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Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh was destined to be an active-component Air Force fighter pilot. It’s in his blood: He is the son of an Air Force fighter pilot who flew more than 200 missions in Vietnam. He followed in his father’s footsteps and attended the Air Force Academy before beginning his military career flying F-16 Fighting Falcons.
But things change, and new opportunities emerge. Only a few years into his career, without knowing much about the National Guard, he transferred to the Colorado Air Guard and never looked back. Now, he is the citizen-airman’s biggest proponent.
On July 28, the former adjutant general of Colorado assumed responsibility for coordinating federal programs and policies affecting all 107,000 members of the Air Guard.
Loh spoke with NATIONAL GUARD over the phone recently. The conversation spanned his background, a challenging year that’s now in the books and the way ahead for the Air Guard.
You were an active-component fighter pilot for several years before joining the Colorado National Guard. What drew you to the Guard? What advice, if any, did you receive to ease your transition?
I left active duty in 1991, right after Desert Storm. In Operation Desert Storm, we had 40 fighter wings, plus tankers and airlifters. That was the buildup from the Cold War. The Cold War ended in ’89. In ’90, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. At the end of that war, in 1991, the Air Force drew down from 525,000 to 395,000 active-duty members. So, 130,000 members were asked to leave the United States Air Force in a very short period of time.
Also, at the time, the force structure of the Air Force allowed for the entire recapitalization of the Air National Guard. I took the opportunity to leave active duty and join the Colorado National Guard. I joined the 120th Fighter Squadron, which was transitioning from A-7s to F-16 fighters. I’m still tied to the Colorado National Guard, even on this Title 10 tour.
Before I left active duty, I asked a lot of people about the National Guard, how could I contribute and would it be beneficial for me to join the National Guard. They all said, if you want to go out and start a civilian career and still serve your country, and if you want to deliver combat aircraft power, find the right unit at the leading edge and make that unit better. I followed that advice.
Looking back, was the Guard what you expected?
I really didn’t know what to expect. I was a United States Air Force Academy graduate. We never talked about the Guard. Maybe we did, but I didn’t remember it. My first assignment was in Europe, at Hahn Air Base in Germany. I would see the Guard for a month in the summer. They were flying older airplanes, A-7s. I was flying F-16s. That was kind of my perception.
At the end of the Cold War, as the National Guard recapitalized out of F-4s and A-7s and into F-16s, I was at Luke Air Force Base [Arizona], where I was an instructor. I started to see the National Guard come through. I knew they wanted to be F-16s pilots, and I was an F-16 guy. When I joined, it was unbelievable — the amount of experience and front-line thought. Walking in, the commander, who had been in Vietnam, tells me, “Our motto is Always Ready, Always There, and that’s my expectation of you. You’re an F-16 pilot, you’re an F-16 instructor. You’re going to maintain your qualifications. And I need you to be ready when the nation calls.”
It’s been a wonderful career, but that’s kind of the expectation I went in with. I went in to make the unit better, and of course, they laid out that expectation from Day One.
We're more battle-hardened because of the things that we never expected our nation would go through.
What lessons from early in your career still guide you today?
Value and respect every member. In any unit that you are in, every member has a place. You need to value what they bring to that team. And you need to respect them. From a young age, I learned those lessons from my parents.
And when I joined the Guard, I learned not just to focus on my primary mission of flying F-16s but also what our Guard family brings to our national defense fabric. We had folks who were executives in Fortune 500 companies who would come out and man the operations desk because they just wanted to be part of that national defense fabric.They wanted to make a difference for the state and the nation.
As the director of the Air National Guard, you interact regularly with Air Force leaders. What are they saying to you about what they see today in the Air National Guard?
The Air National Guard has never been more relevant. 2020 has really been the Year of the Guard with everything that we’ve been doing. [Air Force] Secretary [Barbara] Barrett, [Air Force] Chief of Staff [Gen. Charles Q.] Brown, Chief [Master Sergeant of the Air Force] [JoAnne] Bass all realize the value the National Guard has for the states and the nation. We’re more battle-hardened because of the things that we never expected our nation would go through. Yet, every time the Guard has been called out, we’ve delivered.
We also realize that it takes all of us. There is no one single component that can do it alone or should do it alone. It’s active, National Guard and Reserve, and we come together. What we bring to the fight in the National Guard is obviously air, space and cyber power for America. Every member of that team contributes.
The pandemic has caused a lot of upheaval in the force. Some training and schools have had to be adjusted or canceled. Many airmen continue to drill virtually. What has been the impact of all this on readiness?
The impact on readiness has been absolutely unbelievable. I figured we would actually be in a readiness dive, but what happened early on was a couple of things. First, we empowered the commanders at the lowest levels — squadron commanders, flight commanders — to figure out what it means to work through a global pandemic. We assured our 24/7 homeland defense missions from the command- and-control side of the sectors to actually deliver combat air power on the fighter side.
Everything else mostly shut down, in-person drill weekends shut down. The units that didn’t have that 24/7 mission, they started a process of maintaining readiness, because when our nation calls we must be ready. They went through the painstaking analysis of what it was going to take in order to maintain individual readiness and eventually unit readiness and collective training readiness where we bring multiple units together.
In the Air Force, the same thing occurred. We canceled over 180 readiness enhancement exercises, global exercises, because of all the movement restrictions placed on us. The first thing was, we are going to follow the SECDEF guidance, which is the protection of family and family members. Now that we’ve gone through this and taken those lessons learned, some units never missed a drill, just figured out how to do it.
Other units, because of the 24/7 nature of their missions, then figured out how to get back into it. At the start of the year, we looked at the readiness, again we were going after the SECDEF’s goal of increasing the readiness of our force and I’ll tell you that in March, I never did think we were going to make it. But we actually made our readiness levels by the end of the year. That is all on the unit commanders at the lowest levels and making things happen out there.
It’s been an interesting year, but I think the readiness and the opportunities that COVID, the civil disturbance operations and those things that have come out have actually made us a better force, a stronger, more resilient force that continues to answer the nation’s call.
We have to figure out how to modernize and recapitalize our fighter force structure.
You mentioned some opportunities, specifically the pandemic response and the civil disturbances. Do you have a couple of examples of where those pop-up missions helped enhance the force?
Let’s just go down each one of those. On COVID, how do we protect while also defending and being ready? At the beginning of the year, if someone came up to me with a call to do virtual drills that will actually fulfill the requirements to meet United States Air Force goals, I would have said you’re kidding me. But in March, we had to figure exactly how to do that. Now, we say, “Show me the plan. Show me what you’re going to do.”
At the time, I was the adjutant general of Colorado. My units laid out exactly what they were going to do virtually. And I go, “Wow! Execute that plan.” And they did. Personnel readiness is up there. Then, how can I bring people in and also do that medical readiness that I need? We figured that one out. All the protective equipment required. How do you bring teams together when you’ve got to do maintenance on an aircraft? It’s not just one person changing out an engine. It’s four or five [Guardsmen] in very close proximity. How can I bring small teams together in close proximity and still keep them effective?
We learned a lot during the early days of COVID, where we sent National Guardsmen into what I would consider the hot zone of COVID, and they came out without getting COVID. We took that to the rest of the force. Those lessons learned have developed to our ability now to deliver combat air power anywhere in the world.
On civil disturbance operations, did we ever think we’d be on the front lines defending people’s rights to protest? I was just up in the state of Washington. From the stories I heard, there was literally a sigh of relief from both sides of the fence — both protesters and police officers trying to defend certain sections of the city — when the Guard hit the streets.
For the National Guard members, it was not without challenges. We took everything from cyber professionals, space professionals, air refuelers, pilots and trained them up and gave them the proper equipment, and put them right there, no kidding, with our civil responders. We’ve all been overseas, we’ve all been under the threat of attack. Some of us have been shot and, of course, lost lives. Imagine being in the homeland on a civil disturbances operation and having people throw bricks, rocks and bottles? That was a defining moment for a lot of our members.
The biggest challenge I have now is that some people are still living with the negative effects of what that brings on them. It’s making sure that we connect with those people, making sure that we have small teams out there, making sure we have support system, and that we don’t lose track of any one of those members who had to go through the civil disturbance operations in the homeland. But we’ve had adaptable airmen that literally made it happen.
Then, you go look at election support and cyber stuff that is going on and defending those networks. Now, look at Operation Warp Speed and the states that are delivering the vaccine and also our cyber professionals securing networks. We are working with agencies all over the state and the nation in order to make that happen. When you look at those things, you go, “Wow!”
Besides all that, we still have a federal mission where we deploy many airmen overseas. We have also done wildfires. We have done floods. We have done hurricanes. At one point, over one in five airmen were on duty somewhere in the world or in the United States. That still means, we still had 80% ready for when the nation calls. That’s what the National Guard is today — an operational reserve with strategic depth.
In any unit that you are in, every member has a place. You need to value what they bring to that team.
Some adjutants general say the downturn in the commercial airline industry has diminished the Guard’s full-time pilot shortage. The competition for trained pilots isn’t very strong right now. But this is likely a temporary situation. What’s being done long-term to ensure the Guard gets its share of the nation’s best pilots?
Two things that I’ve learned. One is, the shortage is not going away; this is a temporary blip. I will tell you that the COVID vaccines that are coming out and the time it will take to inoculate everybody and get rid of this means that not by summer of 2021, but by summer of 2022, we should be back on full schedules for the airline industry.
Some have actually expanded. The cargo haulers have been on a holiday pace since the start of this pandemic. So, they need pilots. The passenger airlines have converted some of their aircraft into cargo haulers because they’re picking up the slack that can’t be maintained in the cargo business now. The need for pilots is going to be there. I believe it’s going to start next winter in about a year from now. All of a sudden because of the early retirements that the airlines have done and some other news, there is going to be a shortage of pilots in about a year again.
Because of this temporary blip, we continue to do what is necessary in order to make our pilots absolutely critical. They go through lots of training. It takes a couple of years just to get them to be a wingman. And then it takes many more years and hours to become flight leads to instructors and the like. We’re trying to make it seamless to come from the active component and we’re trying to provide a strong National Guard that can harvest all of the investments the Air Force has made by coming over to the National Guard, if and when they decide to get out of the active component. That’s No. 1.
No. 2 is the bonuses and parity should be on par so that we retain that. No. 3 is we give them the best opportunity now with the uncertainty of the airline industry to come in and serve the nation and be a fabric in that national defense. Those are probably the areas that make us the best.
The Guard relies heavily on some of the legacy aircraft that now seem to be in the Air Force crosshairs as it looks to focus resources on advanced capabilities. It’s clear that all those aircraft will not all be replaced. Some units will be getting nonflying missions. The Guard currently provides 36% of Air Force’s tanker capability, 34% of Air Force’s fighter/attack capability and 30% of Air Force’s airlift capability. Do you expect those figures to remain constant over the rest of the decade?
The short answer is, I don’t ever expect them to remain constant because every year we go through the budget inside of the Pentagon and actually have to figure out what we need to get to in the future.
Right now, the Air Force is trying to figure out how to invest in the future by taking risks in the short term. I talked to Secretary Barrett and Chief of Staff Brown and I’m very confident they understand the value of the National Guard and what the Air National Guard brings to the Total Force. We are a battle-tested, low-cost, low-overhead, low-footprint model for national defense. We are a perfect model for national defense, as you’ve seen this year and throughout our entire history.
As the budget tightens in years to come, the value proposition of the National Guard is absolutely important. Having said that, our CAPSTONE principles really do talk about the concurrent recapitalization and modernization as the Air Force modernizes. As you have seen in the basing announcements, there are other missions. When we are not flying missions, we are still in command and control of the air domain. That is what the United States Air Force does.
The information warfare wing that will replace some of the C-130s? When you look at that, that’s intelligence and cyber and operation of informational warfare in order to get after the command and control of the air domain. Is it a great guard mission? It absolutely is. Can we perform it? Does it have a steady state to train and does it have a surge capacity in time of wars? Absolutely it does. Those units who will be called upon to do that are the fabric the Air National Guard brings.
We pride ourselves on being first to the fight, we pride ourselves on being a ready force and we pride ourselves on delivering the combat capability necessary for national defense. As I look at this, it’s not so much the platforms, but the capabilities we bring. Close-air support? The Air Force brings that capability. It happens to be tied to the A-10 platform. Multirole fighters, those who do strategic attacks, are tied to F-16s, right now, and F-15Es. Air dominance is tied to F-22s and F-15Cs. Now we know these fighters can’t last forever. What do we have to do? We have to figure out how to modernize and recapitalize our fighter force structure.
We also have to modernize and recapitalize our airlift force structure, modernize and recapitalize our bomber force structure, modernize and recapitalize our command-and-control force structure. All of those missions fall on the National Guard. Where we wind up in this percent of force? I can’t make a prediction on that. I do know that my time as director of the Air National Guard, as senior leaders in the Air Force have told me, will be defined by budgets. We need to get America to understand that we need to invest in the air forces, which means we need to invest in the Air National Guard.
You came to this position after serving as the adjutant general of Colorado, a state that provides much of the Guard’s space mission. You have long been an advocate for a separate Space Force with a Space National Guard. We now have a Space Force. Where do things stand with creating a Space Guard?
Right now, Congress is waiting for the Department of Defense’s recommendation. Inside the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Air Force and the Space Force, there has been lively debate on what the Space Force should look like in order to make sure the new service remains agile and operations-biased. The debate is over.
Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett has made a decision. Now, it’s just getting that decision through the building and over to Congress. Congress will then, appropriately, ensure they can maintain appropriate oversight of the new service structure as they create the new components by writing them into law. I think we are in a very good place. I think the Space Force will soon have a two-component structure, including a Space National Guard component.
In August, the Air Force announced the first bases to receive the F-15EX, an advanced variant of the venerable F-15 Eagle fighter. All the gaining bases belong to the Guard. Enthusiasm may have been somewhat muted across the Guard because of concern that the aircraft could end up being a Guard-only aircraft. Consequently, the logic goes, it will not receive requisite support from active-component leaders. What’s your take?
I am absolutely supportive of the F-15EX. The F-15C’s are old. They are a 1970s-era aircraft that was designed and built for air superiority and air defense back then. The threat has changed. Therefore, we need to modernize the F-15C. The F-15EX is that modern variant. If you look at what Dr. [Will] Roper [the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics] and his forces did, they worked with Boeing to develop a very upgraded E-model platform. The F-15EX was born out of that.
Because of those upgrades, because of the things the F-15EX can do and because, quite frankly, the dying nature of the F-15C fleet, we needed a new airplane. Do I look at this as only a Guard platform? It doesn’t matter to me, because it is an Air Force platform. We get a lot of great support for Air Force platforms. If there was sigh out in the field, I don’t see it as that. I’m very enthusiastic about the F-15EX. And I think it’s going to be around for decades to come. And it think it’s going to prove itself once we get into the hands of our great airmen. The first basing announcements were for units in Oregon — the [fighter training unit] in Klamath Falls [the 173rd Fighter Wing] and the operational unit in Portland [the 142nd Fighter Wing].
Modernizing Guard H-model C-130s has been a major topic of conversation for nearly two decades. They need new engines, propellers and avionics. Now the Air Force plans to divest 24 H-models next year and many more in years that follow. Is the Air still committed to modernizing those that will remain?
The Air Force is committed to modernizing the H-models. We really don’t have to program the funds; we have to execute the funds Congress allocates. If you look at the current National Defense Authorization Act and the current appropriations act, there are hundreds of millions of dollars in there to modernize the C-130 H-models.
So, between new props, upgraded engines, the AMP2 increment, which will modernize the cockpit, the H-model C-130 will be around for years to come. It will be a great platform and you will continue to see it in the inventory for decades to come.
You spoke earlier about the prospect of tightening defense budgets in the coming years. You also mentioned the Guard’s “value proposition.” Could you see the Defense Department making more use of the Guard’s cost-effectiveness if, as many expect, defense budgets do tighten in the near future?
If we have a flat-line budget, what squeezes the budget? There are two things: One, there are personnel costs exceeding the rate of inflation. The second one is weapons systems sustainment costs. Those two things as they exceed inflation will squeeze out the rest of the budget. Do I look at the National Guard value proposition and say that it needs to be part of the conversation? Yes. Also, the Reserve Forces Policy Board looked at it and also DoD looked at it. There is a memo out there that says, Hey, you need to look at the entire life-cycle cost of active, Guard and Reserve and factor that into your calculation on any new mission area.
I think the value proposition of the Guard will play very well in the corporate decision-making process, not just in the Air Force, but also in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
AT A GLANCE: Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh
BORN: Michael Anthony Loh, 1962 (Western Massachusetts)
FAMILY: Wife (Diane), two children
EDUCATION: U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo., B.S. Aeronautical Engineering, 1984; Trident University International, Cypress, Calif., M.B.A., 2011
COMMISSIONING SOURCE: U.S. Air Force Academy
MILITARY SERVICE: U.S. Air Force, 1984-1991; Colorado Air National Guard, 1991-present
PREVIOUS ASSIGNMENTS: Adjutant general of Colorado, Centennial, Colo., 2017-2020; National Guard assistant to the commander, Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Va., 2016-2017; Mobilization assistant to the commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., 2013-2016; Assistant adjutant general-Air, Centennial, Colo., 2011-2013; Special assistant to the Air Force chief of staff, the Pentagon, Arlington, Va., 2010-2011
OVERSEAS OPERATIONS: Provide Comfort II (Iraq) and Iraqi Freedom
ALSO NOTABLE: A command pilot with more than 3,200 flight hours (including more than 120 in combat), most of them in the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Also, a civilian air transport pilot rated in the Boeing 727, 737, 747-400 and 777. He flew for United Airlines. The son of retired Gen. John Michael Loh, the commander of Air Combat Command from 1992 to 1995. Served on the NGAUS board of directors as the TAG representative for Area VI from 2018 until his nomination to be Air Guard director.
Source: National Guard Bureau
