[Click here for printer-friendly version]

Lieutenant General Bradley: Welcome. I guess we have probably a few Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) students here as well as some other people. I'm glad to have this opportunity to come talk a little about where we're headed in the Air Force Reserve. As we get into this, I think there are so many things going on I'd like to give you just a little update on other things we're doing around the command to help the Air Force and the nation in challenges it faces.

I plan to talk about things we're doing now; we'll also talk seriously about the future, specifically the Future Total Force—the Air Force program that will further integrate the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve into many more mission areas than those in which we're involved today. We'll also talk a little bit about base closure recommendations and where we stand there and what that does to us and how we will accommodate those changes which are some pretty significant changes to us. I'll talk about a couple of issues that face us relative to volunteerism, mobilization, and recruiting and retention; the challenges that we face in those areas.

I'm going to try to go through it fairly quickly to allow plenty of time for comments or questions you may have, but sometimes it's hard to stop bragging about your folks and the work they do.

Obviously our Air Force is very focused on—while we are engaged around the world in the war on terrorism—supporting relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, with the devastation there.

Of course the Air Force is facing a big challenge now at Keesler Air Force Base with our technical schools. A significant number of Airmen go through training there. They are currently displaced and the Air Force personnel community along with Air Education and Training Command (AETC) is trying to figure out quickly a solution to that situation so that we can continue to get those Airmen through their training. To my knowledge we didn't lose any Airmen at Keesler. There was a lot of damage at Keesler. I don't know if you've seen pictures or not. I have.

It didn't appear to me from the photos I've seen and the things I've heard that the base was as devastated as far as buildings being blown apart like the areas of Gulfport and Biloxi that you might have seen on the news with homes destroyed and all that. Not to say there's not significant damage. There is significant damage at Keesler.

I have a flying wing at Keesler, the 403rd Wing, that does tactical airlift and does hurricane hunting actually, the folks that fly through the storms. Our facilities were not horribly damaged, although most things on base had three to four feet of water in them, but the water was gone fairly quickly. This was not like New Orleans in that regard, but a lot of flooding on the base. The physical damage other than flooding to the base—a lot of trees and power lines and probably roof damage and we had some hangar doors blown off and all that, but it did not look to me like the pictures you saw of Gulfport and Biloxi.

Our wing, of course, got their airplanes out of there and they are now situated at Dobbins Air Force Base in Atlanta, and they are continuing to fly storms. There are a couple more storms out there, as you know, Ophelia and some other one that are out there, so they continue to do their mission.

We have located about 98 percent of our folks in that wing. There are still a couple more we've got to find and we're concerned about that. So there's a lot of work to do at Keesler to reconstitute the base, to get the training going, but also as far as my command is concerned, to get my wing reestablished there ultimately it will take quite some time for that. But the first priority is trying to find people and support them and their families. It's difficult, obviously, to have a wing that will be deployed from where it lives for a long time. A lot of homes destroyed, though, for our folks.

We also have in New Orleans a fighter wing, an A-10 wing. They deployed their airplanes to Barksdale Air Force Base and they have some offices set up there alongside our reserve A-10 wing at Barksdale—an A-10 and B-52 wing, actually, that we have at Barksdale. They are still in the process of trying to locate people, and we're not as far along in New Orleans as I’d like and I'm very concerned about it because we've only found about 65 percent of our people from that wing. I don't have to tell you about how difficult things are in New Orleans, but locating people who don't come to work every day for us is different. So people are obviously trying to take care of their families and their own lives and jobs. Jobs are gone, homes are gone, and we don't know if our people are gone or not. Sixty-five percent of them we've found, and from that 65 percent we've had no casualties. Phone lines are down, of course, you can't use normal phone lines in New Orleans. Cell phones have not been working for the most part there, so it has been a challenge and I want to find the rest of these people by the end of this week. It's hard to do under the circumstances.

We set up websites and we set up 800 numbers for people to call in, but how do you tell somebody to call a number when you can't get a hold of them?

It may be hard for regular Air Force people to understand this because you know where your unit is and what your responsibilities are every day, but when you are a Reservist who might only be in one time that month, that is not necessarily the first place you want to call. Or you may not know even where your wing has been moved to, believe it or not, for a Traditional Reservist, in some cases.

So they're looking after their family situations and their jobs and trying to get their lives together and so forth, and we don't know where they all are. It's a tough one and I'm very worried about it. We may have lost some people and just don't know it yet, but I don't know that for sure. So that's difficult.

We've been doing a lot there in the devastated area to help with medical support through aero medical evacuation crews. We immediately had 32 aero medical evacuation crews volunteer to go help. They weren't all asked for, but we had a lot of folks around our command who were ready to go. A lot of airlift support volunteered and was used and a lot of rescue support was used.

The level of effort has been reduced somewhat because we are not now, for the most part, doing a lot of rescue. Most of the initial medical work has been done, so most of our aero medical evacuation crews have been sent home. But there have been hundreds of airlift sorties flown into the area and a lot of medical support and thousands of folks rescued.

We've had C-5s, C-17s, C-130, C-141 support there for the airlift business in and out of the area, taking everything from helicopters to FEMA equipment to people. A significant portion of the Air Force's aero medical evacuation capability is in the Air Force Reserve and they've been doing a phenomenal job with this all over the area there. The predominant number of them were set up at the New Orleans airport and some over at Lackland Air Force Base, where evacuees were moved and they provided other medical care. So great work by these folks…

We have folks that really responded quickly that I'm very proud of … We have a couple of fairly small rescue units in the Air Force Reserve—one at Patrick Air Force Base that flies HH-60s and HC-130s which do refueling for the helicopters, and we have a squadron of HH-60s at Davis-Monthan. The unit had three HH-60s in Afghanistan when the hurricane hit. Those three actually ended up being deployed back just because of the timing of the AEF cycles, about a week into this. But our HH-60s I think were the first ones on the ground. All of the Air Force HH-60 assets were staged out of Jackson, Mississippi, I believe. I think the Air Force had 23 airplanes there, we had seven.

We had two additional helicopters that were available, but they said they just did not have room for them, there just wasn't space. So this was really a Total Force effort—the Guard, Reserve and the active. Our folks saved over 1,050 people there, or rescued them.

That has trailed off a lot because there's a lot more available down there now to find people and they're doing it in different ways, but these folks got there on Tuesday. They were chomping at the bit on Monday, actually. They were sitting in the cockpits already waiting when the deployment order came in. They flew up there from Patrick, six hours, and started working immediately.

The very first day they were there, the first three HH-60s that got there flew 17 hours each. I want to tell you something, that's a lot of flying time on a helicopter. It's a lot of flying time on a body. I'm not saying it was all the same bodies for 17 hours. I think we had five crews with those three helicopters, but that's a lot of flying time.

The next day we brought a couple in from Davis-Monthan. Eight-hour deployment in, and they turned immediately and flew six hours of rescues. This was in the very first week. The Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday timeframe of the first week.

We're really proud of these folks. This is difficult work and there are a lot of airplanes flying around there, and power lines and towers and buildings and so forth, and they’re rescuing people off roofs. But these folks are combat veterans. They've done a lot of search and rescue operations and saved people in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re as highly experienced an outfit as you can have, combat experienced, and we have used them a significant amount. Every one of these people has been mobilized for two years, which is the limit of the mobilization. They continue to volunteer and we're still using them in our AEF cycles through volunteerism.

So I'm very, very proud of these guys and the work they do. We still have three helicopters there. They sent the rest of them home because they just aren't needed as much now.

The Air Force actually has I think over 5,000 saves overall, a huge effort.

If you watch the news, the Coast Guard did every one of the helicopter rescues—every one of them is credited to the Coast Guard. But in point of fact—and the Coast Guard did phenomenal things—it's a Total Force effort, a joint effort there. The Air Force doesn't get a whole lot of credit for what it did, but it responded magnificently. I've been very proud of it and our Chief is very proud of the work that all of the Air Force has done there and he's got us very focused on this recovery effort, and continuing to ask us for other things we can do along the lines of Red Horse help, prime beef help from civil engineering, etc. So this will be an ongoing, long effort for all of our services, I think.

In the year since I last spoke in this forum we've continued to do a lot of Operation Noble Eagle support, both with fighter combat air patrols and a heck of a lot of refueling. The Air National Guard does a significant portion of the fighter combat air patrols. The Active Air Force does a significant portion. We do some. We just aren't quite as large in the fighter business as the Active Air Force and the Air National Guard, not nearly as large, so we don't do quite as much of that. But there's a heck of a lot of support through tankers as well as some fighters. We do have an F-16 unit in Fort Worth, and since that's conveniently aligned with Crawford, Texas, we get some work down there periodically.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), we have a continuing presence in our C-130 fleet. We just mobilized the last three squadrons remaining for their final year. The President authorized in 2001 partial mobilization which allows the Department of Defense to mobilize folks for two years under the current law. So some of that's done in chunks with mobilization, demobilization, remobilization later. We've had a few people that have mobilized for two years total, in one chunk. And some have gone for a year, then they're demobilized for a while and then they come back, in our C-17 world and our C-130 world, particularly. And a lot of aerial port folks and aero med folks have been mobilized as well.

I visited our operation at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, a couple of months ago, and a lot of Guard and Active and Reserve C-130s are there supporting the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a true Total Force effort.

As I said though, we are down to the last three squadrons with one year remaining of mobilization capability, so next fall we won't be able to mobilize any more C-130 people as ops and maintenance folks. The last three units that have just begun their rotations are Niagara Falls, Pittsburgh and Peterson.

So I worry a lot about what's going to be available later for the theater commander, and they're worried about it, too. We continue to have the option of volunteerism. We'll use that as much as we can and we're continuing to support other operations in Southern Command and in European Command through Coronet Oak deployments and Joint Force deployments in Central and South America and over in Europe. We're doing that with volunteers. We share those responsibilities with the Air National Guard.

The level of effort in the C-130 business over in CENTCOM is a significant amount. We've had our A-10s in Afghanistan in the last year. We'll have some again next year. And we just deployed three days ago our F-16s to go to Balad. So beginning tomorrow essentially, our F-16s will be a big part of the F-16 force out of Balad, working in Iraq. They begin their 120-day AEF rotation there at Balad the day after tomorrow, I guess. Today's September 13th. So the 15th is when the AEF officially starts, I guess. They deployed about three days ago. So that's 12 F-16s going over there.

I mentioned the aerial ports. They are heavily tasked, with lots of mobilization. I think we sometimes mobilize people we don't need to. We could get more volunteers in the aero port business than they've asked to mobilize, so sometimes we don't approach this quite the right way. We need to look carefully when we mobilize people—we'd rather do things through volunteerism as much as we can, and many times we can meet the requirements through volunteerism better than through mobilization, although there are some headquarters-kinds of people who think, “well, if we mobilize them, we've got them and we can't lose them and there's no questions asked.” That's not necessarily the smartest way to do business. I'll tell you, in our C-17 business, both at McChord Air Force Base and at Charleston Air Force Base, we haven't missed a beat with folks. Out of the six squadrons we have at those two locations, associate C-17 squadrons, either four or five of the squadrons have done two years worth of mobilization and they are still volunteering at the same rate as another squadron that's mobilized right now. So they are deployed as much in their volunteer status as they were earlier when they were mobilized; deployed days away from home.

So we can do a lot through volunteerism, and like I said earlier, that's our first choice, when we can accommodate people and their lives and their jobs and their families a little better through that method and meet the requirement, it makes sense to me to do it that way. And you can save money, because when they're mobilized you're going to pay them every day, whether you need them or not because they are not all tasked 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, when they're mobilized. In fact, they are at home a fair amount of time in that. They're not deployed overseas for the whole year. If you use them in a volunteer status you save money, actually, because when they're back home they're off doing their civilian jobs, so the Air Force isn't paying them.

A heck of a lot of airlift business. Aero medical evacuation. We in the Air Force Reserve are the only C-141 people and the C-141s will go away this year. They are doing a phenomenal job, though, in the 141, and doing some aero med in the C-17 business. The 141 was very nicely set up for aero medivac, I believe, and we've learned how to do it on the other airplanes now because the 141s are going away.

The good news out of the aero medivac evacuation business in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’d say, is that the medical care is superb. We've not lost a single patient in flight since the war began. That's different from the past. We've made a lot of progress in the medical arena—I'm not going to just credit our aero med people. There's a lot of initial medical care that's given on the ground before they get on airplanes, but the whole medical effort from start to finish has been just phenomenally good, and there are a lot of people who have not lost their lives that in previous wars would have probably with those particular injuries. A lot of progress…

I saw the hospitals that we have set up at places like Kirkuk and Balad a couple of months ago when I was over there, and they just do unbelievable things in those tent hospitals essentially, contingency hospitals. They do some very serious surgery.

Well, we talked about mobilization a tad. Let me give you a snapshot of from September 2001 to today. How many are mobilized? We're up over about 3,300 now at the current time. That's going to come up a tad because of the, as I said, the 130 squadrons that were recently mobilized. Most of the Air Expeditionary Force effort that we do, not 100 percent of it, but most of what we do is done with volunteers, not with mobilized people.

C-130s are not in the AEF, per say. They are not sourced out of the AEF Center at Langley Air Force Base, nor are the tankers or other airlift folks. So the expeditionary combat support and the combat air forces pieces of the AEFs are sourced through volunteerism from the Guard and Reserve and it's worked very well, although there are some challenges that I'll talk about in a second. But that's the snapshot of the mobilizations.

31,000 people have been mobilized by the Air Force Reserve over the last four years, and you can see a couple of thousand volunteers. That will come up some more now as we get into this particular AEF cycle. We recently have only been pretty much in the expeditionary combat support, but now as I mentioned our F-16s are getting in there so we'll have more volunteers, combat air forces, as we move into the fall.

Challenges with volunteerism for the AEF deployments ... This has been a tough thing to deal with. We have, I think, fairly well sourced everything we've been asked to do in the AEF business, but some of the rules have changed on us. Of course, the AEF went from 90 days to 120 days. I'm not talking about that. I don't care how long an AEF cycle is, it just doesn't matter.

What has changed? The Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve have been allowed since the beginning of the AEF business to manage our people fairly well ourselves and cycle people in and out of the AEFs. There are people who think that's unfair because an active duty Air Force person goes in the AEF and they are there for 120 days. Why should a reservist get to go for a shorter period of time?

Well, “because…” is the reason. First of all, I'm the Commander of the Air Force Reserve. I cannot order any Air Force Reservist to do any tour of duty longer than two weeks. I can direct what we call an “annual tour” which is an annual requirement. I can direct that and that's the limit of my authority in that regard. I can't mobilize anybody myself. I can't order anybody to go somewhere for three weeks or four weeks or six weeks or 120 days. I don't have that authority. But I can tell somebody to go on an annual tour for two weeks.

Now I do a lot of encouraging of volunteerism and I'm not trying to be coy there with “encouraging.” We work hard to get as many people as we can to volunteer to go for 120 days because it makes sense to fit perfectly inside the Air Force AEF cycle.

This is a little instructional thing here for you. If you're an ACSC student, I guess a few of you probably are, I want you to understand this because you may see a little or hear a little about it and I just want you to understand my perspective on it and I think the perspective of reservists…

We signed up to do a certain percentage of AEFs every time, and I want to do everything I can to meet that Air Force need. I don't want ever to say no. I want to do more than what we said we could do, so I encourage everybody I can to go for 120 days. We send senior people over—general officers, colonels, to be commanders, deputy commanders, or senior staff people. We encourage our regular Airmen and junior officers to volunteer and go for 120 days, as much as possible, because it makes sense. It saves money. It costs more and it's more disruptive to rotate people. But when you rely on people to volunteer, and the Air Force has said our intention is not to mobilize people for AEFs. The Secretary of Defense has to sign off on every mobilization, every single one of them. The Secretary of Defense. It's not delegated to someone else.

The Air Force Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Mr. Michael L. Dominguez, who monitors this and who really has a big say in the Air Force on this issue, is very tough on us on mobilization. He doesn't let Air Mobility Command or Air Combat Command or anybody else mobilize people unless it's really needed. He doesn't recommend it. The Secretary of Defense, as I said, is the final authority on it. So the Air Force policy is do it with volunteers as much as possible, so that's what we're doing.

Since I can't tell people to go for more than two weeks at a time, we're encouraging people to go longer. Some people are available to go for a long period of time, maybe because they don't have a job or they've got an employer who will accommodate them very well. Some people don't have jobs that allow them to leave without being ordered to for 120 days. They just can't do it.

I don't think our family issues are any different from active Air Force family issues. Families are important to both sets of people so to me that's a wash. It's the employer business, and it's what people can do relative to their civilian jobs.

There are protections in law for folks who are ordered to active duty and there are not protections in law for people who volunteer. So some people have employers who are more helpful than others. So in the past we've been allowed to rotate people and we'll send people over for three weeks or four weeks or six weeks or 120 days based on their particular availability to volunteer.

CENTCOM has made it tougher because the number of positions in the AEF which require people to be there 120 days versus less time, for Guardsmen and Reservists, has increased dramatically and that's what's been harder, because I don't have as many people who can go for 120 days. So what develops is I can't provide as many for that period of time, so more of those would have to be filled with active Air Force people. Like I said, I'm trying to fill every one I can, and I want to do that, and I encourage it everywhere I go, but they've made it tougher on us. They've changed the contract, so to speak. The Air Force didn't do this, CENTCOM did this. The Air Force didn't really want to do this, but the combatant commander can say how he wants to run his business there and does, so that's been tough.

We've tried to get them to reconsider this. The problem is this has crept over into other AORs. We've been told by EUCOM that we can't send somebody for less than 120 days to Maron, Spain. Now let me give you one small caveat to this. And this one doesn't make sense to me. That's not a combat zone. It's an important AEF requirement at Maron. They do important work. But it doesn't make as much sense as for someone in Iraq.

CENTCOM has allowed us to send the F-16s that are going over, or A-10s that go over. They say those pilots have to be there 40 days minimum, so we're doing that. It is not hard to get a pilot to go over there and fly combat for 40 days. They will all sign up to that because they like going where the action is.

What's been difficult for me to understand is why folks that are out there doing close air support missions for the Marines and the Army, which is what we're doing in our F-16s and A-10s, have to be there 40 days, and they are in Iraq, and they're dropping bombs and so forth close to our own troops, but someone at Al Udeid or Ali Asalin who is doing other kinds of things that is not in quite as high threat an area as Iraq or Afghanistan has to be there 120 days. I just haven't figured that one out. It just doesn't make sense to me.

One would think that the person that's in the higher threat area that is doing stuff that could hurt people might have a longer tour length requirement. They want continuity in that fighter business and bomber business in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they want continuity for the other.

I think there are a lot of young commanders there who maybe don't have a good enough perspective, and I mean very young commanders, services commanders in CE and whatever, some logistics areas, and they say, “look, I cannot live without a fuels guy that's here for 120 days.” I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference whether you're pumping gas at Davis-Monthan or at Al Udeid, it's hot in both places and you pump gas the same way. So that's my push-back on it. That's my worry, because I can't guarantee as many 120 day volunteers as I can 30 day volunteers.

I would sign up today to 30 days for everybody, ground job kinds of things, ECS kinds of jobs, because I don't think it makes sense to send people for very short periods of time. It's too disruptive, it costs too much, but I cannot guarantee 120-day people as much.

Now I have beat this horse a long time here, but this is one of the biggest issues I face in AEF. This is the biggest issue I face in AEF support. I just thought you should hear that perspective and I'll be glad to respond to questions on that in a couple of minutes, because you may have comments or arguments and I'd be glad to hear them.

Future Total Force. The Air Force, as you know, is going to change a lot. It's changed a lot in the time I've been in, it's going to change a lot more. We are not going to have as many airplanes in the future as we have today because they're more capable. The ones we have today are old and they're a lot older than stuff that we had when I was young in this Air Force, but we need to modernize our fleet and we're doing that and with much more capable airplanes. Also, technologies have improved that allow us to get into attacking targets and doing our missions and we'll do that through, somewhat organizationally, through this Future Total Force construct.

What we'll do is a lot more unmanned aerial vehicle business, air operations center stuff, contingency response groups. That will get a lot of attention after Hurricane Katrina. I think we're going to find some impact in the QDR because of Hurricane Katrina. We're going to find stuff because there is a commission that's about to begin a year of work called Commission on the Roles and Missions of the National Guard and the Reserve, for all the services, and this commission is going to propose some changes to the Congress and the Department of Defense and it's a significant thing, and I think Katrina will affect their work. So there's a lot to see out of that over the next year with QDR and this commission.

Space operations. The Air Force Reserve today has nine squadrons in the space business flying a variety of types of satellites alongside active duty people, sort of an associate kind of organization. General Lance W. Lord wants us to do many more things for him in the space world and I'm excited about that because there's a great future there—Info Ops, Battlefield Airmen, etc. We're not very heavily invested in that, but there can be more.

This Future Total Force is going to lead us into more associate organizations of different kinds where the Air National Guard will associate with us, where we will associate with the active Air Force, the active Air Force will associate with us. I will explain that briefly…

If you're in the mobility business in our Air Force, you probably know what an associate outfit is. It's where, for instance every strategic airlift wing in the United States Air Force has an Air Force Reserve associate wing right alongside it. So you've got a set of airplanes, the active wing owns them and flies them and works on them. There's a reserve associate wing alongside it that flies them and works on them, side by side. This is done in every strategic airlift unit in the United States Air Force. We do it some in the refueling business. We do it, particularly, in the KC-10s. We do it also in a small way in the KC-135. There are in other commands, Air Education and Training Command, Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Combat Command, and in the space business, associate organizations.

There are also what I would call a reverse associate where we own some airplanes and the active associates with us. There will be more of that, particularly as a result of Future Total Force and Base Realignment and Closure.

We made recommendations in the Air Force to close three Air Force Reserve bases and to realign seven wings. Essentially that's seven closures, because when the Air Force Reserve moves its airplanes out of a place, even though we don't own the base, we are shutting down that wing and we don't PCS our people. We don't move our people like Grand Forks Air Force Base, active Air Force people. Cannon Air Force Base has sort of a reprieve for a while, but was Grand Forks closed? Ellsworth Air Force Base was proposed for closure. They survived the recommendation of the commission. But if they were too close then the Air Force would move everybody to a new assignment at some point when the mission is gone from there. We and the Air National Guard don't get to do that, so a reservist that's in Portland, Oregon, whose airplanes are going away is sort of on his or her own, other than we are working hard to, and will continue to over the next few years, to try to accommodate every reservist that gets moved.

We were trying to close Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a C-130 unit; Niagara Falls, a C-130 unit; and Pittsburgh, a C-130 unit. The commission said, “you can't close Niagara,” and said the Air National Guard there that had tankers that are going to move will associate with the Air Force Reserve. At Pittsburgh, they said, “okay, you can take the airplanes away, but you can't take all of the people away and they're going to have some kind of joint contingency response cell there.” We don't know exactly what that's going to be yet because that was a new one to us that the commission came up with. They did say, “close Milwaukee.”

What we were trying to do is gather up the right number of airplanes everywhere. In the big airplane business, C-130s, tankers and so forth, we're trying to get 12 or 16 airplanes at every place. In the fighter business, we were trying to get 24 airplanes in each squadron, F-16s and A-10s. That makes sense. It's economical. But I'll tell you, there's a lot of pain in that because, as I said, we don't move our people. And someone who lives and works in Portland, Oregon, for instance, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lives there and works there, has his or her civilian job there, can't necessarily travel to McConnell Air Force Base or MacDill Air Force Base to continue their work in the reserve as easily. It costs a lot of money to go down there, and we don't pay people to travel to their reserve location to train on inactive duty. We do when they are on active duty.

So this is tough. It is really hard to close these places because of the impact on people. All closures are tough on communities, but I think that it's a little tougher on Guardsmen and Reservists because we can't PCS those people. But we're going to do everything we can and we have a history over the previous rounds of BRAC of helping people the best we can get through a career if they want to continue doing it, although it will be harder for them because they'll have to travel farther in most cases. There will be some things available.

The Future Total Force will open up some new mission areas and some new locations for us. We are going to relocate our A-10s from New Orleans Naval Air Station because of base closure, not because of the hurricane, to Barksdale Air Force Base and Whiteman Air Force Base. We're going to relocate Luke F-16s and Hill F-16s to Homestead Air Force Base and Fort Worth to get 24 UE in those places. That will be more economical and save money in the long run for the Air Force. That's good. But the impact on people is tough.

Recruiting and retention. We made our goal in mid-August for the year. We may be still the only part of DoD—active, Guard or Reserve—who’s made its recruiting goal for the year. I can't tell you why we are doing better than the Air National Guard in recruiting this year. I know we've got fabulous recruiters, I'm sure they do as well. Ours are very efficient and good, but that can turn around any time.

Our retention is higher than it's ever been. I attribute that to people being happy with the jobs they're doing, feeling like they're contributing something important. And again, I worry that it could turn around next week. The fact that we are retaining people 93 and 94 percent for enlisted and officer retention is a significant thing to me. I'm really proud of what they've done out in the units to retain our people. We talk about it a lot to make sure that all our people know they're appreciated for what they do, that they know how badly we need them to stay with us. I do it every chance I get, thank people for what they do and try to ask them to stay longer. And many people want to do that, even though we are using them more than we ever have in our history a far as I know. It's amazing.

What a change I've seen over the years. People are happier, even though they're working harder. We have more requirements for them than we have ever had. But when I transferred from the active Air Force into the reserve a long time ago, I know what we used to do for training and it was not very satisfying, and you didn't feel like you were doing anything important.

Now everybody's going to combat, everybody's participating in AEFs. They're doing real missions instead of just training all the time. And we train for those combat missions all the time, but back then you were training for a big war, which you probably didn't really expect to ever happen. But now you're getting used to it and people feel like it is really an important mission and I think that's why they're staying with us. But I worry about it every single day.

That's my story. You may have some comments or questions about some of that.

Q: Sir, could you talk about the Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA) infrastructure?

Lieutenant General Bradley: Okay, not a problem at all. Let me explain what we're doing here because to some people this is important. It's been a tad controversial with some active folks—four star generals, in fact. Some of the MAJCOM commanders were concerned that we were trying to take control of things. Let me explain what we're doing here.

Our unit world with our flying wings is organized exactly like the rest of the Air Force. We are a federal Title 10 force exactly like the regular U.S. Air Force. That's different from the Air National Guard.

So I'm the Commander of the Air Force Reserve Command. I have a headquarters. I have three numbered air forces and I have wings below that structure, and I can tell every one of them what to do because I'm their boss. Just like General Moseley has MAJCOM commanders and they have numbered air forces and they have wings and so on. There is no difference. Just that 75 percent of my people are part-time people, but that's the only difference.

The Air National Guard, on the other hand, does not own the folks up here in Washington. Lieutenant General Daniel James III, my counterpart and Director of the Air National Guard, doesn't own his wings out there. He cannot tell a wing commander what to do and expect him always to do it because that wing commander knows he works for an adjutant general who works for a Governor, unless they're in federal status. That is a huge difference.

You've seen some result of that perhaps in the press in the base closure business and in the Future Total Force business if you read some of the stuff that's written in Washington newspapers and so forth.

The other piece of the Air Force Reserve, about one-seventh of it, is not in the unit world. They are individual reservists who belong on staffs at major command headquarters, at joint commands, at Air Staff and so forth. These are IMAs, Individual Mobilization Augmentees. They do not belong to a unit, other than a couple of minor exceptions. So in the major commands there you can see how many IMAs we have in ACC—800 IMAs; AFMC—2000 IMAs. These are individuals on the staffs out there.

In 1997, Congress passed a law that said the Air Force will establish a command along with the other services—Army, Navy, Marine Corps—the Air Force Reserve Command. So that was in law. And it said that every Air Force Reservist in the continental United States would belong to the Air Force Reserve Command.

We have sort of ignored that law for eight years now. Nobody really cares about that other than us. I believe we ought to comply with the laws. No one's been stirred up about it and asked us about it, however, the General Accounting Office (GAO) did an audit on reserve training three or four years ago and held my predecessor, the Chief of the Reserve, accountable for poor training of IMAs. People who were not ready to do their jobs, who were not properly trained and so forth, and held him responsible for it.

So in order to follow the guidance of the GAO and to follow the law, we set up an organization and we call it a Reserve Management Group that works for the Vice Commander at Robbins Air Force Base who works for me, and this is sort of an ad hoc sort of organization to look after these people.

What I've explained to the major command commanders, the four stars out there, is this is not about who's in charge. This is to comply with the law and it's to give you a better product. I'm not going to tell these people when to come to work and when to go home. I'm not going to tell them where to go. I'm not going to write their OPRs and EPRs. You're going to do that. You own them, they still work for you. But I'm going to look after their physical fitness and their physicals and their dental records and their required training to be qualified to do any job that you want them to do. I'm going to make sure that we fill all the squares on people to make sure they're a full-up round. I'm going to give you a better product. That's all this is about to me.

I could care less about "owning" them. That's not the issue. I'm giving you a better product and I'm complying with the law. I think they pretty well understand it. It had some difficulties being translated in the beginning, but I think it's the right way to go.

Frankly, to be candid, they weren't looking after them well. Anybody on a headquarters staff somewhere, an active duty person, has a boss. That boss makes sure that you comply with everything, don't they? Well, they don't worry about the IMAs. They were just reservists so they didn't worry about them. Well, somebody needs to worry about them and I'm going to take that responsibility because they're not doing their jobs. They belong to them, really, not to me in the past. Now they belong to me, I'll take them over, and look after those things. That’s what that's about.

Does that answer it? That's all it is, is a command and control structure for those things, but they still belong to the active duty bosses.

Q: In relation to the blended unit, I understand we have a blended Guard unit and active duty unit at JSARS, I believe. Do we have a blended reserve and active duty unit? And if not, why not? Wouldn't it be feasible in the Guard because of the Title 32 issue, and wouldn't that also help us cement the Total Force policy?

Lieutenant General Bradley: Yes, it would, but now we don't have one. It would work better for us because everybody's Title 10. It's difficult in the Guard. There is only one of those and that's all there will be. The Air Force has decided that the Air Force Reserve associate model that we've been doing in the mobility business, really since 1968, is very successful. You get a little bit of extra overhead manpower, you know, but the Secretary and the Chief decided that's really worth it. They think that works better. So that's the road that we're going to go down now in the Air Force, is kind of the reserve associate kind of model. We're not going to do the blended wing business.

Any other thoughts you can see me afterwards. I'd be glad to discuss things with you. Thank you very much for your attention.

# # #

Return to AFA Air & Space Conference Page