AFA National Symposium and
Annual Air Force Ball
November 19, 1999
Honorable Carol A. DiBattiste
Under Secretary of the Air Force
National Symposium and Annual Air Force Ball
November 19, 1999
I thank all of you for the very warm
welcome you have given me. I want you to know how honored I feel to be
here in Los Angeles with such a distinguished group of space experts and
space operators. I am sure many of you are asking yourselves, what is
this attorney, former prosecutor — and still a prosecutor at heart —
doing here, giving a speech to leaders, developers and operators of the
world’s finest aerospace force? As you’ve just heard from General
Shaud, I had the distinct honor to serve in our great United States Air
Force for 20 years, probably 20 of the best years of my life, and in
those 20 years, predominantly as a recruiter--three times: one enlisted;
one recruiting officers, doctors, nurses, pilots, navigators, engineers;
and the third recruiting assignment was my last assignment in the Air
Force recruiting JAGs [Judge Advocate Generals] for the Air Force. Half
my time was as a recruiter, the other half as a judge advocate. I am
hoping with that experience, and that great time that I had in the Air
Force for 20 years, that I can today offer you some perspectives on the
future based on my past and my past experiences, not just with our great
Air Force, but also the great time that I spent with the Justice
Department after I left the Air Force.
When I was in the Air Force, we lived in a
world of acronyms, and it was the same with the Justice Department--lots
of acronyms, and no one knew the code unless you were part of the team.
But I have to tell you that the space world of which I was--not a part
when I was, or didn’t know enough about during my 20 year--on active
duty, is the epitome of the acronym world. I am still trying to learn
all the acronyms. I’ve only been in the job for 30 months, but we’ve
got HEO, MEO, GEO, LEO. I’ve got a new one for you, WEO; it is a newly
discovered earth orbit. It has a perigee of about 69 nautical miles
above Washington, D.C., and I call it the Washington Earth Orbit. It is
an orbit where Santa Claus observes all the wishful thinking going on
below of the senior leadership of the Air Force, wishing and hoping for
an enormous budget increase far exceeding the President’s Budget.
But before I go too far in trying to be
funny, I want you to know how deeply honored I am to have this chance to
address a national symposium of the Air Force Association, an
organization that does so much to bring aerospace and national defense
issues to the forefront both at the national and at the local levels,
and an organization that supports numerous educational and recognition
programs for our students, our educators and our Air Force team.
The Air Force Association requires not just
everyone in this room, whom I hope are members, to actively support and
encourage new membership to join its ranks, but we need to encourage
people outside of this room, other members of the Air Force, other
members of the Air Force Association to get more people involved in the
Air Force Association so it can be an even stronger and a more unified
voice. I am very proud to tell all of you that I have been a lifetime
member since I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in September of
1976, and I am very proud of that membership. Actually it was my
membership in the Air Force Association that kept me so well connected
to the Air Force since I retired in 1991 until I was so honored and
privileged to get this appointment today. It was the Air Force
Association that gave me that connection, and the Air Force Association
is the best.
As I said earlier, the reason that I am
here is to try to give you my perspective as your new under secretary on
where we are and where are going. This coming Monday marks the end of my
third month as your new under secretary, and I must tell you that it has
been truly fantastic to be back serving in our United States Air Force.
It has been non-stop for me right from the beginning. First and
foremost, I must tell all of you that I am so honored to be a part of
what I think and from what I see, I know, is the best leadership at the
top level that the Air Force has ever had. That starts with the
Secretary of the Air Force, Whit Peters; the Chief of Staff, General
Mike Ryan; and one of your own superstars in the space and missile
world, the Vice Chief of Staff, General Les Lyles. They’ve been great
leaders who share a clear and well-defined vision and unyielding
commitment not only to our people, but to our mission and our nation.
Together, they are willing to take on any challenge, including one that
I’d like to share with you, and that is reorganizing the headquarters,
for the first time in the Air Force’s history.
The goal is to create a world-class
military headquarters that is effective, efficient and a great place to
work. For those of you in this room who have ever worked or visited the
Pentagon, I’m sure you will agree with me that it is a very daunting
task. During my first three months, I have also been reacquainted with
many people in the Air Force, and I’ve found that this Air Force of
ours, since I left in 1991, has undergone dramatic change. We’ve
restructured our entire wing organizational concepts and realigned our
major commands to cope with the changing world. It used to be TAC, SAC,
MAC and ATC. Now it is Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, Air
Education and Training Command and even above and beyond that, many more
changes have occurred.
The Air Force, as you know, has reduced its
force structure by one-third and its foreign basing by two-thirds. Our
modernization and procurement budgets have decreased by over one-third.
Yet, in contrast, the amount of time the nation calls on the Air Force
to perform operations has increased dramatically. We’ve increased the
number of overseas deployments by four-fold. In Kosovo, the United
States Air Force provided nearly 50 percent of our entire combat force,
flew 50 percent of the combat sorties and delivered over 70 percent of
the munitions against almost 60 percent of the targets. Ninety percent
of our aircraft delivered precision munitions. And we did so with
increased lethality and accuracy, so much so that there were a mere 22
cases of collateral damage out of 23,000 delivered bombs. That to me
speaks volumes about the capability of the United States aerospace
force.
Indeed, there have been many significant
changes as I’ve just discussed, but many things have remained the same
or become even greater from my view point. The Air Force still attracts
and recruits the highest quality men and women in the Armed Forces
today, and we will continue to do so. The men and women of the Air Force
to me seem even more impressive than they did when I was recruiting at
the tail end of Vietnam in 1971 and 1972. My plan for the first 100 days
of being the under secretary was to get out and meet as many young
recruits and the men and women performing all the missions of the Air
Force as I possibly could. I have had the opportunity so far to visit
with hundreds of airmen, officers, reservists, active duty, retired, all
across Air Education and Training Command, Air Mobility Command, USAFE
and Air Force Space Command. Most recently, in fact this week, before
coming to LA [Los Angeles], I had the opportunity to visit Air Combat
Command, and I can honestly tell you, from personal experience now
during the last three months, that today’s Air Force is in the hands
of the best and the brightest people in our nation--and I am very proud
to be back serving with them and for them.
I am also thrilled to share with you that
during my visits during these first three months, I’ve had the great
opportunity to fly a T-38 and do acrobatics in a T-38 without getting
sick, although stay tuned. I flew a three-ship C-17 low-level air drop
mission from Charleston Air Force Base, and that was awesome, a
two-v-two F-15 air intercept mission just this week, and I pulled seven
and a half Gs and did get sick. But it was still awesome. Just a couple
days ago at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I got to fly a
strategic bombing mission in our wonderful, fantastic, out-of-this-world
B-2, and it was truly awesome. Beyond the wild blue yonder into space, I
watched the space operators control our DSP satellites, and I even got
to send a navigation command to a GPS satellite under the watchful eyes
of Senior Airman Denise Enos and a room full of officers. Hopefully, the
millions who use GPS each day didn’t know the difference with me
giving the commands, but it was truly awesome and a wonderful experience
for me to do so. That world was fantastic.
I have also gotten the opportunity to
participate with our senior Air Force leadership in crafting the future
of our Air Force at Corona, and, best, I’ve had the pleasure of being
on the sidelines to watch the Air Force crush the Navy, trounce the Army
for yet another Commander in Chief’s Trophy. And that was fantastic,
and we deserve a lot of credit for that.
But truly, most importantly, above and
beyond, I have had the chance to listen intently to what our people have
to say about our Air Force. Everywhere I’ve gone, whether it is on the
ground in Tuzla, at basic training at Lackland, at remote sites in
Germany, at the hospital at McDill [Air Force Base], in the ops squadron
at Schriever [Air Force Base], or in the maintenance hangers at Langley
[Air Force Base], I have talked to officers, enlisted, retired, active
duty, Guard and Reserve, and these are the people who are making our Air
Force go, that make it go the best that it possibly can. And they have
told me a lot about what is going on in the Air Force so it gives me a
great chance to come back to Washington to try to make things better.
I will tell you firsthand that the men and
women that make up our Air Force are excited about the work they do. To
me, they have the best mission in the world, and that is what we need to
remind them of to keep them in. They are ready to take on the world,
both personally and as part of our team. They recognize that they are
part of a world-class, mission-ready team that is known for its
unsurpassed ability to engage globally, with vital combat support, or
deliver lethal combat effects for our joint forces. As excited as our
people remain about the mission--and every single one that I’ve talked
to was excited about the mission--they are faced with continued concern
about our ever-increasing ops and personnel tempo. I heard that
repeatedly everywhere I went. Some are concerned about the pay
differences when compared to their civilian counterparts, and others are
concerned about the quality of the medical care that we have promised to
them for them and their families. Your leadership, the leadership of the
Air Force, has heard these concerns. And the leadership of the Air Force
Association, I might add, has heard these concerns and has already
addressed many of these quality of life issues. Last year, the chief and
the secretary and the leadership of the Air Force, as well as the
leadership of the Air Force Association, focused primarily on improving
military readiness--in particular, pay and compensation for our people,
returning to the 50 percent retirement that everyone deserves,
significantly raising pay--the biggest pay raise in years is going to
take effect on January 1st, 2000--along with pay table
reforms, career flight incentive pay, pilot bonuses, and re-enlistment
bonuses for over 135 career fields.
Having made these great strides to lessen
the gap on these issues, we are now going to move forward to the next
step, to make similar improvements, hopefully, in the health care system
for our active duty, retirees and their dependents. And we are also
working fast and furiously to address and to fix our recruiting and
retention problems, and we need all of your help to do so. Let me tell
you what else I’ve seen in Washington in the past three months, and
that is the enormous pressure on our budget. It is the reality of budget
caps. None of us like it, and it is affecting the Air Force in a big
way.
In the Air Force, we’ve had budget
pressures in what I would determine are four major areas.
First, the cost of the aging fleet. We are
spending, and unfortunately will continue to spend, a lot more to get
spares, to do required mods [modifications] on our planes and a lot more
on depot activities. Seventy-five percent of the aircraft in our fleet
are over 20 years old, and even under our current modernization
programs, that average age of our aircraft will increase to 24 and a
half years by 2005.
The second budget pressure point from my
view point is our quality of life programs. Although the higher pay
raises, pay table reform and return of the 50 percent retirement are
clearly the right things to do--and things that we must do for our
people--we must now pay for all of that out of hide. That is a budget
pressure.
The third budget pressure point is
unexpected people and operational costs, the costs of attracting and
keeping the very best people against severe external pressure by a great
economy. That significantly increased our recruiting budget, our
enlistment and retention bonuses that I just talked about, and aviation
incentive pay. We are also paying on the readiness and operational area
for more fuel, higher cost, and more weapons. There are other pop-up
bills to pay that we didn’t anticipate necessarily. For example, new
mandated air space rules to allow unrestricted routings globally require
us to immediately upgrade all of our air mobility aircraft. That is a
cost that becomes a budget pressure point.
The fourth area of budget pressure is
modernization programs. We are paying, as all of you know, for Airborne
Laser, F-22, EELV [Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle], SBIRS
[Space-Based InfraRed System], SBL [Space-Based Laser], Global Hawk,
more F-16s and additional JSTARS [Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar
System]. All that we absolutely, positively need, no question about it.
Along these lines we must do our best to keep our Space Launch Range
Infrastructure Modernization Program moving forward. I was told recently
when I visited Space Command, as an example, that some of the ranges’
electronic patch panels that were used during John Glenn’s first space
flight were still in use during his recent flight on the Space Shuttle.
These are just some of the examples of the kind of real budget pressures
that face our United States Air Force.
It seems clear to me that we all must
continue to balance these kinds of budget pressures always looking
forward and toward improving our aerospace capabilities. That is at the
forefront--improving our aerospace capabilities. And in doing so, we
must constantly balance all the budget pressures that will never go
away, and I think will only get tougher.
Part of our approach in solving that has to
be to build on our legacy of partnering, both with other agencies and
industry. Over the course of the next six years, as we try to replace
nearly every launch vehicle and operational satellite constellation with
new systems, we need to continue to forge significant relationships.
Like our partnering with industry on EELV, our partnering with the
Department of Commerce on the National Polar Orbiting Operational
Environmental Satellite System, our partnering with DoT [Department of
Transportation] on GPS, our partnering with BMDO [Ballistic Missile
Defense Organization] on the Space-Based Laser, just to name a few, we
need to continue partnering of that nature.
We must also continue to look for other
ways to partner, such as the Space and Missile Systems Center’s and
Air Force Space Command’s Commercial Space Opportunities Study is
trying to do--and as Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Technology
Workforce for the 21st Century is attempting. We need to
continue those kinds of efforts.
Another key part of our approach is making
the case for modernization, plans and initiatives. As we try to pursue
our plans, and consider migrating more capabilities and functions to
space, it is already clear to me that we must do a better job of making
our case for doing so, particularly in the currently constrained budget
environment. I have some suggestions that I’d like to throw out to all
of you in making our case for aerospace evolution. Although these may
sound prescriptive, they are actually challenges to all of you here
today. Just questions to think about.
All of you in this world, who are at the
forefront of our aerospace force: Number one is need. What is the
requirement? What is the threat? What are the ramifications? What is the
compelling need? Another question to think about is military utility.
What is the significant military utility? What are the significant
contributions to our aerospace force? What are the contributions to
vital national security objectives? Number three is cost. We must ask,
is it affordable? Is it cost effective? Is it more cost effective than
other approaches to perform that same function? Number four is roles and
missions. Is this a core capability of being an aerospace force, and
does this support a core competency of the Air Force?
The better we can quantitatively answer
these kinds of questions, come up with new and innovative acquisition
strategies, and partner where we can, the better we can evolve our
aerospace force in the 21st Century in the current and what I
believe to be the future budget environments.
During my first Air Force life, the Air
Force was a great steward of space. Today, as your new under secretary,
I see the Air Force as pre-eminent in space. As I look to the end of the
five-year budget, the Air Force will still be the number one investor,
owner and operator in space for the entire Department of Defense. We
have 90 percent of the DoD space people, 85 percent of the DoD white
space budget, 86 percent of the on-orbit DoD assets and over 90 percent
of the DoD space infrastructure. Air and space superiority has been and
will continue to be our competency.
Yet as you know, no aircraft arrives over
the target and no spacecraft images the battlefield without the
intellectual and awesome power of our people. They are absolutely,
positively our number one asset, without question. Thus, I’d like to
leave you with a challenge to all of you. It is the same challenge I am
making everywhere I go, and I will continue to make it everywhere I
continue to go over the next year as I travel all across the Air Force.
As you know, I stated earlier that we are in the middle--for the first
time in a long time--of a recruiting and retention problem facing our
Air Force. But we will solve it, and my feeling is we will solve it
during this coming year-- because, in the next year, starting right now,
I challenge every person in this room, whether you are a member of the
United States Air Force, of the Air Force Association, or are retired,
Guard, Reserve, civilian, whatever, to go out and recruit one quality
person for our United States Air Force and to make an impact by talking
one person into staying into our Air Force and not leaving. If you can
recruit one individual during this next year, and retain one individual,
we will be well on our way to keeping our aerospace force the finest,
without question, aerospace force in the world. I thank you very much
for the opportunity to address you today. Go Air Force.
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