Alabama Air National Guard wing commander wins appeal after firing
Doug DeMaio says he still hasn’t out-processed from the base where he was once the commanding officer. In August 2022, DeMaio says he was abruptly relieved as the commander of the Alabama Air National Guard’s 187th Fighter Wing, and within three hours left the Guard’s Dannelly Field in Montgomery.
He’s been barred from going back since.
And still, he says, he doesn’t know why he was fired.
“I have no idea why I was removed,” DeMaio told Task & Purpose. “No clue.”
Late last month, a panel of federal employment judges ruled that Alabama officials never had a good reason to fire DeMaio, or if they did, never presented it to him or in court. The panel gave a final affirmation to a 2024 ruling by administrative judge Christopher Sprague that DeMaio should be reinstated to his position with back pay, according to court documents reviewed by Task & Purpose.
Sprague’s original ruling hinged on a three-sentence Relief of Command memo DeMaio was given by the state’s commanding general in 2022. Sprague said the memo held no valid reason to relieve DeMaio, offering only that “after careful consideration,” he had been relieved “for cause.” Sprague found that the general in charge of the Alabama National Guard in 2022, Maj. Gen. Sheryl E. Gordon, “removed [DeMaio] from his military position ‘for cause,’ but fails to identify what the ‘cause’ was.” Even a separate filing by the state in response to DeMaio’s appeal, Sprague wrote, “obliquely alludes to the appellant’s failure to obey an order from superior officers, but still fails to identify what the order was or who issued the order.”
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An Alabama Air Guard spokesperson told Task & Purpose in 2022 that the state’s “leadership lost trust and confidence in Col. Douglas DeMaio’s ability to command.”
Sprague ordered the state to “cancel the removal and to retroactively restore” DeMaio to his previous job, with back pay and benefits.
With the August decision from the panel, any further appeal by the State of Alabama would have to come in federal appeals court. The Guard did not respond to an email from Task & Purpose asking if another appeal was planned.
As for DeMaio, the former F-16 pilot says his future, and where this all leaves him, is unclear.
Preparing for F-35s
A 1991 Air Force Academy graduate, DeMaio flew F-16s for most of his active duty career. In 2020, he left active duty as a colonel to take over the 187th, when it was one of two Air National Guard units in the country chosen to switch from F-16s to F-35s.
The 187th Fighter Wing is one of the Air Force’s most storied units, tracing its roots to the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. Today, its planes still fly as the Red Tails in homage to that lineage.
For two years, DeMaio said, he prepared the wing for the high-profile mission, working with state political leaders to bring a $70 million building project to house F-35s and their specialized equipment. He also worked with local officials in Montgomery, whose airport sits adjacent to Dannelly Field, to improve the runway for the new, high-tech fighters.
He even stood up a then-rare anti-drone program on base.
The Red Tails received their first F-35s in December 2023, a little over a year after DeMaio was relieved. In late August, just days before the federal panel made its final ruling on DeMaio’s case, the 187th completed a major exercise, Tuskegee Thunder, which served as a formal Combat Readiness Inspection of the wing’s F-35s.
Guard technician rules
Though commanding officers are routinely relieved across the military, DeMaio was able to appeal his removal because of a unique dual status he held in the Air National Guard. After leaving active duty in 2020 as a colonel, he took a hybrid civilian/military job that the Guard calls a “dual-status technician.” Guard technicians — which are common in nearly all Guard units — hold military jobs but are employed under civilian pay and hiring rules.
As a result, firing a technician is more complicated than a commander’s order.
Though the specifics of DeMaio’s appeal weave through the thorny case law of Guard technicians, Sprague ruled on a simple principle: since Alabama officials did not cite a military reason for firing DeMaio, his firing must be treated as a civilian issue; and the state presented no evidence that would suffice to fire a civilian.
DeMaio hopes the judge’s ruling will compel the state to restore him as the 187th’s commander, though Air Force regulations generally prohibit the return of a relieved commander to the same position, even ones who eventually receive rulings reversing that relief. And he knows he’s already passed mandatory time limits for promotions that he might have gotten had his career stayed on track.
His personal life, DeMaio said, began to collapse after he was fired. Civilian jobs turned him away when managers found media coverage of his relief, including one written by Task & Purpose.
“I would say there’s permanent damage that I’m going to be fixing the rest of my life,” he said.
He now works for a defense contractor, he said, focusing on autonomous weapons. And he remains married, with one child in law school, another playing college baseball.
“It’s been hard on the family,” he said. “I’m very lucky to still have them.”
