JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. – Air National Guard leaders met here Tuesday and Wednesday to openly discuss policies, current issues and priorities impacting the ANG during the Air Directorate Field Advisory Council.
The council, which meets biannually, is a field organization that provides another channel of communication to help elevate issues and ideas to Air Force and ANG senior leadership.
Air Force Brig. Gen. James C. Witham, deputy director of the ANG, addressed members of the ADFAC Tuesday with issues concerning furloughs, budgetary concerns, and the new Air Force inspection system.
“There is great deal of scrutiny on everything we do across all of our mission sets that are represented here at ADFAC,” said Witham. “Because if you are a civilian or a dual-status technician, you are sitting there saying wait a minute, those airplanes are still flying and we’re still doing this and that, yet I’m being furloughed.”
Witham believes the ANG is going to have to watch how every dollar is spent during this fiscally constrained environment. He continued to say it is time to be particularly concerned about how the ANG spends and that there will be internal controls in place to ensure it is done correctly.
“It’s very hard to tell our dual status technicians or any of our civilians in the field that we have to do these furloughs but we can still do x, y, and z,” said Witham. “The chief of the National Guard Bureau and the director of the Air National Guard are going to work very hard going forward so that we never furlough our dual status technicians again. That would be across the Army and Air Guard.”
Witham discussed the new Air Force inspection system and how it will impact ANG units.
“This is going to be a cultural change and will change the way we do business in the field, it doesn't matter what you do,” said Witham. “This is a continuous process that commanders in the field will need to execute on almost a daily to a monthly basis. The intent is that we are always inspecting ourselves day in and day out.”
There are more than 20 Weapon System Councils represented. Typically the folks here are wing or group commanders.” said Air Force Col. Mark Auer, the ADFAC chairman. “The council is simply another mechanism to enhance communication.”