Brigadier General Charles V. Ickes II
Chief Operating Officer, Air National Guard
"Focus on the Air National Guard"
Air & Space Conference 2004 – Washington, D.C.
September 14, 2004
Brig Gen Ickes: As I look around the room, I see a lot of Guard-friendly faces. What we've tried to do this morning is put a briefing together that shows a little bit about Guard 101, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, looking at this audience. Then we're going to talk about a little bit of the current operations tempo. Then I'm going to try to talk a little bit about where the Air Guard sees itself fitting into the Total Force of the future. Particularly, I'll show you how Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, who is the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, a Guard three-star Amy general, is leading a change within the states that will align us eventually to better support NORTHCOM and part of the defense strategy—the 1-4-2-1 strategy. So I'll talk a little about that…
Obviously, the Guard's been around a long time—the Air Guard since '47, actually earlier than that in some regards, but been around a long time; part of the Constitution and very vital to the defense of the United States in many, many ways.
Here's how we're aligned. For any of those that you wouldn't know, obviously two chains. I was at the table last night with three active enlisted folks, who had no clue and didn't understand one drop about this. So it's kind of interesting that there are still a lot of folks that don't understand the alignment, how you fit within the states when you have an Adjutant General who reports directly to the governor. That governor is actually the Commander-in-Chief of those Guard forces in the state; and then he can shop them to the federal government to support requirements that the federal government might have.
I'll give you an example. Right now in Florida the 125th, an F-15 wing I used to command, has almost 500 people on what's called “state active duty.” So they have half of the wing which is made up of 1,000 people that are federally mobilized supporting Operation Noble Eagle doing alert missions; and they have the other half of the wing—which is a first since I've been in the organization, but because of the hurricanes they've had—they have the other 500 people in a status called “state active duty.” They are paid by the governor to come in and perform duties which much align with their Guard duty. So it allows capability for both the federal government and the governor at the same time. However, you can never be in the same status at the same time.
We have 54 adjutants generals appointed by the governors. There are a couple of unique exceptions. Here in the District of Columbia we actually have a commander of the D.C. Guard, and he's appointed by the President. In Vermont, they elect the adjutant general through their legislature. In South Carolina the TAG runs for office just like every other elected official—a very unique arrangement. So you've got to run for office down there to become the TAG, and spend a lot of money out of your own pocket. And of course, you can get elected in and out every couple of years.
The President is one of our most famous Air Guardsmen. You all have heard a lot about this so we won't dwell on this much. By the way, the President is today speaking at the National Guard Association of the United States in Las Vegas, and Senator Kerry speaks on Thursday.
Here are the main statuses. You can be in either a state active duty—a Title 32 or a Title 10 status. You can be in any one of these statuses but you can never be in more than one status at one time. That's one of the big requirements of the law. You can never actually report to two masters.
There are some unique things that are done. For example, if a pilot is sitting alert, you actually are in a Title 32 status. If the horn goes off and you scramble immediately, by law, you revert to a Title 10 status, and become a Title 10 asset until you come back from that mission. That's done by a series of orders that are called self-executing orders, which allow a Guardsman to transition back and forth. Very unique, and we do that in many categories, not just with our pilots.
The Air National Guard is 34 percent of the Air Force mission right now. We do a tremendous amount with the Air and Space Expeditionary Forces (AEFs) with our flying wings; with Expeditionary Combat Support (ECS); and, yet we're a very small part of the budget. You can see we've got 88 flying wings right now, 579 GSUs, 106,000 personnel, and we expect we'll stay there for a long time. Quite a few aircraft and some well-maintained and excellent aircraft, I might add. It's pretty cheap to run a Guard base, too.
With our 106,000 personnel we have three main categories. Traditional—we try to keep that at about two-thirds. That's what the TAGs want it to be. Twenty-two percent are military technicians. They're called “excepted civil servants,” which means they must be able to meet all the requirements of the military uniform. The same requirements the Air Force has, but yet in pay status they're Title 32 civil servants. Then we have AGRs, active duty Guard and Reserve. That's the smallest part of our organization but they're full time.
Most every wing has about a third of their people full-time so that they can generate sorties every day. The same is true of our geographically separated units.
We're out in a lot of locations. These slides are just to kind of show you where the Guard connects to the community. We think this is vital, we think it's very good for the Total Force. Obviously, this includes Army and Air Guard locations, but it's vital to keep that connectivity with the community. As people have said in the past, taking the Guard to war takes the communities and brings the community involvement into it.
Keep in mind, the majority of our folks are volunteers. They're traditional and they have other jobs and other lives and it's a unique balance they give us. I will tell you they're a remarkable group of folks that give us a tremendous amount of time.
A Guardsman typically has a lot to think about—they've got family, they've got a TAG and a commander, they've got their employer, and they've got the combatant commander if they're in Title 10 and they're deployed or if they're in a mobilized status. So a lot of things to think about and try to balance. And that makes it pretty difficult at times.
Our vision is to remain a ready, reliable and accessible force that maintains its relevancy. That's key for Lieutenant General James as he tries to lead us as we transform into the future. Obviously, though, our mission is to provide combat capability. That's what we think about and that's what we try to do.
So now we'll talk a little bit about tempo. This was a famous slide over in Iraq. If you can't read it, it says, "One weekend a month, my …." The reality is, this is not our grandfather's Guard, it's a whole new world, and the tempo has been remarkable and the people have stepped up remarkably.
At the height of Operations Noble Eagle and Enduring Freedom we were up to almost 25,000 people full-time in some status. That was just about 25 percent of the Air Guard force. I'll talk about the Army Guard here in a minute just because their numbers are so remarkable.
Expeditionary Combat Support, we have about 15 percent of that, and at one point in 2003 we were still up at 22,000. Now we're down to about 6,800.
We have about 3,000 people mobilized. About 3,700 are in volunteer status right now. Some of those folks have to be mobilized for the nature of the business they're doing. Then in the locations or where they do that duty for Noble Eagle; then Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, about 4,200. So, still about 6,900 Air Guardsmen day-in and day-out above the normal doing the warfight.
In 2003 we had about 72 percent of the fighter sorties. Right now, we're doing about 63 percent in a large part of the tanker and then the airlift. Very, very vital. The Guard, by the way, has 17 of the 18 active alert sights in the United States, so we are critical to the Operation Noble Eagle mission, and by the way, the command and control for this mission resides under a two star down at 1st Air Force who happens to be a Guardsman, Major General Craig McKinley. He will leave 1st Air Force in early November and head over to EUCOM to become a Chairman's Ten, two-star position over there working in EUCOM. He'll be replaced by another Guardsman, we're anticipating.
In Operation Enduring Freedom, we had 24 percent of the fighter sorties up to '03 and now we’re doing about 32 percent. A-10s are very, very involved.
The AEF was the greatest thing that happened to the Guard. I think it was great for the Air Force, but it was super for the reserve component. It allowed us to put predictability in these folks' lives. Obviously Operations Noble Eagle, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom have all impacted that, but the reality is you can look at most units right now and tell somebody 30 months from now, “you're going to deploy for a period of time” and they can start working with their employer and with their families. To be honest, for those of you who don't know, many of these Guardsmen, they’ll set their vacations up so that they can deploy over their vacation so that they're not taking too much time away from their employer. So they actually in many cases give up their vacation time to meet deployment requirements.
Now I want to talk a little bit about where we're going in the future in the 1-4-2-1 strategy. General Blum came on last year as the Chief of the Guard Bureau. Keep in mind that the Guard Bureau is not an operational headquarters. The Guard Bureau is a bureau. Therefore, the leadership at the Guard Bureau—General Blum, General James, General Schultz, the Army three star—they don't actually reach out and tell the states exactly what to do. There is a real unique alignment there.
The reality is that it's a sensitive balance, but what General Blum's vision is, he wants to get the Army and the Air Guard aligned so that they properly fit into the 1-4-2-1 construct. That by no means, means that he wants them aligned only for the Homeland Defense piece, but he realizes how critical that is for the Army and the Air Guard and how critical it is for the citizens of the U.S. Who else would you expect to respond almost immediately other than your Guard forces in each state? So I'll show you how that's going to impact us. And obviously, as NORTHCOM is stood up, that has had a big impact on us and it will have a major impact on us as they fully flesh out their requirements and figure out what they want to set up as requirements in the future, where the Air Guard will fit and the Army Guard will in all of that.
The Secretary of Defense, by the way, on 30 July 2003, told General Blum to figure out how you're going to fit into this piece. He very directly said, “focus your Guard transformation efforts to improve accessibility to the DoD for Global War on Terrorism requirements.” The Army Guard's making huge transitions into this modularity. By the way, the Air Guard and the Total Force saw this coming years ago, and they aligned and have worked these things day-in and day-out to make us all more accessible. The Army Guard is moving along in that direction very rapidly at the same time, deployed with heavy numbers and still trying to transform their force but support the combatant commanders in the AOR.
The National Guard serves as the focal point for Guard matters at the strategic level. All that means is General Blum is kind of laying out the vision for where we're going to be in the future and then the states work with us to decide what's the best way to align, whether it be new mission areas, organizational structures, things like that.
General Blum's trying to strengthen NGB's relationship with NORTHCOM and PACOM, and I would tell you that NORTHCOM looks at the National Guard as one of their key components as they make their plans for the future. Then we will strengthen the statutory links to the Army and the Air Force, and we're talking about some of the law changes that have been proposed.
There is a tremendous spectrum of operations that the Guard is involved with every day. The National Defense Strategy, 1-4-2-1—defense of the Homeland, deter forward in four critical regions, swiftly defeat in two regions, and then win decisively in one region. All of those things, obviously, as part of the defense strategy we've got to be ready to do, but day to day we're doing all these other things.
I keep using Florida as an example, but because of the horrendous hurricane situations that have occurred down there, the amount of effort they've had to provide for the state is dazzling, yet they had people get off the airplane from Iraq from their 53rd Brigade and go straight out to start doing security details in the hurricane. People literally got off airplanes and went into state active duty status. And by the way, talking to the TAG, the great majority of them volunteered for that. He actually was going to give them some time off and they all said, “no, if this is what the requirement is we're just going to step into that and we'll make that happen.”
But you can see there is quite a spectrum of things that the Guard looks at every day, and in some degree the active component has never had to look at that. But I would tell you that's where the relationship will get better forged in the future, too, as we support NORTHCOM and the Homeland Defense and PACOM and in some regards STRATCOM is a key player in this, too.
So General Blum decided, “you know what, I don't have an alignment in each state.” Those states don't really have a good conduit to talk to NORTHCOM and the combatant commanders. It's always kind of been done as a pick-up game, a hodgepodge of how it occurred. So what he directed every state to do, based on Secretary Rumsfeld's memo to him last year, was to stand up a standing Joint State Headquarters that would be that conduit. All those Joint State Headquarters have a J-Staff, basically J1 through J8. Not all of them are aligned the same. General Blum gave them a lot of flexibility. The thing he didn't give them was any manpower, so what they had to do was take what was their Army Guard Corps Headquarters, they took the limited Air Guard State Headquarters (most Air Guard State Headquarters have 22 people or so in it) and kind of built a joint staff. So one of the challenges out there is you've got a pretty Army Guard-centric Joint Staff because the Army Guard has hundreds of people in their state headquarters because of the way they do command and control. The Air Guard, which is so decentralized, only has about 22 people in their state headquarters. So this has become a difficult task. He gave them no resources to do it, much like some of the reorganization going in the other components. Do it off your back and make it happen.
But they figured out how to do it. The reason he did it is they provide command and control for Title 10, 32, and state active duty missions as assigned. Jointness and improved access to NGB capabilities.
I will tell you, in some of the states some Air Force reservists are now doing their drilling at some of these Joint State Headquarters, some of them have Coast Guard alignment. There's only five states that don't have some involvement with Coast Guard, so that's a huge issue because the TAGs now in some regards have responsibility for some of the maritime issues.
Little-by-little, these state headquarters give the active and the reserve component a way to build a headquarters. I would fully expect sometime that the active component will actually put some active duty folks into these, so that there is an alignment between the combatant commanders and these Joint State Headquarters so that they all know that the resources are available and trained, and available to them when they would need them.
General Blum has also made sure that they have connectivity so every Joint State Headquarters has NPRNET, SPRNET, all of those issues, and many of them are standing up a Joint Operations Center (JOC), which day-in and day-out is a funnel for information requirements and things like that. So it's something different. I spent 26 years in the Florida Guard and we never did anything like this. It was kind of a pick-up game at all times. This actually adds a formal process to it.
General Blum's idea is, “let's make ourselves available and ready to meet the requirements that might be levied upon us.”
General Blum realized that we have several hats that we wear as Guardsmen but certainly we have two major masters—the federal government and the governors. So General Blum has directed and has had the states start to align so that 50 percent of all the forces are available. They're either training to mobilize or go overseas or do Title 10 kind of duties, so 25 percent of them are in that bucket. In the green bucket, that's where they're at. They're actually out doing those things. But in the other bucket, 50 percent are available to the governor for any number of missions, any mission that might crop up. I'll show you some of the things he's done there.
Civil support teams, maintenance aviation, engineers, technical search and rescue, medical (big push on the medical part in the states), to be available for mass decon kind of issues in case we'd ever have another situation in the U.S., or probably, unfortunately, when we have another situation. A lot with communications, transportation and security. Key things that the Guard can bring. But keep in mind, the vision on this is that Guard unit brings that to that location unless some of the compacts that are cut between the various governors and regions are enacted, and then there's a way to get, let's say, for example that Florida has a bunch of their Army Guards deployed overseas. Some of the other regional states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, would probably provide Army forces to them under some of the governors’ compacts.
So there are a lot of things that exist out there that always have, and now we're formalizing them. But General Blum wants to make sure that the governors are protected at all times and the governors are very concerned about that with Homeland Defense/Homeland Security post-9/11.
Keep in mind the National Guard Bureau is just a channel of communications. It's not an operational headquarters. So the reality is that it's there to funnel resources and to kind of put out the strategic view.
In the strategic world we look at NORTHCOM, PACOM, and STRATCOM to have a lot of input. Operationally, the Continental US Armies (CONUSAs), they're very integral in helping split east and west and 1st Army is responsible to the east and the TAG of Florida and the four star at 1st Army have been conversing almost every day about issues in Florida and 1st Army. You know, “what can we do, what can we provide for you, what can we legally come in and provide within the state?” So we've built some good relationships there.
At the tactical level, General Blum sees the standing Joint Headquarters in each state kind of handling that piece.
In terms of transformation, at these state headquarters NGB transformation is well underway. We are actively managing this. Law and policy, plans and culture are also evolving, and it's just a different world out there post-9/11.
Now we jump into a little bit of where we're going in the Air Guard in the future. What this is going to talk about a little bit is the reality review, and this will be talked a lot about this week down at AFA. Where is the Air Guard going to fit? Discretionary funding is going to be probably frozen here in the near future for everything from military spending to those kind of things. Non-discretionary funding here is going to go to the baby boomers. You can see that's going to grow exponentially.
We used to have a lot of fighter aircraft, and this isn't meant to be a fighter-centered brief except it's the easiest way to identify that. We've been a very fighter-centric force, but as we bring on new, modern and improved weapons systems there's no doubt we're going to have less fighters in the future. That will have a big impact on the Total Force, but in particular we remain concerned in the Air Guard about that because we do have so many fighter organizations out there between F-15s, F-16s and A-10s.
In terms of targeting, a B-2 can now do what many F-16s used to. Of course, he can only do that in one area at a time, so you probably aren't going to really replace all of those F-16s with one B-2, but the reality is that the capabilities are growing exponentially in the aircraft we bring on due to our industry partners and that's remarkable stuff. So that's going to drive some change.
Let me talk about what the Air Force calls “The Perfect Storm.” There are just a lot of events going on right now in town that are going to drive everybody's logic in the future. That's just the data that goes in, those are meant to be filters and prisms that that all goes through, but the Air Force has done a capabilities review assessment process. They've developed CONOPS so that we can better and more effectively use our force in the future as it starts to shrink. Keep in mind future Total Force has been a big study that's going on in the Air Force, continues to go on day-in and day-out. We know that BRAC is going on right now and will report out somewhere in the May 2005 timeframe. None of us are quite sure what all that will say. Then, after BRAC and after the elections you throw in the Quadrennial Defense Review; and that is going to be a requirement for all of us and it will line out where we're going to go with strategy in the future. Put all those things together and we're at quite a serious change in the way we look today and where we'll look in the future. So the Guard doesn't want to be caught unaware of that process.
So General James said, “create a program that will allow the TAGs (and keep in mind they're one of our key stakeholders) and the Guard Bureau to sit down and work a strategy to be relevant into the future and yet very, very accessible to the active component for their requirements, but never forgetting that we have that Homeland Defense and governors piece.” That's what Vanguard is all about.
The Vanguard charter. Reshape the Air National Guard and the units prepared for the next generation so not only are we talking about force structure changes, we're talking about organizational changes. Many of you know about the blended wing down at Warner Robbins right now. There are ongoing talks at the highest levels about blending the Richmond F-16 unit down at Langley into the first F/A-22 operational wing. That's going on right now. We're actually probably pretty soon going to be selecting school slots for folks from the Virginia Guard to go off and be trained in the F/A-22. But the Guard will be part and parcel of that first wing down there, probably in almost every AFSC down there. How that's going to turn out, what that's going to look like as an organization, is being worked right now. We think what it will end up being is a stand-alone squadron-level kind of organization that will have their own command and control piece, but they'll report up to the 1st Fighter Wing Commander operationally every day for requirements.
Potential impacts. Reshape force structure to match reduced buy of new weapon systems. We would anticipate somewhere around a 33 percent reduction over time, probably through 2025. At the same time, infrastructure costs are being looked at through the BRAC process. The Air National Guard has a voting member on that at the general officer level, along with the Total Force. So it’s an important process that goes on parallel to all the changes that are going on.
Not too long ago, as it was reported, a senior Air Force official talked about between 400 and 600 fighters coming out of the Air Force inventory due to the fact that the Air Force internally wants to take the funds that they have, recapitalize those funds, and bring on their new force structure that they see as the requirement for the future. So that is the process that we're all looking at right now. These numbers, by the way, fluctuate day to day. You can put a new number on it almost every day. But we all know it just drives the point that there are going to be big changes.
Where are we today? BRAC's looming, but we all know that BRAC isn't the function the Guard should look at to say we need to transform because whether BRAC occurs or not the Air Force is going to recapitalize and restructure their force. So we've got to be prepared for that.
Over the FYDP, we have a decreasing share of the budget for iron. We're not going to be quite an aluminum-centric Air Force in the future. By the way, flying missions now, it used to be for the traditional ones of us in the audience, fighters and transport and strategic lift and all those kind of things and now you talk about Global Hawk, Predator, space, all of those kinds of things, as relevant flying missions, so we're looking at that.
When you talk Legacy Force, the Air Guard and the Reserves obviously have a large share of that, well maintained and very viable aircraft as witnessed here recently, but the reality is they get a little harder to maintain and a little costlier, so that's a big issue.
Then the QDR issues. Secretary Rumsfeld has asked us to look very hard at the AC/RC mix. He wants to rebalance the forces. I will tell you, the good news for us in the Air Guard is that at every level in the Air Force the pushback to the Secretary of Defense's office has been, “The Air Force has it right. They've got it about where they need it.” Yes, we do have to mobilize some ARC component folks when big issues kick off, but in reality, the majority of the time we don't have to do that and we think we've got it about right.
An operational availability study run by the Joint Staff also continues to go on, looking at processes and ways to better utilize the Total Force.
So where are we going? We're trying to create a balanced ANG-wide strategy. Vanguard is not a plan, it's a strategy that General James has to work with the states and with the Air Force to come up with a way for us to remain relevant in the future.
The good news is the Air Force has said, “hey, we need the Guard and Reserve to stay about the same size. We don't need them to change personnel-wise.” So that's a good news story for the states.
The Air Force wants to reshape within all the components for efficiencies, so we're looking at standing up as many 12 PAA, those are PAA numbers, primary aircraft in the unit; tanker units at 12 PAA and fighter units—right now we're all at 15 PAA. We see us in the future being at either 18 or 24 PAA and Vanguard helps us to get there along with the Total Force.
As we look to bring on new systems, we think those units in the future will be perfectly structured to receive F/A-22 and JSF.
Then we never want to give up what the Guard is best at, so we don't plan to ever do that, nor do we plan to be only associate and blended and integrated associate kind of units. We believe there will always be a need for some stand-along Air National Guard units.
We ask how do we get to this strategy? We looked at these five key components: transformation, organizations and technology. We looked at the GSUs and see if wasn't something we could do to bring them together better. States with multiple flying units, we asked them to look at how they could create efficiencies; ANG units located on active duty bases or near that. We didn't actually put a number with that, we just said, “If there are facilities nearby does it make sense that you could figure out a way to create efficiencies getting together with them?” And then ANG units with like missions and equipment. So those were kind of the key factors that we took a look at as we started building the strategy with the states.
Integrated units. Just some possibilities. C-17. Obviously we have a C-17 unit at Jackson. We're actually right now in discussion with the active duty. Now the active duty is looking at putting some active duty personnel down at Jackson, Mississippi to make what would probably be best called a “reverse associate unit,” which is where we thought that unit was going from the beginning. That got slowed down for a period of time, but it's back, so that's good news.
KCX, whatever that ends up being. F/A-22 units. We're looking in Florida, we're looking in Virginia right now as we talked about and other possibilities. C-5 units. We're standing up two new C-5 units right now, one down in Tennessee and one in West Virginia. Obviously not new C-5s, but new C-5 units.
New missions, all kind of opportunities coming in, and this is what we need to get smart about and the Air Force is working very closely with us to come up with new mission requirements that are truly out there, not pie-in-the-sky kind of things that wouldn’t work well. By the way, as you start creating reach-back capability and other technology changes where Guardsmen might be able to not only do their job at home, might not have to deploy as much, might not have to be mobilized as much, might even be able to tie that job in with their civilian job. That makes for great opportunities. But we know there's lots of opportunities out there. The big unknown to most of the states and the units out there is what are those opportunities for me? How would I get involved? What's there for the folks that are full-time and part-time right now? Is there any good crossover out there if I come out of one kind of mission?
You're probably not going to be able to hear this. Don't worry about it. Dr. Roche was at our Senior Leaders Conference last year and basically what he said is, “We need the Total Force.” I would tell you that everything the Air Force has told us about the F/A-22 and JSF, without the Total Force, without the Guard and Reserve being factored into flying those airplanes and maintaining them, the Air Force just doesn't have the experience level in the future to be able to do that, and especially fly them at the levels they want to.
We all believe that the Total Force is a great success—everybody believes that, totally. Now, how do we morph into this transformed force in the future? We'll have some differences of opinion on that, but the reality is the Air Force has worked through things like this before and I'm sure we can do it again.
The old “two weeks a year.” My neighbors used to say that to me all the time in Florida when I was flying for the airlines and doing that. “You only go to the Guard one weekend a month.” Where do you think I am most of these other days other than at the airline? But the average Guard air crew member puts in about 120 to 130 days a year and that's a traditional person. So think about how they are able to do that. It's pretty remarkable. And certainly, the world has changed.
Q&A Session:
Q: What's your view on Congressional proposals to provide the same level of medical care coverage for Guard members and their families as the active duty?
General Ickes: Let’s start with an easy one [laughter]. My personal opinion is—and this is something we've talked long and hard about—that we have to be careful that we don't price ourselves out of business, but we all think there's a way to do this. We owe it to our Guardsmen to provide them coverage. If we're going to be asking them to be ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week on short notice, then there's probably a responsibility we have to make sure that we provide them with adequate medical care so that they can do that. That's a challenge right now. I'll tell you, the dental piece when we mobilized last time was huge.
So that's a big challenge. We know it would drive a big bill, but it's an area where we're all looking at very hard. I would say it's a place we're going to try to move to in the future.
Q: Is there any legislation coming to help offset the income of a Guard member who gets activated in a position that pays less than a civilian job?
General Ickes: This was something that came up big time after Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and it actually didn't work as well as everybody had thought. So there is some discussion about things like that again. There's talk about buying insurance, those kinds of things, because what they tried to do before didn't work very well. You actually had real disparities in pay being paid to people and like I said, it kind of backfired the last time.
There are certain career fields where there's no doubt that somebody leaves their civilian job, they come into their military job, and there's going to be quite a disparity or delta in pay. But the reality is they're looking at that. They're also looking at, of course, the Title 10 and 32 legislation to determine who can command whom in various environments. That's one of the key pieces of legislation right now.
Q: Can an active duty Air Force member retire and then join the Guard? If so, how would it affect pay?
General Ickes: The answer to that is absolutely. I just signed one of those pieces of paper the other day. Of course, that's just like a low-level signature on it, but actually it goes to Dr. Roche and the way it would work is if they come back full time and in an AGR status they would receive whatever the difference is in the pay statuses. I may get this mixed up a little bit. The reality is, though, there are definitely different ways to bring people back. It depends on what category. At the 116th, we just hired an air crew member down there because he got off of active duty. He brought so much experience he's going to go into one of their training positions and he'll switch into the Guard system, but there are definitely ways to make that work. It gets signed by the Secretary of the Air Force and we probably process a couple a month.