Two cultures, one force: the future looks blended in middle Georgia

Airman, April, 2004 by Chuck Roberts

Imagine being handed a drawing of an elaborate dish that's never been prepared and told to have it ready by dinnertime. You're provided the ingredients but left to your own devices to figure out the recipe. Change that. Have it ready by lunch, please. Oh, and one more thing--failure is not an option.

A similar scenario is underway at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., where active duty airmen and Air National Guardsmen have been busy blending themselves into the first "Total Force" wing.

When the 116th Bomb Wing mission went away in June 2001, about a thousand guardsmen unexpectedly found themselves without jobs. But in August 2001, the secretary of the Air Force stepped in and proposed a merging of forces and taking on the mission of the 93rd Air Control Wing.

They had until October 2004 to make it happen. But then the deadline was accelerated by two years to October 2002 at the prompting of Air Combat Command headquarters. Three months later, the emerging wing found itself in the thick of war during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"If you said let's try to make this as hard as possible, I think this is a pretty good recipe," said Col. Mark Hall, vice commander for the 116th Air Control Wing. "There are a lot of days you think, 'Hmm, I never thought about that.' But now those things that make you go 'hmm' aren't as frequent."

For instance, if military legal action is deemed necessary toward an active duty member, the wing commander, Brig. Gen. Tom Lynn, can't initiate action because he's an air guard technician--a government civilian employee--during the week who wears a military uniform. By law, a technician can't perform certain command actions against an active duty member except when activated.

That issue was resolved by designating Colonel Hall as commander for the active duty element, but overall approval is still maintained by General Lynn through close coordination. Congressional approval is being evaluated to broaden the commander's leadership authority.

"It's been pretty transparent," Colonel Hall said of the unique leadership roles they face in commanding the 116th, whose mission is to fly the E-8C joint surveillance larger attack radar system and provide airborne battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to ground and air component commanders.

Dark days in Georgia

But the future looked cloudy for Master Sgt. Ben Simmons when the guardsman heard the Air Force planned to reduce the B-1 Lancer fleet to 60 aircraft and relocate the remaining bombers to Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and Ellsworth Force Base, S.D. There would be no follow-on mission for the Guard, which meant no paycheck for Sergeant Simmons, who had just closed on a new house and whose wife was pregnant.

"I was stressing," said Sergeant Simmons, an air guard technician in the logistics readiness squadron. This position is a full-time guardsman slot paid the same as if on active duty, but not subject to permanent change of station moves. There are about 600 full-time guardsmen in the 116th, along with about 575 traditional guardsmen. They work alongside approximately 1,625 active duty airmen and more than 200 civilian contractors. Reconciling the manpower document to reflect such a mix remains one of the major challenges for the wing.

Like many guardsmen, Sergeant Simmons was once on active duty, so the blend was an easy transition culturally. But logistically it was a bumpy ride in the early going.

"It was tough at first. Neither of us asked for this to happen. We weren't ready for it," he said. The mix of supervision requires three different rating systems, but the sergeant said such issues are an "educational thing" and are far outweighed by the benefits reaped.

In addition to enjoying a manpower increase in his office from three to 14, Sergeant Simmons pointed out advantages noted by many others. The Guard provides a steady source of seasoned experts, while active duty forces bring new ideas and a broad knowledge based on past assignments and deployments.

"It's worked out really well for us," he said. "If you walked into our office you wouldn't know whether someone was active duty or Guard."

A good mixture

That same seamlessness is evident at the communications flight where Maj. Fred Massey describes his evenly mixed batch of active duty and Guard troops as "poster children for total force." However, indicators still exist showing the two halves of the wing haven't completely homogenized yet. The unit quarterly awards board for the communications flight displays a separate photo of a Guard and active duty winner for each category. Not to show favoritism, whiners are arranged alphabetically. Next year, he said there will be only one winner in each category.

"It's going good, but it's not normal yet," said Major Massey, an air guard technician. "But it will be normal and efficient in a few years."

Like other units, he said his people experienced growing pains such as learning each other's methods of performance reports and annual evaluations. Guard evaluations are based more on the long-term approach of developing people as a part of your hometown Air Force. As a result, he explained, they don't demand the same level of detail as for active duty forces, who can relocate every three years and require written documentation to capture their accomplishments for the benefit of supervisors who don't have first-hand knowledge of the individual's track record.