Photo By Master Sgt. Jim Greenhill | Air Force Capt. Jeremy Ford, the Ohio National Guard's bilateral affairs officer in...... read more read more
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ROSZKE, Hungary – A motorcade carrying Army Maj. Gen. Gregory Wayt from Belgrade, Serbia, stops at the border here.
The general climbs out and crosses the diagonal red border line painted across the M5 motorway to another motorcade driving him to Budapest.
Wayt, the adjutant general of the Ohio National Guard, is midway through a visit to the state’s partners in the almost 20-year-old, 62-nation National Guard State Partnership Program: the adjoining nations of Serbia and Hungary.
As Wayt poses for a photograph with a Serbian officer bidding him farewell and a Hungarian officer welcoming him, another handoff happens between two Ohio National Guard officers stationed here in Europe full-time.
The two are bilateral affairs officers. Selected by the state and confirmed by the National Guard Bureau and the combatant command, a BAO is the liaison between a host nation and its National Guard state, first point of contact for either partner.
Army Maj. Devin Braun is wrapping up an accompanied, two-year tour as the Ohio National Guard’s BAO in the Balkan nation of Serbia. Air Force Capt. Jeremy Ford has served as Ohio’s BAO in the Central European nation of Hungary on an unaccompanied tour since October 2009.
“We’re the eyes and ears of the [adjutant general],” Ford said.
“The adjutants general need someone they can trust and rely on who understands the country team, who can be part of the embassies … to facilitate the close working relationships between the state and the country, to plan those training events that are most worthwhile and to understand the budgetary limitations of the program,” Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said as he returned from Germany in August from meetings with U.S. Africa Command and National Guard leaders about the SPP.
“You need a single person – hopefully, with a family – who can travel to those countries, live in those countries, be part of the embassy [country] team,” he said. “That’s why that position is so valuable.”
McKinley’s first stop when visiting a foreign country is typically at the U.S. embassy for a meeting with the ambassador and country team, at which McKinley gets up-to-the-minute information on the situation in the country and coordinates his efforts on behalf of the National Guard with the State Department.
Embassy country teams include key officials from the State Department and other agencies reporting to the U.S. ambassador who share information and coordinate efforts, according to the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
National Guard BAOs are included among Defense Department representatives.
“The BAO, to me, is the singularly most important part of the State Partnership Program,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, the adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard. “If you don’t have someone who’s living there, building those relationships, it’s much more difficult to execute missions.
“The BAO shows … that we are trusting enough of our partner that we are going to put one of our people there,” he said. “They’re not just the TAG’s eyes and ears on the ground: They’re the [SPP’s] and … the country team’s assets – they’re eyes and ears for the entire program.”
Ford’s primary responsibilities here in Hungary include arranging military-to-military exchanges between the partners and coordinating joint deployments to Afghanistan that have resulted from the SPP, where Ohio Guard members and their Hungarian counterparts have served side-by-side on a Hungarian-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission.
“We had such a good relationship with Hungary that they asked us to join them,” Ford said.
Ohio and Hungary have been partners since 1993, during which time Hungary has emerged from the former Soviet Bloc to be a full member of both NATO and the European Union.
Ford said that country team colleagues from the ambassador on down highly value the SPP. “They have all said that the strongest relationship that the U.S. has with Hungary is the Ohio National Guard State Partnership Program between Ohio and Hungary,” he said.
In Hungary, Ford executed the military-to-military exchanges planned by his predecessor and designed the exchanges that will be undertaken by his successor. Tasks include identifying participants and arranging invitational travel orders, hotels, air transportation and the agenda, including discussion topics.
The BAO coordinates between multiple agencies. In Ford’s case, arranging the Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams that deploy Hungarian and Ohioan soldiers to Afghanistan involves coordination between the Hungarian Defense Force, the Ohio National Guard, U.S. Army Europe, U.S. European Command, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and other agencies.
“It covers a broad spectrum of responsibilities,” he said. “It keeps you busy and keeps you interested.”
“The list of supporting agencies that support our activities is 25 or 30 long,” said Braun, Ohio’s BAO in Serbia. “It can very complex. There’s a lot of synchronization that has to occur. That’s a big part of your job.”
The BAO also serves many masters, Braun said, including the adjutant general and state leadership and the sponsoring combatant command, the embassy and the National Guard Bureau.
The BAO program is ad hoc and year-to-year.
“The funding for the BAO program is an issue,” said Dubie, the Vermont adjutant general. “It would pay huge dividends for the BAOs to be all throughout the geographic commands, like they are in EUCOM and, mostly [U.S. Africa Command.]”
“Unfortunately, it’s not a standardized program of record,” Braun said. “Each one has its own unique circumstances. … The number one [area for improvement] is standardization of tour lengths and the tour type, for example authorizing it as a [permanent change of station] across the board.”
Planning the next fiscal year’s events can be a challenge when BAOs might not even know the budget for the coming year.
How the BAOs are paid for is not consistent from country to country, something National Guard leaders are looking to fix.
Braun and Ford’s positions are paid for by EUCOM. Serbia and Hungary fall within EUCOM’s area of responsibility.
“We’ve got to find those slots … so that we can populate these BAOs, whether they be Air Guard or Army Guard, so that they can be the link between the state and the country,” McKinley said.
BAOs can be either Army or Air billets. In Ohio’s case, Serbia is an Army billet, and Hungary is Air.
The length of BAO assignments is inconsistent. Braun served two years. Ford’s billet is funded annually with options to extend up to three years. He is scheduled to be replaced this month.
“It’s critical to have a long tour,” Braun said. “Many BAOs are only one-year tours. … By the time you’re preparing to come home, you’re probably just starting to learn the job, and that’s not in the best interests of host country relations, of continuity of operations. You’re never reaching the band of excellence and proficiency, because it’s the second year that you’re getting to that point.”
Longer tours would benefit the combatant commands, reduce the need to constantly train new BAOs and improve relations with the host nation, Braun said.
“This is a relationship, rapport type of work,” he said.
Most BAOs do not receive formal language training and learning the host nation’s language becomes a matter of officer initiative that requires making time in addition to numerous official duties.
Ford and Braun learned some basic expressions.
“If there’s one thing I really regret,” Braun said, “it’s the lack of development of my language skills.”
Serbia has very high English proficiency, and it was difficult for Braun to carve out time for language study once he was in-country.
“You don’t get language training before you come,” he said, “and there really isn’t a funding budget to get it for you while you’re here. If you do anything, it’s all self-study.”
BAOs value the highly-sought, competitive assignment as an opportunity for professional and personal development.
“It’s a unique opportunity,” said Ford, a C-130 Hercules pilot. “Being a pilot … just to be able to leave for a year, and then come back to flying … it’s good because it doesn’t hurt my career as a pilot [and] it helps it because now I have a joint staff position, and I’ve got a lot more tools in my tool bag.”
Officers need joint staff experience to advance their National Guard careers – positions that have traditionally been challenging to find, though various initiatives are improving that, including provisions of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act that empowered the National Guard.
BAOs typically are senior company-grade or junior field-grade officers, and adjutant generals have said that is another unique opportunity offered by the program. BAOs play a significant role in shaping the SPP, work in a joint environment with numerous other agencies and are routinely involved in national security matters at the strategic level.
Such opportunities are unusual at the rank of captain or major.
“It really expands your thinking and your understanding of our nation’s defense overall,” Braun said. “Not just an active defense where we’re out there fighting the war on terror or providing deterrence at theaters around the world, but where you’re actually out there engaging in this form of soft diplomacy everywhere … to promote peace and stability and security to prevent conflicts.”
The BAO is one of the people likely to form the kind of long-term relationships with the partner country that are among the most-valued features of the SPP.
“I look forward to 10 years from now meeting some of these Hungarians that are captains and majors at my level and maybe seeing them as lieutenant-colonels, colonels … generals,” Ford said. “Since I know them, we already have an immediate relationship, and if … we’re ever deploying to another war together, we know each other. That relationship is priceless.”
Such relationships are a unique aspect of the National Guard’s contribution to Defense and State Department efforts to build partnership capacity.
Ohio and Hungary have comparably sized forces.
“We have a small military in the Ohio National Guard, and a lot of us know each other, and we stick around for a long time,” Ford said. “The same thing happens here in Hungary. It’s a small set of guys that know each other and they all stick around for a very long time. … So we’re all going to grow together, we’re all going to advance together.
“If anybody were to ask me if being a BAO was a great thing to do, I would say absolutely without any hesitation whatsoever.”
“It’s been the most interesting job that I’ve held in my military career,” Braun said. “I’ve had many rewarding jobs leading soldiers, but this one is a rare opportunity for me as a National Guard member to be involved in something at the strategic level.
“You’re at the front lines … the diplomatic front affecting U.S. policy, U.S. relations with the host nation. You’re able to interact with your military counterparts in a foreign land and see change, see things that are improving them and their capabilities. It is extremely rewarding and very interesting. It can be very challenging, too.”
| Date Taken: | 10.04.2010 |
| Date Posted: | 10.04.2010 06:48 |
| Story ID: | 57456 |
| Location: | ROSZKE, HU |
| Web Views: | 262 |
| Downloads: | 5 |
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