Colonel Ken Backes, US Air Force, was a national security affairs fellow for 2008–2009 at the Hoover Institution.

Backes comes to Hoover from the Pentagon. He has had two “outside the wire” deployments in support of the Global War on Terrorism. He served in Iraq as a Military Assistant to a senior advisor and later as the Iraqi Minister of Health’s Liaison to the US Government where he helped formulate health care policies for the country’s 26 million people. His most recent deployment took him to Afghanistan where he was embedded as the senior mentor to the Afghan General Officer in charge of Logistics Command Operations. A career logistician with over 31 years of service, he has commanded two squadrons and served as an action officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He earned a Bachelors degree from Wayland Baptist University in Plano, Texas and holds a Masters in Public Administration from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, California and a Masters in National Security Studies and Strategy from the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. His research will focus on issues concerning interagency cooperation at the strategic and operational level. Backes is one of two officers representing the Air Force in the 2008–09 class.