Need Savings? Let’s Tweak Some Things

Air Guard Director Lt. Gen. Harry Wyatt told the crowd Tuesday at AFA’s Air & Space Conference there are a few areas of policy that could be tweaked to make the Guard better able to respond to federal responsibilities. Air guardsmen are routinely mobilized for stateside disasters, but contingencies outside the US present another hurdle due to some arcane Pentagon policies that stipulate 30 days’ notice for employers. This regulation prevented the Puerto Rico ANG from flying missions immediately after the January 2010 Haitian earthquake, Wyatt noted, since it was an operation outside of the United States. “Folks that call the shots at OSD need to realize they don’t need 30 days’ notice for these situations,” Wyatt said. This is part of a larger organizational discussion, he noted. Resources and force structure are going to get a hard look in the upcoming negotiations, he noted, and it would behoove the Air Guard and the Air Force to prepare to grapple with the changing concept of what a wing looks like—different from the large, mostly Cold War era structures built up across the active duty. “We are going to have to take a look at our traditional wing structure and reexamine how we do things,” Wyatt said.