T8 B22 Filson Materials Fdr- 8-29-02 Mgen Shepperd Interview- Typed Notes 314

MGen. Shepperd - 8/29/02

You were director of the ANG during the 1AF transition to ANG command and control. Can you describe the importance of the air sovereignty mission? You have to put it in context of sev things: Cold War was drawing to a close after the Gulf War, Berlin Wall had come down, Soviets were gone as an air threat, No longer the things we'd experienced early on of Bear aircraft coming down from su going to cuba At the same x, the af was drawing down dramatically in force structure Not only about air defense, about no longer needng the cold war force structure and things we had extablished for the cold war About money and the reorg of the af under gen mcpeks direction Another factor often forgotten - BRAC - the deisre of gen mcpeak was to "get the af right," in other words, to put the boxes in the right place and strucutre the af for the futre He felt ang had been the guardian of air defense force for years and therefore command control belonged within the ang He saw great force strucutre and money probs coming He thought If you put it in the guard, it was guard responsibility One more fight he didn't have to fight He didn't know how to work command and control To me it was about several other things For a long time all of us had understtod that the likelihood of anyone attacking us in an air attack was very unlikely Further if they did it, we didn't have anykind of ad structure to defend the nation But had three things essential to conducting air war anywhere Communication, intelligence and command and control Essential for war Through 1 AF and through NORAD we had capability to do those tings I realize that there was a force structure battle coming Didn't seem wise to me to take down very mechanism we use in case we had to boost up again - the three things air defense system provided no matter how many units were there To me - it was about preserving some type of infrasturture simply did not seem wise to declare our air borders open If you declared them open and had no means whatsoever to prosecute our borders it opens it up to the obvious, anyone wanting to violate our borders would have carte blanche to do that Transiiton of laf gave us ability to maintain air sovereignty to our country Sen mccain said I was tryiing to defend old world force strucutre for ad of america

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Not about an attack, about air borders and air sovereignty I firmly believe as of country - no matter how you did it - with fighters, balloons, aerostats - concept of air sovereignty of nation Don't declare land or water borders open, shouldn't open air borders Felt good about defending it, but when deciding how many you need, run into all sorts of problems Needed forces on various places on our coasts We were able to defend and maintain those How well-suited is the ANG for this mission? The guard was tremendous well suited to do this, back in the 1950s we had something like 2600 airplanes dedicated to air defense of nation Had gurad units and ad on alert and because we had a real threat back then Had a real air dfeense system of radars and figthers Shrunk as the air threat diminised and cold war changed Became strictly an air guard mission On the other hand, the expertise of how to really do air dfense remaied at the unit level in the air national guard Sectors slowly transitioned to the guard All of the expertise remaining for how to do air defense of america Thank goodness we had the guard on 9/11 Had we taken down our entire air dfense structure, we would never have been able to do what we did on 9/11 Wouldn't have had command and control sturuect, liasiion w/faa and command and control structure to do that A natural guar d mission What was the general mood from AF and ANG leaders alike in response to this transition? Would you characterize the transition as smooth and seamless? Air force basically washed its hand of air defense and was no longer interested in it and we've seen that many times, the af sheds itself from the mission and that's a real problem Saw it w/weapons systems and the a? for instance, The guard was the only owners of the 17 Seen it with reconossaisnce misison where there's no interest from the active duty air froce When a mission is shed to the guard, the guard has to really fight for advocacy because there's none left in the air force and that has implications for pom, funding and political advocacy

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When decision wa made by mcpeak to turn laf over to the guard, a huge fight iin the af, lots of people thought no way in the world should we do this, A 2 star slot had to go to the guard A tremendous reluctance, even though they wren't interested in air dfeense, One of the first steps in staff integrations, in other words, when it turned over to the guard, we absolutely needed af involvement, and kept active duty troops in A legel issue w/title 10 and 32 and needed ad lineup in the hq and for command and control when an incident took place As it turned out, laf was one of the first times an active duty general officer billet was turned over and filled by the guard This has been a tremednosu susccess story in my opinion Courageous decision and visionary, made by gen mcpeak, not done by pure reaons, but visionary and the right thing to do

The Cold War was over and the air defense mission had drawn down considerably: was giving the ANG the mission a way to save it? I think gen mcpeak About getting the af right and getting the right people in charge of the right mission Do you have any examples of the 1 AF struggle for survival you may have witnessed during your tenure as ANG director? Examples you are willing to share for this book? Gen killey was very much involved in the survival of laf, dan navin was his cohort there Gen killey's fight was about force strucute, mine was about thought process of air sovereignty of the nation If you wanted to stay in line w/the little red book of the af, you had a numbered af in charge of prosecuting war You need a numbered air force Absolutelyif you want to stay in line w/the way the af operates, we cut 1 af size to be in line w/gen mcpeaks line Only naf that ws cut Ours was much more tailored to what gen mcpeak wanted Fight for survival In the names of efficiency and savings and budget pressures were looking at taking laf and that's the wrong thing to do ... it's about how you proseccute war and defense in w/air force doctrine and that's what it's about and laf does that Every pom cycle, you come up w/bills to pay and the quickest way to pay bills, cutting people Dramatic and immediate savings so if you could do away with 1 af and those people you could do away with laf and still people looking at how to do that

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