Moderator: On with our first speaker. Our first speaker is the senior uniformed Air Force officer responsible for organization, training and equipping nearly 700,000 active duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian forces serving in the United States and overseas. He’s a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he and other service chiefs are the military advisors to the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council and the President.

Please join me in welcoming to the stage our first speaker, the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General T. Michael Moseley.

[Applause]

General Moseley: Mike, Bob, thanks for the opportunity to be with this great assemblage, fellow airmen, it’s always great to be able to spend some time with you in a setting like this because we can share some thoughts.

Industry leaders, thank you so much for the sponsorship that allows the Air Force Association to do this. Attaches, friends of the Air Force, welcome to something that is very important to the United States Air Force in partnership with the Air Force Association.

So again, Mike, Bob, thanks for the opportunity to do this and for the fellow senior officers who are going to have a chance to speak. This is a wonderful chance for us to share some ideas and some thoughts and to get some feedback and to kind of give you an idea of how we see things progressing and where we’re going.

I asked for an opportunity to begin to lay out a bit of thinking with the rollout of my White Paper. A couple of weeks ago I did this at Maxwell which was the unveiling of the White Paper, and I chose to do that at Maxwell for any number of reasons. I believe Maxwell is the intellectual engine of our Air Force and it has been since the Air Corps Tactical School. I asked to do it at Maxwell in the big auditorium there at squadron officers school, which some of us slept so soundly in years past. [Laughter.] In fact General Looney and I were in the same class, and General Renuart was in our class and we, the three of us, slept soundly in that auditorium. [Laughter.]

But I wanted to do it at Maxwell with senior NCOs from the Senior NCO Academy; I wanted to do it with folks from the School of Advanced Aerospace Studies, Basic Course, SOS, ACSC and War College, because I think that’s the future intellectual engine for our Air Force. Those are the folks that are going to take a vision and turn it into a reality, and those are the folks that are going to continue to adapt and learn and move an Air Force into the 21st Century.

So I enjoyed that session at Maxwell, and this is the second time I’ve had to present the White Paper in the form that you’re going to see. I asked the Air Force Association if I could do it with you folks because I think this is the next step in understanding where we’re going, why we’re going there, how we’re going to get there, and some of the issues along the way.

So again, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about this and to be able to lay out the details for this White Paper.

But first, I want to show you something. We have a group of people that live in Austin, it’s a company called GSD&M that do General Looney’s recruiting. They’re very very creative folks. On Sunday we began to roll out the next episode and chapter of our rebranding and our outreach program that they’ve put together. But while I was there a few weeks ago sitting with them and talking about our program, they said we want to show you something that we built and put together for the Department of State. They showed this to me, and I said if you don’t mind I’d like to have a copy of that because I’d like to take that with me and for a variety of audiences I’d like to show that because I think it’s a pretty powerful message.

The intent from the Department of State was to be able to have this video so in outreach programs from the embassies across the world, or in programs at the embassy the ambassador and the country team could use this as a bit of an introduction to what the United States is all about.

So I know some of you all have seen this, and I know you’ll enjoy seeing it again. For those that haven’t, I think you’re going to really be moved by what the good folks in Austin have put together for the Department of State.

If you’ll play that, we’ll start off with that piece of video.

[Video shown.]

I think that’s a good piece of work for those guys in Austin.

[Applause.]

The fellow that runs that company is a guy named Roy Spence who’s pretty famous in the media business. I told him I was really grateful that he didn’t have an image of the University of Texas Tower in that thing, because it would have been a personal dilemma for me to have that thing edited out before I showed it to anybody. [Laughter.] But he did a good piece of work.

Let me start by saying it’s taken about a year or so for some of us to think about this White Paper and to think about the delivery and the release of a White Paper which I think lays out how we see the future, how we see the challenges of the future, how we see the opportunities for the future, and what are we going to do about it. It’s one thing to think through the notion of tomorrow may not necessarily be a Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, but it’s another thing to actually put programs in place, connect the dots as to how we go from a strategy to a task, how do we resource, how do we make hard choices, how do we make hard budget choices, how do we transform an organization. In short, how do we redefine American air power in the United States Air Force for the 21st Century, and that’s what this is about.

So let me start and go through this, and then if we’ve got some time I’d sure welcome questions and comments.

Give me that first slide.

That’s a quote from the first Chief of Staff, Tooey Spaatz. If you all have been blessed to have some time up at the Air Force Memorial, you’ll know that’s on the wall of the memorial up there. I believe in 1947 when the Air Force became a separate service, when General Spaatz looked out across the world and believes that we better be able to dominate the skies, if you fast forward to where we are now, I think that parallel is with us when it comes to air, space, and cyberspace -- the three domains that we’re responsible for and we’re looking into how to be much more capable and effective in operating in those domains.

I believe still we exist to fly, fight and win our country’s wars, and when you look at that State Department video, the faces on the citizens, all of us that wear the uniform, have worn a uniform or will wear a uniform take an oath to defend the Constitution and the population of this country. The faces in that video bring you back to the notion of it’s our job to achieve these strategic operational and tactical effects, and to fly, fight and win this country’s wars.

Next slide.

So in this White Paper how do I define the strategic environment for tomorrow? You can scratch this itch any way you want to, but I think if you think about a generational struggle against militant extremism, terrorism, when you think about instability, ethnic strife, or you think about economic instability. When you think about peer competitors that are flush with resources. When you think about dangerous regional actors. You can begin to fill in these blanks.

Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction not only perhaps in the hands of nation states, but non-nation state actors. Equally troubling is rapid technological change. And even more rapid militarization of that technological change. How do we deal with that? How do we think about it? What do we do about it?

Exploding information volume, blogs, internet. When you think about newspapers and the print media, and you think about e-mail and blogs and the electromagnetic spectrum, how information is passed, we’re moving rapidly into an age where people don’t necessarily get their news from newspapers or from print media, they get it from images and from something that lives inside cyberspace.

Globalization and competition for scarce resources. Petroleum is one, water is another, arable land is another. That gets to the dislocating climate change and what does that do to coastal regions and arable land? And what does that do to competition for those vital resources, not only on a regional but a global scale?

So I think the strategic environment as we look forward is going to be characterized by challenges. I don’t necessarily believe that we have to assign bad actors to nation states as much as we just have to understand that the world that we will likely live in tomorrow will be equally complex if not more challenging than the world we live in today because of the characteristics of the strategic environment that are changing so fast.

So with that as a baseline, looking out into the future --

Next slide.

-- I believe we have an opportunity to redefine American air power in the United States Air Force to deal with those challenges across those three domains of air, space and cyberspace.

There’s one characteristic of military operations that if you fail to adapt or learn or anticipate, that normally leads to failure in some form. There’s a fellow that’s no longer with us any more that some of us in this room used to work with and for named Moody Suiter. He used to teach us along the way that you’re only going to be surprised by the things you don’t think about.

So how do we get our minds around this uncertain future? How do we redefine American air power? And what are the attributes of this transformation?

General Deptula’s helped me think about this and these are his bullets. You’ve got to actually get at transforming the organizations to be more adaptable, more learning, and more forward leaning. You’ve got to adopt new concepts of operations, in our case through cyberspace, through unmanned vehicles, through air and space. How do we connect the sensors? How do we connect the shooters to the sensors? How do we train the people? How do we do this with new concepts of operation that leverage the new technologies that we have to be able to exploit in near real time. How do we do that? While we’re fighting a global war on terrorism and while we’re looking to recapitalize an inventory that has been battered by 17 years of constant combat?

So in my sense, the White Paper is a vision to be able to get our minds around this and to ensure our future ability to fly, fight and win across those domains. In and from those domains -- space, cyberspace and the atmosphere. Freedom to and freedom from attack in all domains for the entire joint team, and to ensure freedom of maneuver for the joint team because that’s our job, it’s been our job and it will be our job as long as we operate in these domains.

So that, in my sense, is how we approach the outline of the redefinition.

Next slide.

So how do we do it? Again, it’s one thing to sit around, prop your feet up and claim to have a vision, but it’s another thing to actually begin to work your way through how to make it happen.

We’ve got about 140 initiatives that are in work right now. Attempting in much better, faster, cleaner, more transparent ways to link the strategy to the budget and to be able to field systems in a much more timely manner. And to be able to prioritize resources across the development of the POM, out through the corporate process, into actual budget authority and into actual fielding of systems.

The ’09 budget is on the Hill. In fact the hearing season has already begun. General Corley and I had a pleasurable opportunity to have the first hearing, and Secretary Wynne and I, I think we’ve got six more hearings in the next three weeks or so scheduled, which are the posture hearings, which then help support the ’09 budget, the President’s budget, and address the issues that we believe live inside that budget. Then the challenges that we have for the future.

This is important this spring because we also are working through the fiscal guidance on the build for POM ’10 which will be the legacy POM for President Bush’s administration, it will be the transition POM into the next administration.

So how then do we define this or how do we develop an outline to get at those particular, for lack of a better word, admin challenges?

Well, you can take this challenge and look at it any number of ways. You can take the initiatives and bend them in any number of venues. You can look at it from strategic to operational, tactical levels of war. You can bend the initiatives in that. You could bend the initiatives relative to priorities that we’ve laid out about win today’s fight, win the war on terrorism today, take care of our people and be prepared for tomorrow’s challenges. You could bend those priorities that way. Or you could bend them under our Title 10 authorities of organize, train and equip.

So imagine a Rubic’s Cube, of sorts, with each of the initiatives bend in each of those three categories because it makes sense to me that they cut across any organizational template because the represent the path to this redefining of American air power. But I’ve taken organize, train and equip as a way to outline these and begin to talk through the priorities. So let’s do that.

Organize. How do we better streamline for today’s fight and tomorrow’s fight? How do we normalize presentation of forces for combatant commanders? Or said another way, if the squadron group and wing structure at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan right now that is under the command of Brigadier General Hoss Hyatt. If that is effective, and it is; and that is the way we present forces, apportion forces or forces FOR for Afghanistan, then should the organization at Seymour Johnson or Shaw or somewhere else be different? I think not.

I think if we live in an expeditionary air force and we fight as an expeditionary air force, then the organizational template deployed should be the same as the template at home station. Because if you don’t do it that way, and we’ve all had opportunities to live in that world, then as you deploy into CENTCOM’s AOR from a template that is different than the template you will fight with in the AOR, somewhere over the Atlantic some magic ferry dust is sprinkled over the people and the organization and then you become a theater command structure, not a home station.

It’s my belief that it should be the same, and it’s my belief it’s what works in the AOR for the combatant commanders and the commander of Air Force Forces or the CFACC should be the way we organize at home station.

And I believe the restructuring of the Air Staff into a joint template of A1 through A9 is also a way to parallel our other joint activities as well as with the Joint Staff. In doing this, I’ve also stood up, we’ve got a little over a year now, a new A-head, A2 for intel, and put a lieutenant general in charge of it, and that is General Deptula who is here with us this afternoon.

After spending some time in the theater and after spending some time in Washington and after taking a look at the 9/11 Report and thinking about this a little bit, I’ve concluded that we haven’t been set right in our intel community. In the not too distant past Air Force intel was the gold standard for all joint activities. But over time we’ve drifted a bit and over time we’ve not prioritized training of intel professionals, we’ve not selected intel professionals at various levels. And the result of that is today, as we speak, there is not an airman that holds a J2 job in any combatant command.

Now Mike Hayden, Director of Central Intelligence, is a pretty good job for an airman. But between General Deptula and General Hayden there’s not too many airmen. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it’s right for our people. I don’t think it’s right for our intel professionals. I don’t think it offers career development or progress. So I think we need to do something about it. For the last year we’ve worked at it, and General Deptula is the A2 and he’s working that hard.

So in that restructure of the Air Staff from A1 to A9, it mirrors what we do in the theater, it mirrors what we do in the joint world, and it mirrors what we do on the Joint Staff, and I think that’s the way to organize the Air Staff for the future.

Our MAJCOMs, our MAJCOM commanders are here with us. We’ve asked them to take a look at their headquarters as a management oversight headquarters and push the command warfighting activities down into our component warfighting headquarters, our NAFs. We’ve got 7th Air Force on the Peninsula, 13th at Hickam, 3rd at Ramstein, 9th in the Central Command AOR, and 12th in Arizona, the DM. We’ve also got 14th for space, 20th for missiles. We’ve got 8th for the bombers. And as we begin to look at all of this and look at those Falconer AOCs, how do we develop leadership to live and operate inside those AOCs, and how do we fight in a theater best represented by a COMAF4, a JFACC or a CFACC? So that’s the notion of the warfighting headquarters.

The wings, groups and squadrons, we’re in the midst of a bit of a reorganization now to refocus the squadron as the building block of everything that we do in the theater. If you can build on the squadron organizational structure with operations and maintenance, logistics support, if you can focus the squadron commander on that, then building squadrons into groups and wings in the theater is much easier than attempting to adapt an organization somewhere airborne over the Pacific or the Atlantic.

So if the premise is to fight and win and the premise is to have an organizational construct that facilitates that, that’s getting at streamlining for warfighting.

Total force. We’ve got over 150 initiatives in play right now to better integrate Air National Guard, Reserve, and active. A hundred and fifty. From associate organizations to big organizations, F-22 squadrons. F-22 locations are now and will be fully total force with the Virginia Guard, the Hawaii Guard and the Reserves at Holloman in New Mexico and Elmendorf in Alaska.

As we bring the tankers on board, the same template for them, locations that are associate arrangements under General Lichte’s world. And as you look at what we’ve done across the board to integrate total force I think you’ll agree that United States Air Force is the gold standard for being able to operate, deploy in a theater with no difference between Guard, Reserve and active. What a home run that is, to be able to walk around that base at Bagram or Kandahar or Balad or Al Assad or Talil, Al Dafra, Al Udaid, and not know the difference between Guard, Reserve and active. Home run. Home run for all of us.

Strategic communications. I’ve been convinced and still am convinced that we can do better in our communications business both strategic communications and public affairs and outreach because the members of the total force -- Guard, Reserve and active -- are so good at what they do and so professional that I think it bears a certain sense of attention to be able to tell that story much better than we have in the past, and to be able to reach out to a variety of venues, not just the media, but academia, think tanks, et cetera, and offer windows inside the Air Force and outside the Air Force to train our people to think about a much broader horizon when it comes to the opportunities with strategic communications.

I also think in this organize piece of the White Paper we can do much better in strengthening relationships in the joint community and the international community as far as Air Force to Air Force with exchanges and also with equipage.

I think if we focus on this in light of strategic partnering opportunities and developing strategic capacity on an international scale, we’re better off, our fellow air forces are better off, our people are better off, and it offers so much more robust operational opportunity than we have in the past.

So as you look at this and the organize piece, I think streamlining specifically for warfighting focus, getting at better ways to strategically communicate, and looking for better ways to partner is one way to wrap up the organize piece of the redefinition of the Air Force.

Next slide.

Let’s talk about training for a minute. This is where General Looney and his professionals hit home runs every day.

I believe Red Flag is important to us. In fact I believe it is so important to us to develop opportunities for advanced composite force training, that the operations that we have in Alaska under General Chandler and the operations that we have in Nevada under General Corley, should be merged. There should be one big honking Red Flag. It should have the same range fidelity, it should have the same opportunities. So when international partners request to come to Red Flag they have an opportunity to fly mountainous, different terrain, desert, Alaska, Nevada, against a variety of threats. It opens our aperture up because we can train across a much wider spectrum, as can our partners and guests to Red Flag. And to work at updating those ranges and bringing the range threat arrays up as close to 5th Generation as we possibly can.

I think it’s also important for us not to forget that our job is to fly and fight. Our job is a warfighting piece of the Department of Defense. So to instill or reinstill notions of warfighting ethos and to instill opportunities to train in true warfighting skills across all of our training and education has been something General Looney’s been working very very hard.

Airman’s Creed is a step in that direction. We’ll talk about that a little bit more later.

Basic military training. We fold less socks at basic military training now. General Looney issues everyone a rifle. We qualify with a rifle and a pistol. They qualify in expeditionary setup with cantonment areas. They understand that much better. They have the privilege of wearing MOP4 Condition Black for a while. What a privilege that is in San Antonio in July and August. They get attacked, they have to evade a bit, they set up a new cantonment area. They do much higher levels of buddy skills and emergency medical technician training. And we’ve extended it a couple of weeks to be able to work all that in there while still focusing on warfighting ethos and the skills that our folks need when they graduate every Friday down at Lackland.

CBAT, Common Battlefield Airman Training. We have so many people today that fight on the surface. Terminal air controllers, combat controllers, pararescue jumpers, some civil engineers, security forces. Across the spectrum we have deployed today thousands of airmen that their primary function is to fight on the surface.

So how do we look at coalescing the syllabi of those various tech schools, and how do we look at focusing on common training and common shared experiences to make it better for them so that they come through a refined basic military training, go to a CBAT opportunity, much, much more capable to deal with tomorrow’s world; much, much more capable to deal with operating off of an expeditionary airfield.

Professional Military Education. Between General Looney and General Lorenz they have done wonderful, wonderful work at Maxwell focusing on warfighting skills and ethos into the basic course, SOS, ACSC, Senior NCO Academy and War College. But also Airman Leadership School and the NCO Academies across the Air Force, total force -- Guard, Reserve and active. And to be able to wrap all that up and connect the tissue between each of those opportunities so that when one of our young folks graduates from tech school, their next opportunity will be Airman Leadership School and the NCO Academy. What happens in those gaps? How do we fill that in and continue to reinforce skill sets and competencies in a warfighting ethos? How do we do that between commissioning, basic course, SOS?

I think this is a very very critical piece of preparing our people for the future, that we continue to hone skills and competencies along the way while we have the opportunities for Professional Military Education.

Advanced degrees. We’re working very very hard to be able to provide any airman, anywhere the opportunity to advanced academic degrees -- enlisted or officer. We had some language that we worked with DoD last year. We’ll work some more refined language this year that will give us much broader authorities to work advanced degrees on our enlisted side as well as our officer side because I think that’s something that benefits the service, benefits our airmen and their families, but it also benefits the country. So more to follow on that.

Language skills. It’s the second year in a row that we’ve asked Air University to provide language training for Senior NCO Academy, Command and Staff, and Air War College. Languages are still the same, as we’ve talked before. Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and French. French because of our upcoming opportunities in Africa. Spanish because of Central and South America. Chinese and Arabic for obvious reasons.

Now none of us have kidded ourselves that our folks are not going to be 3-3 speakers after 11 months of studying Mandarin Chinese, but at least they’ll have an opportunity to understand better the culture and an opportunity to understand better how the language and the culture fits. And on their regional studies they’ll be able to visit those places and I thin kit offers much broader horizons on what’s required for us outside our expeditionary airfields, outside the wire, and in our strategic partnering.

Taking care of families is at the top of everybody’s list. Quality of life, quality of life not only in military family housing but in the work place. Housing upgrades. All of that is at the top of Secretary Wynne and my list, to ensure we never lower the standard and to ensure we always have an opportunity for a family to be safe while a member is deployed, for kids to be able to run around the neighborhood without fear, and to be able to maintain the security of our bases, and to be able to execute command authorities from the bases.

Also to be able to improve force development across these domains. Space professionals, cyber professionals, across those domains and look at better ways to focus on intel and on some of our other logistics, acquisition, contracting. To be able to develop those in a different way, again, focused on a global set of challenges in tomorrow.

So that’s organize, train. Let’s talk about equip.

It’s not the first time y’all have heard me or Secretary Wynne or any of the MAJCOM commanders talk about the challenges in recapitalization. We have to be able to look at ways to accelerate delivery of advanced capabilities. We have to look at ways to optimize the acquisition process, to streamline it. And y’all know next week, I’m told, we’re going to make a source select on the new tanker. I hope we do because we’ve waited a bit for this. I suspect we’ll go through some admin work after we have source select. I suspect we’ll have an opening round of debates on choices and issues with those choices. I just hope it doesn’t take us another seven years to be able to bend metal on an airplane so we can field a capability. Because at the end of the day, this is about replacing airplanes that are 40-50 years old. We’ve got to get on with this.

We’re working our way through the helicopter. Space systems, General Kehler and his guys are working every day to make the space systems quicker, deliver faster, and to be more effective, and I think we’ve made incredible headway in doing that.

We’ll talk about the five priorities which are not new. Field the tanker, get the helicopter, our space systems, field the LITENING 2 as fast as we can and get it into squadron strength so we don’t have to spend billions of dollars on service life extensions of other airplanes. Then continue to press on the notion of fielding a new bomber. A bomber that 2018 has been a mark on the wall from the QDR, and 2018 is a doable mark on the wall if we can continue with this program and continue to work the way we’ve laid this out with industry.

So those acquisition priorities haven’t changed. But the associated goals of being able to retire aging and worn out aircraft hasn’t changed either. And be able along the way to preserve the American aerospace industrial base which is so critical to all of us. Very critical.

The last part of that is accelerated fielding of UAVs. In this ’09 budget we’re buying 93 airplanes. Fifty-two of those are unmanned. Ninety-three to be acquired, 52 unmanned.

I had a treat to be out at Nellis a couple of weeks ago and I spent half a day with the leadership of the Warfare Center and the wing, and the UAV wing, the 432nd. Out of that we made some decisions about standing up a UAV squadron of the Weapons School by July. We asked General Looney to look at an opportunity to bring people into the UAV world right out of undergraduate pilot training. We don’t know yet how we will do that. We’re still in the process of thinking do we define someone from a track, a bomber track, fighter track, other, and then send them through lead-in and then send them to the UAV world for two years and then back? That’s likely how it will go, but we’re waiting to see the details of that.

I’ve also asked the A1 to assign a specific AFSC to UAV operators and sensor operators so they can have a primary and a secondary AFSC that captures the notion of operating UAVs.

This weapon school idea is long overdue. For those of you that haven’t had a chance to look at it, the MQ9, the Reaper, carries a load equal to an F-16 except it can stay out a lot longer than an unrefueled F-16. What’s beyond the Reaper? What’s beyond an airplane like that? What looks like an unmanned combat aerial vehicle that’s as big as an F-16 or an F-18 or an F-15 that can stay airborne over a set of targets 10, 11, or 12 hours unrefueled, and operate in very dense and very high threat environments.

So to stand up a weapon school for UAVs by July. In fact I had a chance to talk to the Commandant of the Weapons School this morning and asked him how that was going. Canine, Scott Kinsbader said, sir, it’s going really well, we’re going to make it. I said good. Since we asked you to do it and have it by July, it would be good if you actually do it by July. [Laughter.]

But he’s pretty enthused about that also, because he also brought up the notion that this is not just about Predators and Reapers. This is about ten years from now and how do we set the condition of a community to be able to think like a weapons officer inside another MDS. This one just happens to be unmanned.

Next.

So I would offer to you as we look at organize, train and equip, and we look at the world that will be a bit of a challenge tomorrow, and we look at how to connect these dots and how to match strategy to task, how to match a vision to programs, and how to match programs to deliveries, I would offer we’re past refusal speed on this.

In the redefining, in the remilitarizing, in the reinstilling of the nation that we fly, fight and win in three domains, and looking at the opportunities to get at cross-domain dominance, we’re way past refusal speed. We’re committed to this. This is the flight path that we’re on.

Let me talk a little bit about transformation. That’s a word that means a lot to a variety of different people. Some positive, some negative. It’s almost like the word quality. Quality has a certain quality, unless it is your quality journey which I’m glad we’ve declared victory on and moved on to other things.

But transformation sometimes means different things to different folks. But in my notion, transformation is an enduring activity. It’s not something that’s an end state. It’s something that has to continue over and over and over. We have to think about how to improve, how to learn, how to adapt. We have to think about how not to make the same mistakes. And we have to continue to look for an edge in this business of air, space and cyberspace. We have to learn from those experiences. We have to pipe those lessons learned into the corporate process. We have to pipe those lessons learned into the programmatic process. So a lesson learned in combat, in today’s combat, doesn’t necessarily go in a binder on a shelf down at Air University Library for someone to come look at in 10 or 15 years. It is something that actually goes into the programmatic corporate process and we match money against a challenge and we actually address the deficiency.

So how do we learn from that? How do we adapt? How do we bring new technologies on board in a timeline that matters? How do we quickly roll technologies into our systems, whether they’re space, emerging cyberspace, or air? And how do we strengthen all of this relative to our ability to deliver combat power for the nation as a member of a joint team alongside a land component, a maritime component, or special operations?

So I would offer we’re past refusal speed. There’s no stopping on the redefining of American air power now because we’re into the new century. We’re into a generational struggle against militant extremism while we have to face the challenges out ahead of us.

Next.

I want you to look at this picture for a minute. The words that Mitchell wrote I think no one in here could dispute. Countries that go into an armed contest with the equivalent methods of a former war normally don’t do very well. Victory comes to the country which has made an estimate on the equipment and methods and things ahead. But in the picture you use there with the airplane, with that Martin bomber, underneath the number one engine there is Mitchell standing there with a fellow named Pershing. This picture was taken in July 1921 before Mitchell began to sink the ships. Pershing became Chief of Staff of the United States Army about a week or ten days before this picture was taken, but because of his association with Mitchell he knew that something big was about to occur operating out of what we now call Langley.

So less than two weeks into his tenure as the Chief, Pershing took the night steamer down from Washington to Norfolk and spent a day with Mitchell talking about what was about to happen out over the Virginia Capes when these airplanes began to drop bombs and sink ships. Because I believe in Pershing’s mind and I believe in Mitchell’s mind from what I can read, they see the dawning of a new set of opportunities. They see air power progressing from 1916-1917 into something that manifests range and payload that you can deliver decisive effects against ships which were thought at the time, as y’all remember, to be unsinkable.

So this is a fascinating picture not only because of the uniforms that these guys wear, standing under that Martin bomber. But two weeks after Pershing takes over he feels a need to travel to spend some time with Mitchell prior to the events that forever change the notion of aircraft and ships.

I think as we look ahead there are daunting opportunities and there are challenges ahead that were not much different than 1921. There are things out there that we don’t know yet. And we will be surprised if we don’t think about this stuff. There are opportunities out there ahead of us that we don’t understand yet. But if we can focus on this Air Force with our mission, simply stated, if you’ll give me the next slide, the mission is to fly and fight. I don’t think we need to forget that. To me that’s pretty simple. Whether it’s a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, whether it is a UAV operating from Las Vegas over Afghanistan or Iraq delivering decisive effects day and night, whether it is our new cyberspace activities as we develop squadrons and groups and wings within that domain. We fly and we fight to win our country’s wars.

It shouldn’t be lost, some of you have heard me say this, that I chose a print here that shows a couple of B-24s coming off a target called Poieste. Late summer, 1943. To think through the notion of flying and fighting, imagine what it must have been like to take a B-24 off of North Africa and Bin Gazi, fly it across the Mediterranean, up the Adriatic, across the Balkans to strike at that time the most heavily defended target in occupied Europe. The most heavily defended target that anybody had flown against at the time was Poieste. 176 B-24s took off. After it was all over the next day, 30 could fly. Over 1700 Distinguished Flying Crosses; five Medals of Honor; more than any other single mission in World War II. But what’s more important, 420 Purple Hearts. One mission against Poieste.

I think that manifests the soul of the American Air Force. It is about range, it is about payload, and nowadays it is about cross-domain dominance and being able to present to the decisionmakers either as a combatant commander or the Secretary of Defense options across air, space and cyberspace.

That’s the nub of the White Paper and of the initiatives that we bend under organize, train and equip. And one more time, we are past refusal speed on looking at redefining this to encapsulate cyberspace, space and air, in a much different way than we have in the past to address these challenges.

So let me end with a bit of a touch on the Airman’s Creed. I want to show you this. Some of you may have seen it. If you have, I know you’ll enjoy it again. But I’ll bet you, most of you haven’t.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Rod McKinley with General Looney’s folks at Air Training Command built this and I think you’ll be as touched and moved by this as I am every time I’ve seen it. Then after that if we’ve got time, Mike -- We don’t? Okay, never mind. Let’s look at the video.

[Video shown.]

[Applause.]

Good stuff.

Mike, Bob, senior leaders, fellow airmen, thank you for the opportunity to spend a little time with you. Thanks for the opportunity to share some thoughts, especially about something as important as our future. For our attaches and our corporate sponsors, thank you for being here and making this an event that is worth attending across so many levels.

So guys thanks, God bless you. Mike, thanks again.

[Applause.]

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