 Hi, for the two o'clock block, this is Jay Fidel and Think Tech. It's the military in Hawaii, which we do every other Thursday. And we have two generals with us, and the BGEN on the screen stands for Brigadier General. Okay, we have, on one side, Brigadier General Joseph Harris, who's the Air National Guard, Hawaii Air National Guard. And on the other side, we have the Army. We have Brigadier General Moses Kauievi, and he's with the Army National Guard here in Hawaii, and so welcome to the show, you guys. It's so nice to see you here. Thank you for coming down. Nice to be here. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Jay, for allowing us to be on today. Yeah, I told you my first question is going to be, and let's talk to you first, Moses. How do I get your job? I want your job. I like your job. I like what you do. I like the whole thing. So how do I get your job? Well, there's many avenues to get to where I'm at, but it took me. A long time to get to where I'm at as far as the Hawaii National Guard, Hawaii Army National Guard commander, but I actually joined the guard when I was 17, straight out of high school. I joined as an enlisted soldier. And after four years, I decided to, that I wanted to go through officer candidate school, became an officer and got my qualifications in education and made my way through the ranks in a nutshell, I should say. And then here I am today as the Army National Guard commander. So that is something because you're the senior man. You're the guy in charge of the Army National Guard in the state of Hawaii. How big is it? How many, how is it divided up? Where are the units located? Can you talk about that? Well, we're a fairly, what we call a small size state, but we have approximately around 2,500 personnel, give or take, depending on the recruiting, fluctuation and retirements in the Hawaii Army National Guard. And we were across the state in all counties. So from Hilo all the way to Hanapepe and Kauai, we have units across the state and in Maui, as well as the bulk of units are here on Oahu. You know, I really hadn't thought of it, but you must be with all that geography, you must be affected by COVID. Can you take a minute and tell me how COVID has affected your operation in this command? Yeah, interestingly, COVID has actually created a challenge for us to train, but not impossible. We've, the basis for the Army training is really the squad. And the squad level is approximately six people, maybe up to 10 people, depending on the type of unit you have. So with that, and that is the foundation of Army units from the squad level all the way up, you can actually do some training with that amount of people separated from the breast and maintain the COVID-19 mitigation standards that is out there. Also, we have the ability today with the technology to complete our primary military education or with distance learning or online type of training to ensure that we get qualified in the rank that we're in, as well as any other type of training that we need that doesn't require us to go into the field, classroom type of training, or updates or any type of other types of additional type of training or good to have training. This is an opportunity in some ways then for training. Let's turn to you, General Harris, Brigadier General Harris. I want to be clear that everybody understands the BGEN. So how do I get your job? It's not that I'm looking for both of your jobs, but I'm making a comparison so I can decide which of your jobs I really want, okay? Tell me how you got there and what I need to do to replace you. All right. Well, there's many paths to get to where I am, and certainly I had no idea when I started that I'd end up in this position, and I'm sure Moses would tell you the same thing. The careers are a long, it's a long path, and so you never know quite where to lead. But much like Moses, I started right out of high school. I started when I was 19 as a part-time citizen soldier going to college and working in the summers, and had an opportunity to go full-time enlisted. I made it to the rank of B-7 after 13 years enlisted, and then had an opportunity to get commissioned, got my school and training out of the way. I trained mostly in logistics, Air Force logistics, which is one of the larger, if not the largest career area in the Air Force. As you might imagine, flying missions require a ton of logistics and support to operate. So that was kind of my chosen profession, worked my way up in mostly in the Oregon Air National Guard and then moved to Hawaii about five or six years ago and joined the maintenance effort here and did that initially for about four years and then moved down to headquarters to learn plans and programs and some of the staff work that goes on at state headquarters. And then just earlier this year, I had the opportunity to kind of lead up to the position I'm in now at the commander position of the Hawaii National Guard. So how big is your command? What kind of facilities and equipment do you have? Yeah, so we've got about almost 2,500 folks, about 2,498 is the complete population. We're on the four major islands, but like the Army, the bulk of us are on O'ahu. The largest kind of segment of us is the 154th wing on Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam. They've got all three of the flying missions as well as many of the support squadrons and that's about 90% of the Hawaii Air National Guard right there. Then we've got some GSUs, we've got combat communications squadrons on the big island and on Maui. And then now on Kauai, we've got our nascent space control squadron that we were talking about before the show started. So you must get around and when you get around, you must take planes in the Hawaii Air National Guard, am I right? Yes, absolutely. You know, normally when we perform our monthly drills, we do what's called a GSU run and that GSU stands for Geographically Separated Unit. And so what we do is we utilize our own aircraft and sometimes other states sign up for this mission where they help us pick up our guardsmen and then drop them off after drill back on their islands. And so we've got some folks on Oahu that work on the outer islands and then we've got some folks that live on the outer islands that work on Oahu. And so we've got to get those people moved around normally to drill. Now, obviously with COVID, that movement has been halted and so we've had to come up with creative ways to keep those people in touch with their units, continue their training. It's been challenging, but we've come up with ways to work around it and maintain our readiness. Well, Moses, I'm really interested in the difference between the Air, rather the Army National Guard and the Regular Army. And I wonder how much exposure you and your troops have to the Regular Army when you interface with them, the comparison of your systems, your practices and their practices. I mean, can you differentiate for me what it's like in the one and the other and how it's different? Yeah, the only real difference is the times that we get to train. So traditionally, the Army National Guard, like the Air National Guard, were one week in a month, two weeks out of the year at the base level. However, in the past few years, actually the past year since 9-11, that has increased. We've had more opportunities to come in and train and more activities such as deployments that we've been on. We cycle through the deployment like Regular Army units do, depending on where the need is that the Army needs. We are an operational reserve force for the Army and we have to maintain the same training standards and equipment standards and personnel standards that the Army has. So there's no difference between us and the Army when it comes to the requirements that must be done to maintain readiness standards. One of the most important things that is required is our personnel readiness, which is like what we talked about a little bit earlier, which was our education and our certifications and our training. So if you would put two units side by side on active duty Army unit and a National Guard unit in a deployment, and most of the time, you're not going to tell what the difference is between the two units as far as executing the mission because of the standards that we both are required to do. What are the priorities in the mission? I mean, if you could list a couple of them that are right up at the top, what do you see as the priorities for the Army National Guard? For me, the priority for me is personnel readiness and that goes down to individual readiness, which means you have to have a good physical, you have to be physically fit, you have to have all your military education requirements done and civilian education requirements because the Army does have, depending on what rank you are, certain education requirements, civilian educational requirements that you have to maintain. And depending also on your military occupational skill, we have a wide variety of skills across a spectrum within the Army. And for the Army National Guard, that ranges from medics to infantrymen to cavalrymen to doctors to nurses. We have staff planners, battle staff planners, a whole wide range of skills, intelligence officers, intelligence NCOs, logistics personnel, and all those skill sets bring together or come together to ensure that we can function as a unit and be ready when the time comes to either do our federal mission, which is to be deployed in support of the active duty Army, supporting the independent Constitution of the United States, and then our state mission, which is the mission to do our operations in accordance with what the governor has and obey the orders of the governor. And that includes doing missions such as what we're doing now in response to COVID-19 mitigation for the state and supporting the state and counties. What are you doing now for COVID? Well, for COVID, we've established what we call a joint task force actually, and that is actually a combination between or among both Army and Air assets, so Army and Air National Guard personnel and forces. So Brigadier General Harris has some of his personnel and units and skills within the joint task force that we've established, and I have some of the Army personnel and skills across the state. And we're doing a lot of things such as screening at the airports where we have a task force medical setup made of Army and Air personnel who are doing assistance to the Department of Health in swabbing and you've seen the news with contact tracing for what we call COVID mapping and other type of COVID-19 mitigation education. Well, that's directly for the benefit of the community then. Your mission at least in part is to be right out there in the community and help the community. I was going to ask you about that. The other thing is you mentioned recruiting or at least by implication, and it seems to me there's a lot of people out of work right now, including skilled people who lost their jobs already. And I wonder if that, you know, how that impacts your ability to recruit qualified people. I mean, do you have the billets for them? Are you out there looking for them? I'm always looking for people and come on down if you want to join the Hawai'i Army National Guard. We're ready with the sons and the daughters of Hawaii. Come on down to the recruiters. They'll set you up. They'll give you the range of military occupational skills that you might be interested in and take the ASVAB and we'll see where you sit or fit in the gamut of skills and we'll get you in right now. We really need personnel to help, especially in times like this with COVID-19 mitigation efforts. The more people we have in the Hawai'i Army National Guard, the more people we can have out there helping the community. That's great. That is really great. That is really an important takeaway from this whole discussion. You mentioned a joint force with you in General Harris and I'm interested in that. It strikes me and I'm not really familiar with how, you know, it works, but you have the, I guess you would say, the local commander-in-chief as the governor and then you have the services, at least the Army National Guard and the Air Force National Guard, and you guys get together and you create this joint command or joint staff. Is that right? Does it work like a parallel to what happens in Washington? Well, it works parallel to similar how you would set up a force to go and deploy for any type of contingency operation. So, we set up a headquarters with the necessary command and control elements and staff to planning and monitor operations and execute operations and that's the headquarters element. Then, like for us here right now with COVID-19, we create also geographical or functional task courses. For example, a geographical task course would be a task force responsible for the area or our land space and anything that happens in that area. So, what we have four geographical task courses set up across the state to match the counties and each geographical task force commander is working with the county EOC administrators and also the mayor to assist them in any type of gaps or skills or capability that they need that the National Guard might be able to assist with concerning this COVID-19 mitigation. We also have specific functional task force like a task force medical. So, I have a task force just dedicated for medical type support that is assisting with the department of health in swabbing, COVID mapping or contact tracing as it's known and other areas in planning and other operations. What about deployment general? You know, I remember, I'm sorry I can't put my finger on exactly when, but there was a time when the Hawaii National Guard was was activated and was sent overseas. I don't remember exactly when that was but it was it was quite something where everybody was putting his boots on and taking off for parts unknown for war. How often does that happen? Well, actually, you know, we've been doing deployment since 2004 as early as 2004 with actually 2003 when you're looking at our aviation units and then in 2004 with the mobilized the 29th Brigade in its first mobilization since 1968 and we've continuously actually mobilized units on what we call a sustainable readiness model that the Army has every so many years we cycle in units into to support the Army on a deployment. Our 29th Brigade actually had several units that were deployed across Europe as well as in Egypt last year for a Kosovo mission as well as to assist in the multinational peacekeeping in the multinational forces observers in the Sinai. So many years we'll cycle through a deployment or come up on a deployment then and it depends on the need. It's not the same type of deployment. Our aviation units always deploy every so many years to into support the regular Army as well. So it's become a routine event versus a one-time event and then a large gap. You get to go with them? Excuse me? You get to go with them? Yeah, I deployed twice. I deployed once in 2004 to the 2005 and deployment and we got out of Iraq in 2006 and then I went back into Kuwait as the Camphor Junior Commander back in 2008 in October through 2009 and got back in Hawaii about August 2009. So that's my two main deployments. So General Harris, you get to see General Kaouvi on a frequent basis. You guys meet on the Joint Command there. How often? Well, I would say probably once a month or so. I'm a part-time citizen soldier. I think he's full-time. But we both work out of the same facility down at Fort Ruger there on Diamondhead Road, which is where the TAG's offices are as well. So we do run into each other and we certainly are on a lot of telephone calls together with the TAG, working together to do everything that the governor and the TAG requires of us. But so your mission would be a little different than what General Kaouvi was saying. I wonder if you could differentiate that for me. It's not going to be the same and your deployments aren't going to be the same, are they? No, they're not. So I mean starting back with kind of the differences between the Army, I'm sorry, the Air Force, the regular Air Force and the Air National Guard. Mission-wise, it's very similar to the Army where capability-wise, readiness-wise, we have all the same parallel requirements. And that's for good reasons. So we can be embedded right with them and be transparent in terms of getting the job done. And we're both set up that way. The National Guard is set up that way constitutionally. And so day to day we are embedded with our active duty Air Force counterparts at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam where the bulk of the Hawaii Air National Guard resides. And so we're right here with PAC-AF headquarters on the Joint Base. And we're also in what's called a Total Force Association with two of our flying missions. And that's the C-17 and the F-22 Raptor where active duty and Guard forces combine under one set of command and control structure to get the mission done on a daily basis. So are you flying around the Pacific with these aircraft? I mean how far do you go? What's your area of operation? Well each platform is designed for something different. The C-17s are in the global, what we call a global en route system along with all the other C-17s across the globe. And they are all over the world at any given time. The tankers are similar. They do a lot of local support for flying with our fighter units. They do a lot of local support here in the Pacific and around the Hawaiian Islands providing tanker refueling to support to all those air operations that are in the proximity. But they also sign up for missions all over the globe as well. So they're very mobile, constantly deployed. And there's a continuous, we were also part of the Guam task force over there that the tankers are involved with. And so we've always got a constant level of participation going on over there in Guam. So between the Army and the Air Guard, you guys get around. The Army gets around, obviously in the Middle East gets deployed there and you're flying everywhere. And I wonder if the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard in the state of Nebraska does the same thing. I kind of doubt it. You know, Hawaii has to be unique because of its location, because of its proximity to other military bases and so forth. Am I right about that? Is it different between Hawaii as a base for these operations and other states on the mainland? Yeah, the Hawaii Air National Guard is quite unique. It's got the largest wing in the Air National Guard and having the combination of flying missions that it has is also very unique. There's not a parallel, not very many parallel units like it. And it's for the reasons you describe because our geography and our strategic, the strategic nature of our location in the middle of the Pacific, it requires that kind of makeup of our missions. So as you said, yes, we are all over the place. You know, one mission I didn't mention flying is the F-22 Raptor. Now, obviously they stay, they're a fighter, so they don't travel across the water as regularly except for depot maintenance and when they need to deploy to a mission to the Middle East or to Asia or wherever their task to go. But whenever they do that, they require tanker support, they require airlift support with the C-17s. And so that combination of air missions that we have gives us a ton of capability to move around the Pacific with a variety of combat power. And that's before we even get to Barking Sands. Can you take a minute and tell me what you've got going in space in Barking Sands? Yeah, we're really excited about the direction we're growing right now and that is in in space. And obviously the creation of Space Force and a lot of the effort that the Department of Defense is putting into space is something that a lot of Guard units are excited about and trying to get involved in. And we're lucky enough, again by virtue of our location here in Hawaii, to be considered for one of these missions. So we've got a brand new Space Control Squadron, what we call an offensive Space Control Squadron that we're establishing at PMRF on Kauai. And it's about 90 folks total. Once we get everybody hired, we've got about 22 out of those 88 folks hired. And we are also waiting on some environmental assessment stuff to get completed before we can start provisioning the unit out there. The facilities are already there from units that have been there in the past. But we've got to get them configured for the Space Control mission. And we've got to get the training equipment out there so that the folks that we are getting can start to train and be ready to deploy here in a couple of years. So how can I get recruited? Where do I go? Is there a website, a place, a telephone number? How do I get that job? Well, we, much like the Army, we're, you know, in COVID-19, to answer your question earlier, it definitely affects our ability to recruit and retain folks. And we're, you know, that's maybe the silver lining in whenever the economy takes a downturn, it's a little easier to recruit and retain folks to the to the to the Guard, the Army and the Air National Guard. And we're glad to be able to provide great opportunity for those that are struggling to find good employment, you know, on our side too. And we have great opportunity in all of our mission sets to employ folks in it. And that's, you asked about the differences between active and Guard. One of the big differences is when you join the Guard, you get to choose kind of your level of participation. You can do as little as the base, which is that one weekend a month or 15 days a year, or you can sign up for additional periods of full-time duty, active duty and a variety of statuses. That's right. And you can, you can get, you can learn your job faster if you go that way and you can earn more money as needed. So depending on what your needs are for your family, whether you, whether you've got a part-time job somewhere else, a school, family, you can arrange your Guard membership into your life, how you see fit and provide a great service for your state, your country, and yourself. Well, I want to turn to General Coe even for a minute because we're almost out of time. And I mentioned before that we need to talk about the role of the Guard, both the Army and the Air Guard in today's political environment. I mean, there are issues where the Guard has been either called, activated by, I guess, either the governors or the, or Washington to participate in dealing with potential or actual street violence. There are legal issues attached to that. There have been many discussions about, you know, what the Guard would do if it was ordered to perform acts that are considered illegal and where the Guard would get advice on the legality of a given order coming from the administration. I'm sure you've thought about that and I hope you never have to face it, but I wonder what your thoughts are in terms of a time when the Guard is actually a part of the political environment, actually. Well, for us in Hawaii, the Hawaii National Guard, we pretty much work for the governor of the state of Hawaii on a Title 32 basis. That's where our authorities lie. And so the governor is really our commander-in-chief. So as despite what the politics is out there, we are here to defend the state, the constitution of the United States. Should there be any question as to whether there is a legal issue with the use of the Guard, we leave that up to the lawyers to figure out as well as our own judge advocate generals, as well as those in D.C., National Guard Bureau up in D.C. Also, is that entity that can vet some of that questions for us? And then, of course, we have the state attorney general here in Hawaii that pretty much gives us advice from a state level on what we should be doing or not be doing in accordance with what the need is out there. General Harris, would you have anything to add or comment on that issue? I would just say that we're constantly involved in the political environment and we are always available for our governor to be used for domestic response, whether it's with hurricane response, whether it's with the lava flow. We have a routine of developing the task force similar to the one that General Kyle Evie already described for all those kinds of domestic response events. That is how we're founded constitutionally and we're proud to do it, you know, to be living in communities where we also serve our governor like General Kyle Evie described. It's who we are. It's who we are as founded by the constitution and we're, like I said, we're very proud to do it. Yeah, that's consistent with everything I've ever seen about the Hawaii Guard and National Guard. So we're about to close here. General Harris, can you go first and say what you want to leave with people about the equality and role of the National Guard in Hawaii and where you see it going in terms of being part of the development of the state? Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. We're very excited about the future that we've got ahead of us. We're developing in space as I already talked about. We're also excited to continue to develop our cyberspace type capabilities. Our flying platforms, we're continuing to modernize them and keep them relevant to the threat environment that's out there. We're also really proud of who we are in Hawaii. We're on all the islands just like the army and we're excited to work with the communities and local leaders to partner and align interests wherever we can and be there for our state and for our governor and yet also continuously trained for our federal mission, our Title X mission as well. So I think we've got a really exciting outlook for the future. We'd love to have you join us and be a part of us. And yeah, I think that's how I'll conclude. Okay, you take an older gentleman like myself in the Guard. We'll find a way, Jay. Thank you. Thank you, Joseph. General Cowey, can you answer the same question? Where do you see it all going? What's the role of the Guard now in these special times and going forward? How do you see it evolving as an element of state, I want to say state government, but the whole state? Where does it fit and where will it fit? Well, I think for us in the Hawaii Army National Guard as well as the Air Guard, I would say really our role is going to continue to assist and help the community. We were like what General Harris stated, we were founded on such principles with community-based. I like to say that with the sons and with the daughters of Hawaii, we're going to help you in COVID-19. So message to all of you out there, continue to wear your masks, practice social distancing. We're going to help you as well. And we're going to be there, no matter what. We're going to count on you actually. I think we actually have no choice, but to count on you in case of extreme weather, which is coming with climate change. Any day could be a big storm and we'll really appreciate your help in those times because you are our primary protector in those times, I would say. Yeah, so I've been doing disaster management since some, I would say 1992, Hurricane Iniki was my first major one as a young lieutenant. And over the years, I've continued to assist in various, as I grew up in the National Guard in various disasters and I continue to do so. So from my past experience, I expect the Hawaii National Guard to continue on into the future doing the same and helping the community. Thank you so much, General Kaweevi and General Harris. Great to have you on the show. Great to have this discussion. I think it's very helpful to the community to know more about you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. I really appreciate the opportunity to tell our story. Yeah, thanks for having us. Aloha. Aloha.