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Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak, the acting director of the Air National Guard, hosted Air Guard wing commanders and senior enlisted leaders from around the nation for the Wing Leader Fly-In event at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Tennessee, April 23-24.
The conference gathered senior leaders assigned to each of the 90 Air Guard wings nationwide to collaborate on ideas and provide input on critical matters affecting the future of the organization.
“We’re building an Air National Guard where all of our deployable combat wings will have the capability to autonomously pick up, go downrange, establish a base, support life for Airmen on that base, generate air power and defend the base all at the same time,” Pirak said.
“That’s a huge leap [from supporting predictable, rotational deployments] and that means we have a readiness expectation that’s much more ambitious than we’ve had in the past.”
This year’s event, themed “ANG Ready 2027 — Getting Units of Action Right,” emphasized that to maintain combat-ready forces capable of meeting today’s dynamic strategic environment, ANG leaders must be laser-focused on preparing Airmen for the fight.
As part of its new force presentation construct, the Department of the Air Force is transitioning how it deploys its forces from a crowd-sourced model to one in which Airmen from the same installation deploy together as part of a mission-ready Unit of Action.
The change acknowledges the need for Airmen to train together and build team cohesion to arrive in theater as a lethal team ready to operate in environments that will likely be more contested than the past two decades.
“I am singularly focused on wartime readiness,” said Pirak when explaining his priorities. “There are three pillars to that. We must develop our people. We must modernize and recapitalize. We must unleash the innovative power of our Airmen.”
Pirak said empowering Airmen to make decisions at the lowest level during large-scale, multi-domain exercises alongside joint partners will prepare them for what the future fight may look like.
“For very practical reasons, we often train on our own installations,” he said. “However, that’s not enough. We must put our Airmen in situations where they’re working with their joint brethren to take risks together and make micro-tactical decisions in a very demanding environment. This is how we learn to survive and operate together in contested environments.”
Pirak emphasized the significance of honing Airmen’s seamless coordination and collaboration with the different branches of the military to successfully operate and fight as an integrated joint team across all domains.
“There’s no fight that won’t be a joint fight,” he said.
─ By Tech. Sgt. Sarah M. McClanahan
