The Air National Guard is helping to develop a new Air Force service core function that focuses on building international relationships that may prevent future conflicts.

Air Force Colonel Don McGregor, director of Air, Space and Information Operations for the Air Guard, said his office is helping align and integrate capabilities for the newest service core function called "Building Partnerships."

"It's about how are we going to normalize "Building Partnerships" within this emerging and unique capability that the services are providing," he said adding that war fighting skills can be easily adapted to partnering missions overseas.

However, implementing a core function for "Building Partnerships" in an organization rooted in war fighting takes time, McGregor said.

"There's your dichotomy ... how difficult it is for us to make this shift as a military, as an Air Force and as a Guard to accomplish all of those things."

The great news, he said, is that the National Guard's joint State Partnership Program is already established. It is the example they are looking at for ideas.

The State Partnership Program fosters military-to-military, military-to-civilian and civilian-to-civilian cooperation through its partnerships between the states and other nations. It began in 1993.

The New York Guard's partnership with South Africa and Virginia's partnership with Tajikistan are just two examples of the 62 partnerships in which Guard members conduct international activities through corporative projects at home and abroad.

Government and military officials describe SPP as a model organization for security cooperation.

"The [SPP] delivers programs and activities that build broad capabilities with our African partners," said Army General William E. Ward, commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), in his 2010 posture statement presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McGregor said the other service components are also studying how to integrate similar programs.

His job is to cement the Air Guard's roles and responsibilities within SPP and then integrate those within the Air Force's new Building Partnerships service core function.

"Now that we have a [Building Partnerships] function, we are working to develop the relationship with [SPP]," he said. "It hasn't been easy, but it's been exciting."

The process is slow and tedious, but McGregor said the Air Guard's SPP experience has it right in the center of the development of the new service core function.

The result will be resourcing, sourcing, structure and sustainment for the Air Guard in both SPP and the Building Partnerships service core function.

That is something the Air Guard never had before, he said.

"We did not a have a functional area, per se or an international affairs area, per se in the Air Guard," McGregor said. "We needed to have that proper representation."

For Airmen at the unit level, there is a chance to participate in these partnership activities.

"We all train very hard to develop our skills and capabilities," McGregor said. "We also carry out our daily responsibilities with a great deal of pride. However, many of us don't ever realize that these exact same capabilities, we work very hard to achieve and maintain, can be replicated within our partner nations.

McGregor said all these Airman would need is some cultural and language training. "And potentially any of our 107,000 Air Guard members can eventually be tasked to demonstrate these very same capabilities with our friends and allies around the world; very much like we do in State Partnership Program already," he said.

In June, Air Guard officers from New York and Arkansas took part in an exchange program with the German air force. Pilots, navigators and battle staff managers also helped train their counterparts in Algeria, and some Guard flight engineers exchanged best practices in Ethiopia.

A new Building Partnerships cell has been established within the Execution and Plans Division. It now serves as a conduit for Air Guard international affairs and is formalizing its relationship with SPP and integration into Building Partnerships, he said.

McGregor said the Air Guard is also working with the Air Education and Training Command as it develops the variety of cultures and language training needed for the Building Partnerships service core function.