In an exclusive interview with Military.com this week, Hokanson — who is set to retire as the Army and Air National Guard’s top officer in August — urged caution as the Air Force wages a legislative fight to move the Guard units with space missions into the active-duty Space Force by bypassing state governors’ authority.
The Air Force sent a proposal to Congress, hoping it will pass legislation allowing the shift.
“Anytime you change a law or a precedent that’s been in effect for a while, you want to be careful of the unintended consequences that may be related to that,” Hokanson said.
“Anytime you change things, you have to kind of be concerned about ‘Where does it start? Where does it end?'”
Military.com first reported on the Air Force’s legislative proposal to bypass state governors and rewrite sections of Title 32 and Title 10 of the U.S. Code to transfer hundreds of Air National Guardsmen serving in space missions in multiple states to the active-duty Space Force.
Guardsmen in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii and Ohio could be affected by the move, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The proposal has been met with fierce opposition from National Guard lobbyists, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and, notably, every governor in the country.
In May, officer and enlisted Air Guardsmen from Alaska, Colorado and Hawaii took aim at the proposal, calling it an “existential threat” to them.
Many of those states have relied on the space knowledge within the Air National Guard units to respond to stateside emergencies, such as the California Air National Guard’s 234th Intelligence Squadron, which has used its satellite capabilities to track, monitor and assess wildfires in the Golden State.
