Warrior of the Week – Kelly Hogness

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. R. Michael Longoria
  • 319th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. --  To his neighbors he is just an "average civilian living in downtown," but to the men and women of Grand Forks Air Force Base, Kelly Hogness is a man with a very important job. Mr. Hogness is the installation's anti-terrorism officer.

The West Fargo, N.D., native joined the Air Force to see the world but had no such luck.

"I joined the Air Force to see the world but they sent me to Grand Forks," said Mr. Hogness. "Grand Forks AFB was the first and last base I was stationed at during my career."

Mr. Hogness refused an assignment to Dyess AFB, Texas. Instead, he chose to comeback to North Dakota.

"West Fargo was lovely and it was very tight knit community," said Mr. Hogness. "It is very similar to Grand Forks, so it was a very easy transition for me."

The retired master sergeant also had assignments at Ellsworth AFB, S.D., and Sheppard AFB, Texas.

"I ran the gambit on I-29," said Mr. Hogness. "I never got to see the coast."

Mr. Hogness chose to come back to Grand Forks a second time. He made the decision so that he and his wife could start nesting and planning for retirement.

"I met my wife here and it just seemed like the right move to come back," he said.

Mr. Hogness spent the majority of his career 20-year career as a maintainer but spent a few years as an instructor. It wasn't until the end when he started working in the anti-terrorism office. He explained that the maintenance squadron had an abundance of senior NCOs, while the security forces squadron was short of them.

"My chief asked for volunteers to help fill positions in the security forces squadron," he said. "I was game. I've always been game to do something new."

After an interview with the current anti-terrorism officer at the time, Mr. Hogness was selected because of his instructor background.

"You don't need to have a security background to be an anti-terrorism officer," he said." You just need to be able to manage a security program well."

Mr. Hogness retired from the Air Force and immediately got a job with a contractor working on base but after a year the anti-terrorism job opened up and he applied.

"It was an easy choice," said the married father of two. "I'd much rather be doing this for the rest of my life."

The job he chose to do for the rest of his life is a simple one.

"The sole-purpose of my job is to manage the wing commander's anti-terrorism program and provide awareness training for everyone," said Mr. Hogness. "We just want to make sure that we keep all the threats we can away from our critical items."

His primary duties include figuring out what is critical to the base, what threats out there have interest in the base, what vulnerabilities can be exploited and how can we mitigated risk to decrease our vulnerabilities.

Mr. Hogness added that he can't do the alone and that everyone on base should be vigilant.

"It's everyone's job; I'm just here to manage it," he said. "The more eyes we have out there, the more diligent we are in protecting our assets makes it that much harder for the enemy to affect our mission and our safety."