformed ourselves from a mainly fighter force to a balanced force across all mission areas. We fly everything that the Air Force does, including the B-1, but we may fly the older model of the airplane. For instance, the active Air Force will have the F-16C/Ds and we will be flying the A/Bs. Basically the Guard is a modern and balanced force across all of the commands and all mission areas.

Today the active U.S. Air Force has reduced its presence worldwide to about 86 locations. The Air Force no longer has a presence in many large population states of the Northeast nor in some of the important states of the Upper Midwest. Remember, when you abandon America, America will abandon you. I believe, you can trace the lack of political support for things that are important to the Air Force directly to those states where the Air Force is not located.

However, your Air National Guard flying units are located in all 54 states and territories. We do not have flying units in Guam or the Virgin Islands, but we are represented in every state and many communities when you include our geographically separated units, our combat communication units, our air traffic control units and our radar units. The National Guard has about 2,500 armories in most of the counties in America. These National Guard armories are really important.

While speaking four years ago in Toledo, Ohio, a little lady shuffled up to me, saw me dressed in my finest with my medals, and she said, "Excuse me, sir, where are you from?" I said, "Well, I'm from Washington, D.C." "Oh, it must be nice there," she said. I said, "Yes it is." She said, "You speak English very well and if there is anything we can do for you in America, please let us know." (laughter). She thought I was a foreign officer. So I asked her, "Do you know anything about the National Guard." She says, "Oh, yes I do. My husband and I square dance in the National Guard armory every Tuesday evening." From my perspective, at least in Toledo, the National Guard armory is a lot more important than Washington is.

There is an important lesson in this. When I or you think of the military, we think of the active duty force at places like Luke or Scott Air Force Bases. But to most of America, the airplanes they see flying and the people they see in blue suits are not from the active duty, they are from the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve. We are the source of support for the military mission in much of America.

In Desert Storm, when the postman or his son from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is involved in the war, then America is involved and that is what the Guard is about.

We used to be "weekend warriors" and "part-time soldiers" but that no longer applies. Everybody used to spend two days a month and a 15 day period called summer camp, but today you may not necessarily go for training on a weekend. It may just as well be broken into four periods spread over four separate days. The 15 days can be split up to support different missions. The extra training for some is now almost for all.

Remember, our force is 75 percent "real" people with "real" jobs and 25 percent full-timers who are mostly in maintenance.

We used to stay at home and train for the big one. We still do that. In the past, we went to a few exercises a year, maybe three Red Flags, and we still do that. Except today, we are in every major exercise because the active duty has been cut so much. They need us to participate in every exercise. In the past, five overseas deployments was a heavy year. Now, it is 20 for training and real world missions around the world, side-by-side with our active duty forces and Reserve forces. We often leave our airplanes in place for 90, 120 or 180 days while rotating our people through. That is all new. We never used to do that.

For every contingency of any size, the active force immediately needs all of our tankers and our airlifters. Instead of "weekend warriors" around for the big one; we are now quasi, full-time soldiers. It is a total change in our life and that is what the new world demands. We have to manage this for the future or it will fall on the active duty force.

The pace was breaking the back of our folks so we slowed down a little in February and in March, but by April and May it once again picked up. We are really pushing our people. About 5,000 of our people are TDY in any one month. That doesn't sound like a lot when you've got 109,000 people, but the active duty Air Force is about 400,00 people and has about 9,000 people TDY.

Of our 1,200 airplanes, about 500 of them are on the road TDY all the time doing something for the Air Force. Our average aircrew spends 110 to 120 days a year and our average support personnel spends 60 to 80 days supporting missions and training. These are busy people doing things for America.

The American public clearly does not want more spending on Defense; they want less. They don't want more war, they want more peace. The Guard has changed to be what the customer wants. We have "Drug Mentorship", and "Youth at Risk" programs as a way of adding value to America within the states. Overseas, we have formed state partnership programs taking our large collection of native language speakers and matching them up with former Warsaw Pact countries or former Republics of the Soviet Union. My Czechoslovakian relatives in Texas are matched up with Czechoslovakia and Illinois is matched up with Poland for an F-16 exchange. We bring these people over in small teams, have them come to our drill weekends, take them to work with us, try to show them our a military functions in a democracy, and then we send small teams back over there. For instance, Lithuania matched up with Pennsylvania, and we are sending them people who know a lot about nuclear disasters and a 911 system.

Now, let me switch to the budget. The public said they want a balanced budget, and we are going to balance the budget sometime around 2002. To achieve this, I am planning for a DoD cut of at least another 12 to 15 percent on top of what we have already seen. I may be wrong, but that is what I am planning on.

What does it mean for the Air Force? I don't know and neither does anybody else. Instead of a $60 billion Air Force, I am planning on a $50 billion Air Force. Dramatic change is on our doorstep.

"CyberGuard" is a clever little phrase that we use to describe how we are preparing our organization for the 21st Century. When people say cyber, everybody thinks computers. Of course, that is part of it, but I am talking about an entire organizational transformation. What was successful in the 20th Century will have turned almost 180 degrees to be able to cope with the 21st Century.

If you do not know the difference between the Information Superhighway, the World Wide Web and the Internet, if you don't know what hypertext markup language is, if you don't know what HTTP means, if you don't know what JAVA is, and if you do not speak fluent Spanish, you are about to lose your job. You are about to be replaced by someone who can.

Information technology will change the way we work, train and fight in a changed world. I am talking about synergies of systems, and organizational structures, the people, the businesses, and the processes which we use.

Also, in the year 2025, 40 percent of this audience in uniform will likely be minorities and women. If we do not look like America, they will not support us. If we do not look like America, we will not be able to recruit and we will not have an Air National Guard in 2025.

Why do you need to speak Spanish? You will need to speak the language of the customer. By the year 2040, ninety-two percent of the new business is not going to be in America but in the developing world. If you want to sell to the world, what language should you speak? Some say, Chinese and some say Urdu for India. But, in this country, about the year 2030, thirty percent of the population will be Hispanic. If you do not speak fluent Spanish, you will likely not be able to hold a middle or upper level management position in this country. The jobs will go to those in South America and Europe where multi-lingual is a way of life.

The new structure will also require a common vision and values to be effective. The Chief is working hard on this in the Air Force and we are working hard on it in the Guard.

Why would we change? Primarily, reduced budgets are going to force us to change. That is why the Chief talks about a 50-50 Air Force. Today we are 70 percent active duty and 30 percent Guard and Reserve. It will mean a return to the "militia" nation, and it is going to be driven by budgets if nothing else.

The key concepts from the New World Vision study will also impact us. In 2025, a Director of the Air National Guard will stand in front of the F-15 unit here at St. Louis, and she will say, "Folks, it is time to turn in your fighter airplanes for uninhabited aircombat vehicles because that is the way we will fight wars. We will rely on uninhabited air combat vehicles with smart standoff weapons using small projectiles that are very lethal."

In 2050, the first launch will take place for a mission to Mars and a Guardsman will be in the cockpit, because the citizen-soldier will be even more important in 2050 than they are now. In November of that same year, the director of the Air National Guard will get up at the senior commanders conference and say, "Do you realize, ladies and gentlemen, just 50 years ago we actually strapped bombs to our kids and had them dive at the targets? What a stupid way to go to war!"

Other dramatic changes will occur. Smart point of use delivery will replace airdrops, and large payloads will be delivered directly from million pound airlifters to the folks directly in the field. Even the refueling guys will face changes. Engine technology will extend the range on airlifters so they may not require refueling.

CyberGuard will have a new organizational infrastructure and behaviors. The way we are currently organized in the Air Guard is guaranteed to fail in the 21st Century. Industry got away from this structure two decades ago. We are still dragging our feet. It makes people coordinate between functions when in reality everything involves cross-functional teamwork. The old way is guaranteed to be slow. We have to change it. My organization is into this new structure and process. When you call, you don't call the XO [Director of Operations] but you call an F-16 team or KC-135 team. They own your problem. This is a dramatic change and it requires dramatically fewer people to operate this way.

Instead of the headquarters and field "us and them" roles, we want a "We." Sears did this because they were about to perish, so they got rid of the corporation headquarters "us" and formed one team. Go into a Sears outfit today and you will see a drastically improved organization.

We have invested around $200 to $250 million over time in a fiber-optic network at all of our locations. This is the way of life in the future. If you wait to do this, you won't have the money to do it, and you'll be grossly behind.

The Warrior Network, a satellite-based system, will let me sit in my office and talk to everyone in the Air Guard for about $150 an hour. More importantly, we can distribute education and training over this network because we won't have the money to travel places and give speeches like this.

This fiber-optic network must also reach into the Guard member's home so they can participate in such things as Air War College between flights or on their lunch hour.

Videoconferencing is a way of life. In the future, you will pick up the phone and the person's face will appear in the lower right hand corner of your computer. Your computer will be a $500-700 computer sitting on top of your TV set that will work your entire entertainment center on the Web itself.

Teaming rooms will requires investments in facilities and equipment to avoid a return to purely functional organizations. We are doing that, and it is not easy. They have to have the databases available to deploy the decisions that they make. McDonnell Douglas is very active in this area distributive interactive network for simulations. We need our aircrews to use a virtual reality helmet for training of a real world mission in Bosnia or large formations. The technology is here today, but we simply have to invest in it.

Infrastructure is another issue. A networked Guard in an Interneted world should use a standardized architecture. I see wonderful things on computers, but often they can't talk to anybody else. It drives us nuts. So we are trying to maintain a standard architecture.

Our Chief of Staff, General Fogleman, preaches the importance of "a team within a team." It is a new way of working. No longer is it winning for the Air Force or winning for the Guard, but working as a team for the American public. It involves integrated process teams, not stovepipes, and much smaller staffs.

I am trying to carve off major portions of my staff and move them to the site of the customer, the MAJCOMs. My guys say this approach won't let us protect the Guard. I counter with many examples of things we don t have like a supportable radar for the F-15, enough chaff and flares and defensive systems that work. We don't have the stuff we need to interact with the Air Force in a modern war. I can continue to get "nothing" with no staff. So I am going to put my staff where they can be part of the battle at the customer level. The idea is to produce win-win relationships based upon trust and teamwork.

We will need lifelong learning. I'd like for us to be a learning organization. Imagine how powerful it would be if my 109,000 people would come to work and just do two things everyday learn something new and improve something. Producing a learning organization is a powerful tool and it costs nothing. It is a tremendous multiplier.

We want to be a paperless operation. I have stacks of it on my desk everyday and costs me $40 million each year, $40 million I won t have later. We've must do things electronically, quickly, because that is the way industry and everybody else is going.

There are new management information systems out there. If the Internet can use icons on information systems, why can't we do it in the military? I am trying to construct one where I see the status of everything I need and make it available to everybody else in the Air Guard through JAVA, with proper firewalls. It isn t easy to do, but possible.

These changes are just waiting for investment. Nobody has the money to do them, but if you think you don't have the money now, wait until later. You really won't have any money later. You have to walk the walk. You can't talk to your people about the latest stuff and leave a 286 computer on their desk. You can't wait to invest in the newest thing because the newest thing is always right around the corner. You've got to invest and reinvest in some type of plan for your organization.

You must use the power of the Web because you can't afford everything you need on your own. I can also use our computer system to parallel process information with my directors . I put my strategic plan for my four years side-by-side with theirs, my 90-day action plan with theirs and my personal learning plan side-by-side with theirs. Then we can realign our programs to support each other.

The changes we are facing are absolutely dramatic, the same as the change from sail to steam. Throughout the Air Force we are planning for the Air Force in 2025? We are asking ourselves if today we will commit the same error as some on the Army Staff did in 1915 which prevented them from seeing the airplane as a new way of war and not just a toy. It changed the entire nature of warfare. As we construct the Air Force of 2025, we assume we are doing the right things with our six pillars and the Parthenon diagram. However, is there anything that we are missing because we are so trapped in the Air Force way of thinking today that blinds us to dramatic possibilities for 2025? I wonder.

Thank you very much. I enjoyed coming here. I'll be glad to respond to any questions.

GEN. SHAUD: General Sheppard never disappoints. Part of your very good work in the Guard has to do with your positive and strong relationship with the states. You frequently get involved in humanitarian efforts. How do you work that?

MAJ. GEN. SHEPPERD: There is one secret to the National Guard. There is no one to say "No." There is no intermediate headquarters between the National Guard Bureau and the 54 states and territories.

For example, we issue the State of Missouri equipment, money and guidelines. Then, we trust them and expect them to do what is right. We hold them accountable if they don't. They have to perform on inspections by the people who gain them in time of war. It works.

Not only do we not need a lot of bureaucracy to supervise, but we won't have the money to do so in the future. We had the courage to abandon a lot of our old practices.

Let me add one thing to my remarks. I am most proud that we could not have an effective Guard without an effective Air Force. We take two things for granted. First, we have created a seamless Air Force, where you can take people, 75 percent of whom are part-timers, and put them on an airplane and send them to Aviano [Air Base, Italy] and tomorrow morning they will fit seamlessly alongside that active duty force. You won't know the difference. That is unbelievable.

The other thing that we have done so well as an active duty Air Force and also now as a Guard, is put enormous responsibility in the hands of your young people and simply assume they will do it right.

When the Cuban shoot-down took place of the two civilian airplanes, our response was to immediately put up CAPs [Combat Air Patrol] for the SAR [Search and Rescue] effort so the Cubans would see them on radar. All night long they performed the mission, and the reputation of the United States was in the hands of a young Air National Guard part-time captain whom we knew would do the right thing. When you can do that with part-time people, and when you can do that with a modern Air Force to put the welfare of the nation in the hands of young people, we've really done some right things. I am sure happy to be part of it.

GEN. SHAUD: That is super. The leadership of the Guard is obviously thinking ahead. As I look out at our former senior leaders in the audience, it is apparent thinking ahead is not a recent thing for the Air Force. What we see today in the Air Force is the pay off for the notion of "total force" developed over the past decades. It has resulted in the seamless force that you talked about today. Thank you very much.

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