National Guard chief on lessons from Ukraine, COVID-19 and military promotion limbo

WASHINGTON — With roughly 430,000 Soldiers and Airmen, the US National Guard represents a sizeable chunk of America’s overall military strength. Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, the 29th chief of the National Guard Bureau, is the man in charge of organizing and making it all work. And as the National Guard Association of the United States gathered over the weekend in Reno, Nev., for its annual convention, Hokanson was a man in the spotlight.

Ahead of a the event, he sat down with Breaking Defense for a wide-ranging interview touching on everything from how the Guard is handling lessons from Ukraine to the experience Guardsmen had the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when members were being used as teachers and bus drivers.

This interview, conducted in July, has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

BREAKING DEFENSE: You just celebrated the 30th anniversary of the State Partnership Program. That program has gotten some credit for helping to build up Ukraine’s military over the last decade, which we’re seeing the results of. Is there a way to take the lessons from Ukraine and reapply them to training that’s being done for other countries in the region?

HOKANSON: So one of my first trips after the war started was to the Baltics and Moldova. And Moldova has a partnership with North Carolina. At each embassy of the state partners, we have a bilateral affairs officer who’s there every day in the embassy, and they help facilitate the training that we do with those countries. And so I spoke with our adjutants general, and our bilateral affairs officers, when I was in the country, and their military leaders, and said, “Look, in light of what you’re seeing, I know you’re reassessing what you need, what you don’t need. Let’s adjust any and all of our training to what you think is most important.” And the chief of defense in Moldova was very open, and their minister of defense, and they said, “Look, our nation is small, we can’t afford these type of capabilities, but we can do these capabilities. And these are really important, so help us focus on those.” And so the North Carolina guard at that point, really took a relook at the training they had scheduled, and they changed it to meet Moldova’s requirements, so that [Moldova] felt that they were focusing on the things that were most important to them in their country.

Has that reassessment been happening elsewhere as well?

Yeah. In fact, a lot of the state partners, they’re watching [what is happening in Ukraine]. And of course, each of their countries has their own different view and intelligence service, or just their relationship to what’s going on Ukraine with their respect to their part of the world. And so they’re looking at what can they learn from that or what lessons may be applied to them. And I think it’s causing all of them to, you know, take a look [and say] “Okay, we didn’t think that there’ll be another major war in Europe. And now there is and so, okay, where are we right now?” Recently, we signed a partnership with Austria, a neutral country, and they saw value in a partnership where we trained together, we learn from one another.

For guardsmen, it makes us a lot better, too. Because now you take some of our young men and women that go from their state to a foreign country, they get to help learn the language, they see the environment that they operate in. And then they also get an appreciation for the global environment or the regional issues that they face. So when I was the adjutant general of Oregon, our state partnership was with Vietnam — flooding, wildfires, tsunamis, very similar disasters that we faced, but we shared what we learned from each other. And they said, “Hey, here’s what we do in the Mekong Delta, when we have annual flooding.” We gained a lot from that, and then we talked to them about, “Hey, we have forest fires almost every year in the northwest, here’s how we fight those.” And so by being a two-way relationship, both the state and the country get great buy-in. And in many cases, [the size of a state’s] National Guard is probably equivalent to the size of the military of their partner nation. And so in many cases, it’s almost a peer-to-peer conversation.

The Guard has been tasked with a lot of missions over the last few years that traditionally they wouldn’t be used for, and for longer periods of time. How concerned are you with being stretched too thin?

Obviously, one of our biggest concerns is recruiting and retention. The Guard is amazing, because we provide 20 percent of the joint force at about 4 percent of the budget — now, it’s not really four, because we use the current service schools and stuff like that, so you know, you could argue what that is in a total amount. But what we have to do is we have to find that balance to where our guardsmen can do their civilian career, they can have their guard career, and frankly, balance that with their family.

If you look at the past couple of years, how many guardsmen we had on COVID response, it was a big taxing event on us. I visit all of the states, every chance I can, on their drill weekends, I meet with the senior leaders, and then I ask the recruiters, why are people coming in? I talked to the leaders, why are people getting out, and [I am] trying to understand what we can do at the national level to help address that. Because at the end of the day, we’ve got an incredible responsibility as 20 percent of the joint force to have ready and capable units when they need them. But we can’t have that if we take so much from people that they end up departing the organization.

So we do watch closely. And right now, in terms of the Army Guard, everything goes well, we will meet our end strength, we’re above our authorized end strength right now, our authorized end strength for October 1, because it’s changing. On the Air Guard, we’re a little bit below I think we’re over 97 percent. But we really need to get to 100 percent. Because we need everybody on the team. So when I work with the adjutants general who command the guards in their state, you know, we are absolutely there when the emergency when they need us. But when the emergency is over, please get it back to whoever normally would take care of that.

You know, like [making the Guard into] school bus drivers during COVID. I totally got it, there was a significant concern, you looked at the demographics, so we were there for the emergency. But once the emergency is over, then, you know, let’s get that back to the people [for whom it’s their] livelihood. Our guardsmen are amazing, because they bring their civilian careers with them. So they’ll figure anything out. They got a great leadership, good organizational skills, they’ll do whatever they asked him to do. But at the end of the day, you know, we’re kind of expensive. And so when we can hand that mission back and our guardsmen can go back to their civilian jobs and their drill weekends, it benefits all of us.

I totally forgot about the bus driver thing. Also a lot of teaching, right?

Interestingly, some of our guards went, “Actually, wow, I love teaching. I want to become a teacher.” So now they have a new civilian job teaching, and they’re still in the guard. And, you know, like many of them, they leverage that skill set, and you never know where it’s gonna lead.

In the first half of the 2010s, there was a lot of tension between the Guard and the Air Force, to the point Congress mandated a commission be put in to referee. With the Space Guard issue and potential retirements of jets again in the budget, how are relations between the service and the Guard now?

The great thing is, is there’s always an avenue of communication. [I have] great respect for Secretary [Frank] Kendall. You know, anytime I need to talk to him, we work out schedules, and he’ll always hear me out. And I greatly appreciate that in Gen. [CQ] Brown, they’re always willing to sit down and have a conversation. And at the end of the day, we’re just trying to provide the best information we can to the service secretary so they can decide what’s best for the nation. Now, each of us see it a little bit differently, but the ability to have that conversation [is key].

I talk to the adjutants general every Thursday, and it gives them an opportunity to relate to me their issues and concerns. And then, of course, you know, our congressional leadership in each of the states, they’ll express their concerns and issues as well. But at the end of the day, nobody is not allowing us to have that communication. They always are open door. And we have the same on the Army side, you know, the ability to speak with the secretary of the Army, chief of staff of the Army, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretary of Defense. Now, they see a different picture, sometimes a little bit broader. But as long as we can provide them the most important and critical fact-based information, so they can make the best decision, then we’re able to do our job.

And you feel like those avenues are open now?

Absolutely. Yeah, they’re very good about that.

Putting your Joint Staff hat on for a second — by the time this is published, there will be three empty seats on the Joint Staff, and hundreds of military promotions in limbo. Are you seeing any impact on operations?

Every one of those has an impact on our ability to operate. And I would go back to, what’s my number one priority? Our people. So to every individual, there’s a family, for the most part. And for every move, there are multiple subordinate moves. And when you stop that, now you have, you know, seven, eight, nine individuals, with families that are now also in a position where, do I put my kids in school or am I going to move in the middle of the school year? A lot of our moves are in the summer, and part of that is to facilitate the benefit to the family to get them into schools, get them into an area before the school year starts. And so for every senior level, there are many, many subordinates that are impacted by that. And you could say it’s just the generals — well, no. Generals were colonels were lieutenant colonels were majors were commanders were lieutenant commanders. If you’re in that position, and you’re looking above you what’s happening, is that gonna impact your career decision? And I’m just very concerned that — to me, I want to take care of our people. And anything that impacts the family is going to impact the service member. And we need to do everything we can to prevent that where we can.

And at the highest level, the Joint Chiefs being shorthanded, will this have an impact?

Well, you know, it’s at every level now. So you’ve got folks that were scheduled retirements, folks that were planning to come into positions. And that all that’s on hold. And obviously, when you’re an acting, it’s not the same as being the confirmed position. It limits — you can never presume confirmation. The longer that draws out, you know, obviously — we’ve got exceptional leaders. And I will tell you, when you sit among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our nation does get it right. Every single one of those individuals are phenomenal human beings. But at the end of the day, they also have a family. And they’re leading an organization trying to set the standard and the example. And when you have those vacancies, there are impacts.