ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Lt. Gen. Craig McKinley watched the grainy black and white images of an Air Force weapon finding its target and scoring a significant victory in the Global War on Terrorism.
The target: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The victory: Taking a terrorist leader out of the game. The players: The U.S. Air Force teamed with the Air National Guard.
McKinley turned from the screen to his audience at the 128th National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS) General Conference here Sept. 18.
“June 7, 2006,” McKinley reminded the packed room at the Albuquerque Convention Center. “The perfect example of how we in the United States Air Force and the Air National Guard can deploy overseas to create an effect. A guy by the name of Zarqawi was in this safe house. We had intelligence. … We knew that if we were able to put the right force on this target, we would probably have a result of a high-value person destroyed. It all worked right. We took what we do at home – our training, our equipment, everything that you do resulted in a total force effect.”
The ingredients: A Predator feed. Joint Surveillance Target Acquisition Radar (JSTAR). Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC). Fighters on an improvised explosive device combat patrol.
“[The fighters] didn’t know this mission existed,” McKinley said. “[They were] redirected. One of the pilots was an Air National Guard pilot. His wingman was an active duty pilot flying an Air National Guard airplane. If it doesn’t get any better than that effect – to kill that person, to do that kind of work, to have that kind of effect in the Global War on Terrorism – [then] I don’t know what success is.”
In some ways the new director of the Air National Guard – McKinley took charge June 1 – and vice chief of the National Guard Bureau shares common ground with his Army National Guard counterpart who was simultaneously meeting with Army Guard officers in a different room at the same convention center.
Both McKinley and Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, director of the Army National Guard and also vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that recruiting and retention are their top priorities.
Both leaders said that resetting their components – providing Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen with the state of the art equipment they need to fulfill their missions – is vital.
Both leaders feel immense pride in seeing how the Guard members they lead have transformed the National Guard in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks; how Guard members’ actions have changed the way America talks about its oldest fighting force.
Both generals lead multi-tasking, busy forces. Army Guard Soldiers are in the states and in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai and the Horn of Africa, among other places. Air Guard members are in the same places, flying side-by-side with the active Air Force worldwide and performing numerous core missions such as resupplying the National Science Foundation in Antarctica.
The generals even share some of the same style. Unlike other speakers at the three-day conference, the two came down from their platforms in their rooms to talk on the same level as their audiences while discussing the state of their components.
The conference host, NGAUS, includes nearly 45,000 current and former officers. NGAUS was created in 1878 to provide unified Guard representation in Washington, D.C., with the goal of obtaining better equipment and training by petitioning Congress for more resources, the same mission it has today.
But there are also significant differences in the challenges facing the two directors.
McKinley takes control of an Air National Guard reeling from the latest round of the Base, Realignment and Closure process. “BRAC really was a gut punch for all of us,” he said. “We’ve got serious problems, and we’re going to have to deal with them corporately. … BRAC is law. It’s done. It’s unfortunate, but we’ve got to move on.”
He promised that the National Guard Bureau would help the states weather the BRAC storm, which translates to a loss of some air assets.
McKinley also faces a disconnection from his active duty side not shared by his Army counterpart.
“Our Air Force has felt recently that we in the Air National Guard have kind of pitched out of the fight,” he said. “I think I know why.”
In 1988, the Air National Guard left the Pentagon for a Crystal City office building, he said. McKinley has moved back to the Pentagon, and he is bringing his most senior enlisted advisor, his deputy and others with him.
“That’s where business is done in Washington in the United States Air Force,” he said. “We’ve got to connect at the senior leadership level.”
Unlike Vaughn, he faces a recruiting shortfall. He said the Air National Guard will be about 1,000 Airmen below its 106,800 goal this year.
So McKinley is borrowing a page from his Army Guard colleague, adopting the Guard Recruiters Assistance Program (GRAP) because it has worked on the Army side.
“Recruiting is job one,” he said. “We don’t have any excuse not to be full.”
The Army Guard’s turnaround came as its Citizen-Soldiers were at the peak of combat missions on the ground in Iraq, in June 2005, Vaughn said.
“This is a huge deal,” he said. “It’s historic. … The pride that this nation feels in our organization … is fueling that recruiting effort.”
Vaughn said the Army side goal is 357,000 Citizen-Soldiers.
He called GRAP, which became fully operational in June of this year, “the greatest peer recruitment machine ever put together. … It’s making us younger at a pace we’ve never seen. … It’s making us a leader.”
The result of achieving full strength in the Army National Guard includes the end of a “hollow” force, the ability to push back against the concept of piece-mealing under-strength units just in time for deployment and – in the long term – maybe even shorter deployments, Vaughn said.
“We had a size 9 foot going in a size 11 shoe,” he said. Now the foot fits, he said.
“We’re very proud of you,” Vaughn concluded. “I think that you’re among the most appreciated institutions in the entire nation. I don’t think we’ve ever seen it like that. You have an overwhelming ability to recruit Soldiers. You have all the tools. You’re well-led. We’re under-equipped, and we know that. … You’ve got to stay strong as a combat force. Everything that we do … rescuing people, fighting fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, everything that we’re called on to do, the resources for that come because we’re a two-fer force.”
For his part, McKinley characterized the Air National Guard’s challenges as opportunities.
“I’m proud to be in the Air Force, and I’m proud to be in the Guard,” he said.
The general recalled the day he was working at the Pentagon when the Guard’s newest mission arrived in the form of a ruthless and evil attack.
“I saw people being carried out on stretchers,” he said. “I saw people who didn’t live. … That was a day we cannot forget or let our [fellow] American citizens to forget. We have a mentality that things go away quickly in our society. That was a very brutal and evil day, and from the minute I saw F-16s flying over the Pentagon within minutes, I knew we were starting our resolution to win the war.”