General T. Michael Moseley
Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force
Air Warfare Symposium
Lake Buena Vista, Florida
February 2, 2006

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General Moseley: Thanks for the opportunity to be here with y'all today. It's an honor. It's an honor to look out on a crowd like this and see mentors and friends. It's an honor to be here with folks from Central Florida, the ROTC Detachment. It's an honor to be here with the wonderful, wonderful people of the Air Force Association who have never failed the active Air Force, the Total Force, have never failed any of the endeavors that the United States Air Force is involved in. So it's just great to be here.

I would like to chat with you about what this conference is about and what the core discussions are about today and that's this notion of interdependence. But let me talk to you about that from my perspective of what does that mean relative to the contributions of an air and space force? That's how I'd like to address some comments with you, and I'm looking forward to your questions.

A lot's happened since we were together six months ago. A lot of things have gone on. We've had some interesting challenges on the Gulf Coast with bad weather; we've had some interesting challenges in South Central Asia with some earthquakes; we're still fighting in Afghanistan; we're still fighting in Iraq; doing business in the Horn of Africa; doing business in the Pacific. We've still got 700,000 plus of the finest Americans on the face of the earth involved in activities with the United States Air Force. But one of the best things that's happened to us over the last six months is we now have Secretary Michael W. Wynne on board. Secretary Wynne and his wife Barbara represent everything that we would want in a Secretary and a First Lady. For Jenny and I, it's a particular honor to be able to serve alongside both of you, to represent this great Air Force and the city of Washington at every opportunity that we can be together. Sir, thank you for your leadership, and thank you for taking this on and being a part of not just this crowd, but of the 710,000 Airmen out there—Guardsmen, Reservists, civilians, active—that are doing the Lord's work today in defense of this great country.

Secretary Wynne took this job at exactly the right time. We're fighting a global war, a real global war. We're focusing on developing more expeditionary notions of Airmen and more expeditionary notions of presentation of forces. We're in the business, each and every one of us in this room, of looking for ways to better take care of our folks, to better develop Airmen and to better prepare them for this expeditionary world and this Long War on terrorism. And we're in the middle of an interesting set of challenges with the recapitalization of the oldest inventory in our service's history.

We're blessed to have Secretary Wynne on board with us. He's got the right credentials to do this. He is a graduate of a service academy. It happens to be a different one. He was an Air Force officer, his brother was an Air Force officer. He's got a technical background and he knows more about acquisition and technology and the world of Washington and the Pentagon than anybody alive, so we can all rest assured that we have the right Secretary on board at the right time in our service's history.

Between Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), a hurricane or two, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), hearing prep and hearings, a new budget, executing an old budget, preparing a new budget, oh and by the way, righting this War on Terrorism, your senior Air Force leadership has been pedaling pretty fast. As I look out here on this front row, we just spent two days locked up at Maxwell Air Force Base to talk about these very things alongside Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray. We spent two straight days talking about the things that matter to our folks; talking about the things that matter in this joint and interdependent world we live in with coalition partners and joint partners, and we spent two days wrestling with the notions of recapitalization and modernizing this country's asymmetric advantage which is the United States Air Force.

So [Air Force Association (AFA) Executive Director] Don Peterson, [AFA Chairman of the Board] Pat Condon and [AFA National President] Bob Largent, let me just say thanks again for putting this together and the opportunity to share a few thoughts. You guys have done an awesome job and having it here in Central Florida is a real treat. There are probably some of us in this room that don't know when you land out there at that airfield you've actually just landed at McCoy Air Force Base; or in General Joe Ashey's case, McCoy Field. [Laughter]

Chief Murray, Godspeed to you and Sherry. As the Chief of a service and as a member of the Joint Chiefs, there's no better partner to have than you in this endeavor as you represent the enlisted men and women and the officers and the civilians of this great Air Force. This military body has never been stronger because of you and your efforts, and your legacy will continue for a long time. Thank you, and we all wish you the best. [Applause]

There's one other person here I would like to recognize too. This was his last Corona. It won't be his last Air Force Association get-together, but it may be wearing a uniform on the front row, and that's [Air Force Space Command Commander] General Lance W. Lord.

Lance, you've been a mentor, a friend, a brother, to all of us. You've taught us so much about a medium and a domain that is so critical to everything that we do. But beyond that you've been commander of numbered air forces, you've been a teacher, you've been an educator, you've been a trainer, you've been an operator, you've done all of this and you've done it with such dignity and class the Air Force is also a better place just because of you. So my friend, we all wish you the best, you and Becky. Thank you for being a part of this front row, for keeping all of us straight. Thank you for teaching us how to think about space and how to orchestrate space and how to bring space to bear across the strategic and operational and tactical boundary, and to be able to bring whatever it is we need from orbit into a cockpit or onto the surface so we can do our business better. So my friend, we wish you and Becky the best and Godspeed to you. [Applause]

Let me chat a little bit about this notion of interdependence. What does an Air Force bring to this fight? What's different about an Air Force or an Army or a Navy? Because I think as we look at QDR and I think as we look at BRAC and I think as we look at budgets and I think as we look at all of these things it's useful to cage us back to true north every once in a while and just ask the question, “what does an air and space force do? What makes it so unique? What makes it the asymmetric advantage for this great country?”

Let me start with a little example. Sixty-two years ago today a great example of the attributes of then just air power I think are instructive for us. In late January 1944, allied leaders were able to conduct some negotiations with Russia to be able to get access to four airfields in western Russia, in Kiev and inside the Ukraine. The reason was because the mighty 8th Air Force and the 15th Air Force had pounded German industry to the extent that the Germans had begun to move key industrial sectors further east in an attempt to get them out of range of the B-24s and the B-17s.

But after the approval of the use of these airfields, on the 2nd of February 1944, the mighty 8th and the 15th launched strikes out of Italy and out of East Anglia against those key industrial targets, much further east than we had been able to strike in the past and by using those four airfields brought all targets in Germany within range of Army air forces.

Remember, the reason this happened was because the mighty 8th and the 15th Bomber Command had pounded this war-sustaining industrial base to the extent that the Germans couldn't sustain themselves with the status quo and they had to do something different. So in this game of strategic dislocating activities, what other military arm was able to strike into the heart of Germany in 1944 prior to the invasion other than the mighty 8th and the 15th?

In doing this, it provided no safe haven for any of the activities of the Third Reich. Rail yards, factories, depots, oil refineries, transportation nodes; all struck and struck repeatedly.

What's even more instructive in the business of this shuttle bombing was the notion of flying fighters alongside the B-17s and the B-24s to provide that force protection. Imagine the frustration of those expert fighter pilots of the Luftwaffe when they realized that the B-17s did not turn around and head west or that the B-24s didn't turn around and head south, but they continued east and alongside them were squadrons of P-51s with the necessary drop tanks that provided them the range to provide the force protection for the bombers.

Also, in an interesting historic note that is relative to the culture of this great Air Force, General Ira Eaker actually led that first raid of 129 B-17s launching out of the 15th from Italy.

So this Operation Frantic, as it was called, demonstrated again to the world that the speed, the range, the flexibility and the lethality of air power holds target sets at risk and today is functional on a global scale.

But there's another chapter to this. In order to sustain these operations, the airfields had to be resupplied and the only route to resupply those airfields in the Ukraine was by air. So the Air Transport Commands of the 8th and 15th flew round-trip missions between Tehran in Iran to the bases near Kiev to provide the necessary fuel, munitions and sustainment items, which has manifested itself in Afghanistan again with Air Mobility Commands assets being able today to fly every single war-sustaining item into the Afghan campaign by air.

So what I think this story brings out is the inherent uniqueness of air, and now air and space, power. Air power is not limited by oceans, by shorelines, by shallow water. It's not limited by mountains or mountain passes or rivers, shallow or deep. It's not limited even by distance. The uniqueness and the unique contribution in this world of interdependence that we're talking about is reflected by air and space power in the very nature of what it brings, in the notion of delivering sovereign options, or in the notion of holding a global set of activities or targets at risk.

In fact, as we look to the future, as we recapitalize this great Air Force, the only thing that really limits us in this is our own imagination and our willingness to adapt and exploit emerging technologies.

From the beginning of powered flight and from the beginning of the space program, we've known that these are unique mediums. Land components, maritime components, and air and space components each have different missions in this world of interdependence and joint and coalition warfare. Let me share how I have come to think about this.

The United States Army is the dominant force in land warfare. It is the finest army ever fielded. It is the most capable army ever fielded or in fact ever imagined. It is without peer. But it is a land component activity. Its job is to seize and hold terrain.

The United States Navy is the finest naval force ever fielded. Our Navy—and notice I say our Army and our Navy—has spent 200 years establishing dominance of international waters in the maritime domain. There is no peer to the United States Navy, whether they are submarines, surface combatants or aviators operating off of Nimitz Class carriers. But the Navy is also a single domain activity in the fact that it is responsible for conduct of operations on the high seas.

Your Air Force is different. While the Army is responsible for the land domain and the Navy is responsible for a maritime domain, your Air Force is responsible for two domains—air and space. They are inherently different, but they are a continuum in a spectrum of activities from one centimeter off the surface to geosynchronous orbit. That's what we contribute. We contribute to this interdependent joint and coalition fight.

The early air and space pioneers knew this. Billy Mitchell, Frank Andrews, Hap Arnold, Bernie Schriever, Joe Ashey [Laughter] … They all understood the freedoms that this medium allows a joint force commander and what these capabilities bring to the table. These pioneers realized from the moment you take flight things are different. From the moment you break the surface of the earth and you can look down on activities, you know you are no longer limited by shallow water, shorelines, water, mountains, rivers… The characteristics of air and space power are constant. Vantage, you can see, you can assess. Speed, range, adaptability, flexibility, agility, percussion, precision, lethality…

So make no mistake, from the first flight that a lieutenant takes in a trainer or from the first opportunity one of our space operators has to operate a spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit and to be able to see the earth and to be able to look at this from the perspective of an Airman, it fundamentally alters your approach to how you contribute to warfare in the joint and coalition setting.

These same attributes of an air and space force let a joint commander simultaneously strike across strategic and operational and tactical boundaries. Think in terms of B-17s flying from East Anglia and Fogia in Italy and striking targets so far deep into the Third Reich that they had to continue into Russia. This is way before the invasion in Normandy. But the Royal Air Force and the combined bomber offensive, to be able to strike targets in the homeland of your opponent before any land component is brought to bear, is one of the outcomes of being able to capitalize on this unique nature of air and space power.

On a single mission a joint force commander can task his air component commander to strike war-sustaining infrastructure at global ranges. Petroleum, power, lines of communication… To conduct simultaneous, precise, time-sensitive targeting on emerging targets; to strike fielded forces; to strike command centers; to strike key leadership; to be able to interdict the movement of troops and supplies; to be able to provide close air support all the while conducting inter- and intratheater lift and refueling and maintaining that Global Vigilance from orbit and from air-breathing systems.

Now in this world of striking platforms we can do a lot of this off of a single platform. Think of the difference between a B-17 and a B-2 where you fly the B-17 in groups of hundreds to be able to strike city block-size targets. Now you can fly a B-2 from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, to targets around Kabul and Kandahar, 42.5 hour missions, and drop the weapons, and the average miss distance of the weapons, whether they are 2,000-pounders or 500-pounders, is inside the length of the weapon. And you can do that over and over and over and over again because of the unique nature of air and space power.

In Tuesday's State of the Union Address, President Bush talked quite a bit about the War on Terrorism. He gave great examples of the sacrifices and courage of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and Airmen. Seeing Tech Sergeant Jamie Dana up on the upper dais of the House Chamber with her military working dog Rex, Tattoo E110, filled me with an incredible amount of pride knowing what that young lady has gone through and where that young lady is now. She personifies what all of us hold dear in this profession of arms and she is the representation of American Airmen today out there in harm's way doing what we do best.

But with her as a baseline, how do we prepare Airmen better in the future and how do we think about this War on Terrorism and how do we prepare ourselves to be more expeditionary and to be more lethal and to be more capable and to contribute in this joint and coalition fight and to contribute to this notion of interdependence?

We've got an interesting set of lessons learned. A lot of you have heard me say this. We've been fighting for 15 years. From the time the first wing deployed into the eastern province of Saudi Arabia in August of 1990 and hostilities began in January of 1991, the United States Air Force, the Total Force, has been fighting in the Middle East for 15 years. Twelve years in no-fly zones, Bosnia, Kosovo, then Afghanistan, then Iraq. In Afghanistan, as of today, we've been fighting solid there for 1,579 days—that's seven months longer than World War II.

So with this experience, what have we come away with on how to better prepare our people, and how to better think about joint interdependence, and how to think about what's required for the future?

When folks who would do us harm wake up every morning and they begin to think through the notions and options of attacking or causing harm to American citizens or American property or allied or coalition people or hardware, I wonder what it feels like to know that the first set of activities against them in reprisal for those activities will likely be delivered by the United States Air Force? How much fear does that put in the heart of an opponent to know that on a global scale the United States Air Force from orbit and from air-breathing systems can locate targets on a global scale, can locate activities or individuals on a global scale, and can hold those targets or those individuals or those activities at risk or strike them with the lethality of a weapon that detonates with the precision of less than the length of a weapon, and that we can command and control this and we can assess the effect real-time?

It must be a bit discouraging in this world of dissuasion and deterrence to know that if you act against the United States or its interests or its coalition partners, the United States Air Force will find you and strike you and there is nothing you can do about it. It kind of reminds you of that Harry Callahan line: “you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky?”

So how do I see this in terms of the contributions of an Air Force? I see this in a set of overlapping notions of Global Vigilance, Global strike, Global Mobility. I see this as a set of overlapping opportunities from space, from air, and on the surface. I think about activities that range from strategic attack to time-sensitive targets to persistent Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaissance (ISR) to an unblinking eye, to be able to better find and fix targets and to better be able to persist on a global scale.

Together, Global Strike, Global Mobility, Global ISR or Global Vigilance define the role of an air force. The role of an air force in today's world, I suggest to you, is air and space power as it contributes to this notion of interdependence. To hold any place on the surface of the planet at risk is an inherently tailored deterrence for the leadership of this country. We may never know what has not happened because of this capability. We will never know what has not happened because of the capabilities of the B-2 and the tanker force to get the B-2 to targets. We may never know what has not happened over the course of the last 25 or 30 years because we've had the F-15C Eagle, which is the only fighter in the history of combat aviation that has had a 104 to 0 kill ratio. We don't know what's not happened because of the men and women of the United States Air Force and what we bring to this joint and coalition fight.

So how can we do things slightly different? I believe we can become much more expeditionary. I believe we can look for ways to become more interdependent with our joint and coalition partners. I believe there are ways to look at increasing the percentages of people in the United States Air Force that do deploy. I believe that every one of us should be a Geneva Convention card-carrying, deployable Airman trained and ready to go to any location on the surface of the earth and operate.

Out of Corona we discussed extending basic military training out to 8.5 weeks to include more training in expeditionary skills and small arms, in emergency medical skills, etc., to continue to better prepare our force for these expeditionary operations. We've also looked at including in the Senior NCO Academies, Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) and Air War College beginning next year the requirement for some language familiarization and more focus on regional skills. For all of you out there that will go to the Senior NCO Academy, ACSC or Air War College next year, you'll have an opportunity to take one of four languages. It will not be an option. And you will enjoy it. [Laughter] It will be either French because of Africa and sub-Saharan Africa; it will be Spanish because of Central and South America; and it will be Arabic or Chinese for the obvious reasons. There will be a test afterwards and you will be held accountable.

We can become more streamlined in our command and control function. We can look at these warfighting headquarters in a slightly different way. We can look at the notions of dual-hatting the existing command structures with representations in the joint world and flatten the curve on being able to respond to contingencies in a much faster manner. And we can look at better ways to work within the joint world and within the coalition world as far as composite force training and sharing of information and command and control. To look at the ranges in Alaska and the ranges in Nevada as one expansive Red Flag range that just happens to be conducted in Alaska or happens to be conducted in Nevada is the direction that we're taking.

And when we look at strategic partnering and coalition partnerships in the future, two opportunities are presenting themselves to me in a very clear manner. One is the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. Not any different than the F-16 and the coalition benefits that we've derived from our partners flying the same fighter—the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will open those same doors for us.

The other one is an emerging capability that we're just beginning to think about which is the Light Cargo Aircraft. To be able to partner with coalition members not just with fighters but with mobility assets to be able to conduct more robust intratheater lift, address humanitarian issues or challenges, disaster relief challenges, seems to be another set of wonderful opportunities to be able to partner alongside folks.

In conclusion, the success of this United States Air Force and America's air and space power hinges, I believe, on one critical node and that's our people. That's how I see the future of this Air Force because we have the finest people in the world that wear this uniform. They are absolutely the most flexible and adaptive and professional and lethal of any group of people that have worn this uniform in the history of this country or any other military's uniform in the history of this country.

As we look at the future, as we get through BRACs and QDRs, and as we get through '06 budget executions and '07 budgets and '08 budgets and all of the things that happen in Washington I think we should again cage ourselves back to true north on what an air force does, what an air force contributes, and what makes up an air force.

Whether it's flying a B-17 from the mighty 8th from East Anglia to Russia; or a B-2 from Whiteman Air Force Base to Kabul and Kandahar; instead of crossing over countries now we're crossing over continents and oceans and we're maintaining this Global Vigilance from geosynchronous orbit. And instead of hitting city blocks with ordnance we're hitting single vehicles, single buildings, into four feet or five feet circular error averages, and that's because of our people and the technological skills that they bring, and because of the attributes of warfighting that will never change that they manifest themselves daily at Balad and at Bagram and at Kandahar and Al Nasariyah.

That warfighting ethos that is so powerful for us, as personified by Tech Sergeant Dana. The willingness to go to Schweinfurt the second time, or the willingness to go to Tokyo the second time, or to Rabul or Bougainvillea or Belgrade or Baghdad. This courage, this resourcefulness, this adaptability and lethality is what makes this Air Force so great. We do have the greatest people in the world, we do have the greatest Airmen. We have the greatest warriors that the world has ever seen.

So thank you again for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you about how I see the contribution of an air and space force in this business of interdependence.

As for the Air Force Association, you guys are awesome. You've always been at 9,000 feet flying abreast, combat spread, master arm on with the radar contact with your sortie, and it's a pleasure and an honor to be able to be here with y'all today with the men and women of the United States Air Force, the retired community and the kiddos from Central Florida out here.

May God bless this great country, and may God bless our men and women in harm's way—Soldiers, Sailors Marines, Coast Guardsmen and Airmen—and may God bless this great United States Air Force.

Thank you.

Q: When our U.S. ground forces are drawn down in Iraq as is expected, the Air Force will be conducting missions there for some time. For fire support, who will call in airstrikes? U.S. personnel embedded with Iraqi Security Forces? Or Iraqi forces? Where will our decision process be made?

General Moseley: I don't know. [Laughter] No, let me chat about that. That's an important question and that's a good question.

Who would have thought we would have been in no-fly zones for 12 years? Who would have thought after March or so of 1991 General Charles A. Horner would have kept us all out there for 12 straight years, missing Christmas after Christmas and anniversary after anniversary, engendering those great notions of domestic tranquility? [Laughter]

I don't know. We've been talking about this in the tank. The simplicity of this would be Air Force Enlisted Terminal Attack Controllers (ETACs), Air Force Combat Controllers, and the way we've done this in Afghanistan and the way we've done this in the early parts of Iraq and the way we do this in other areas. But I'm not sure that will give us the depth and the robustness to be able to do this and still maintain the global tasking. So there's other notions about Army and Marine partnership in this with Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs). There's other notions about training specific units within the Iraqi military to do this. That takes you down a whole set of interesting questions.

To be real honest, I don't know how we're going to do this. We’ve wrestled with this a little bit. We've got several sets of options. But I think at the end of the day the United States Air Force alongside aviators, some aviators from the Army and aviators from the Navy and Marine Corps, will be involved in this for a long time. I don't know that it will be 12 years, but I think air and space power will be involved in this business for a while and it's going to be one of the challenges we're going to have to wrestle with.

Q: You've talked about ISR. Obviously it’s one of the important missions of our Air Force. While you're the Chief, what do you hope to achieve in improving ISR, both manned and unmanned, traditional and non-traditional roles, in making it responsive to the commander?

General Moseley: That's another great question. I think we need to move into the world of persistent sensors as much as we can. It is comfortable to have a U-2 because we've always had a U-2. Kelly Johnson built that thing in the '50s and we've had it around since then and we're all kind of wedded to it. But remember the limit of the U-2 is not the sensors. The limit of the U-2 is the human. We put a kid in a diaper, put them in a space suit, put them in the airplane, launch them out there, and after about 11 hours we've got to bring them back and at times decompress them. So the human's the limit in that platform.

Global Hawk doesn't have a human in it. The chip in the Global Hawk doesn't have to be fed or decompressed or put in a space suit or a diaper. The chip doesn't care. You can keep the Global Hawk over the targets for 22 or 23 or 24 hours. So the human in this air-breathing business becomes the limit.

So how do we look at an unblinking eye? How do we look at moving the ball on providing persistent, ranged, vantaged ISR in a joint setting and in a command and control system so that we get that unblinking eye? And how do we capture the capabilities that we have on orbit so we have a continuum of ISR capabilities anywhere on the surface from orbital systems and air systems and how do we orchestrate that and how do we pipe that into a command and control system so that an intel officer of the future can look at these things?

It's not good enough to just capture the object. I know that I will get no disagreement in this crowd to say that of the million pixels that come through the pipe, not every pixel has equal value. So how do we train a new generation, or how do we evolve and improve and train a new generation of intel officers in the United States Air Force, to be much more savvy about this business?

We've talked about and we've submitted a nomination to turn a lieutenant general into the A2 of the Air Force to be able to focus a little bit more robustly on Air Force intel to do the other part of this kill chain business. To be able not just to launch the sensor out, to come back with the pixel, but to have the assessment in the command and control piece of this in a much more robust manner.

I would ask this question in answer to the original question. Imagine how we would look at a data wall with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of seemingly unrelated bits of data and have an intelligence function that can connect those dots and correlate that data to be able to find activities or individuals anywhere on the surface of the earth and be able to do that with the persistence of an unblinking eye from orbit and from these air-breathing systems.

This ISR business is a big deal with me. If you took a snapshot in time in February 2006, we have the killing piece down pretty good. We're moving the killing piece into the modern world. As far as being able to drop the satellite-guided weapon and to kill something, we're doing a pretty good job of that.

The finding piece is becoming more of a challenge in an extended Global War on Terrorism. How do you do this in partnership with your coalition partners? How do you do this to find activities against hostiles that will do you harm inside a country that you're not at war with? And how do you do that and immediately share that information with a coalition partner? To me that's an issue of orbital systems, air-breathing systems, and a command and control net and a completely different notion of United States Air Force intelligence as far as capturing, assessing, analyzing and transmitting these seemingly unrelated bits of data. So this is a big deal.

The killing piece we've about got right. With the finding piece and the assessing piece, I believe we've got lots of room for improvement, and that takes us to this notion of these unmanned systems and this persistence.

Q: Regarding the drawdown of our force, our manpower. How do you see that working over the next five or six years and do you think we'll run into challenges like Reductions In Force (RIFs) or force separations?

General Moseley: That's another great question. Let me answer it this way, though. As we look at streamlining the warfighting headquarters and we look at streamlining the MAJCOM headquarters and we look at fighting a Global War on Terrorism and being able to get at this notion of what an air and space power does, and to be able to assess this and move this information quicker, an interesting question is, “do we have the right structure and do we have an overhead that is not necessarily an impediment, but not value-added in being able to move that information?”

When we look at joint participation and coalition participation and warfighting headquarters and management overhead, do we have the right structure? I suggest we're heavy in that. I suggest with the 15 years of combat experience that this leads us to an opportunity to be smaller.

Forty thousand active duty equivalents is not a bad number when you consider that we have a large percentage of the Total Force that has not deployed. Remember, we've been fighting in Afghanistan longer than World War II. If we've got folks in the Air Force that haven't deployed and we've been fighting longer than World War II who are they? [Laughter]

So I'm not so concerned about the number of 40,000 equivalents across the active, Guard and Reserve. I'm more concerned about streamlining the warfighting headquarters and the presentation of air and space power to a theater and the ability to locate and the ability to strike and to command and control and assess this activity on a global scale. I think we can do that.

As we've talked about the 40,000 people I'll tell you, Secretary Wynne and I are very sensitive to taking care of these great people and very sensitive to being up front as we look at how to go down this road and how to do this, and to be able to look at the sets of options and the cascading effects of this and the training pipeline and to understand the second and third order effects of this.

I've got to tell y'all, this is not our first rodeo in this business. When you think about 1989 and 1990, and 1991, we came off of 40 percent of the United States Air Force in that two- or three-year period. We're not talking 40 percent. We're talking seven or eight percent. We came off of 326 to 279 general officers in one assignment cycle.

The other thing I'll tell you is when we start this, the first set of people that are going to go are going to be 30-plus general officers because we're not going to start this at the bottom of the pyramid, we're going to start this at the top of the pyramid.

So there's lots to be learned from what happened to us in 1989, 1990 and 1991 about how to do this right and how to do this with dignity and how to do this understanding that every one of the 710,000 people in this United States Air Force has value and has dignity and we owe it to them to be able to think this thing through.

But I would say the reason we're doing this is because the efficiencies and effectiveness that we have seen with this combat business and with this joint business and the streamlining business can take us to these numbers.

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