Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray
Command Chief Master Sergeants Forum
Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition 2005
September 12, 2005
AFA Executive Director Donald L. Peterson: Welcome, we're delighted to have everyone here this afternoon for a great forum. The focus in this session will be on our Command Chief Master Sergeants throughout the Air Force and led by our Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Gerald R. Murray.
It's a delight to have this great team up in front of us. It's a great part of our leadership of our Air Force and we're privileged to have the wonderful talent, skill, and most of all, the dedication and commitment of the men and women who are leading our Airmen across the many areas and challenges they face every day.
As I said, our panel is going to be moderated by CMSAF Murray, who represents the highest enlisted level of our leadership, and as such he provides the direction for our enlisted corps and represents their interests as appropriate to our American public and to those in all levels of the government. He serves as a personal advisor to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of our Air Force on all issues regarding the welfare, the readiness, morale, the proper utilization and the progress of our enlisted force.
Chief Murray is the 14th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force appointed to this highest non-commissioned officer position. Chief Murray, over to you… [Applause]
CMSAF Murray: Thank you very much, General Peterson. Sir, what a pleasure it is to be with you again and this great Association, and to be able to speak to what this Association means to our Air Force, which continues to maintain the greatest air and space power in the world.
It is a pleasure for us to be with each and every one of you, to have you here with us from general officers to the youngest Airman, from those of our sister services, and also foreign services that I have seen here, and to see an audience that takes an interest in our enlisted force. Especially from those of you who are officers and civilians or in other services; we greatly appreciate that.
I see that we have General Norton A. Schwartz here, and I said that he'd be with us and what a pleasure it is. I also had a chance to talk with Acting Secretary of the Air Force Pete Geren and with General T. Michael Moseley, who said they would rather be here than what they're doing right now—they're doing a press conference right now across the hall. But we do appreciate that for each of you that are here.
I'm going to ask each member here to introduce themselves briefly, but I wanted to offer some opening comments about the responsibility that we have.
There are 13 chief master sergeants that represent all major commands, DRUs, FOAs—to include the Total Force of the Air National Guard and our Air Force Reserve Comman—that are here on the stage with me. Some of the other chiefs of the major commands, DRUs and FOAs are out in the front of the audience here.
As I say, along with my position we represent every enlisted Airman in the United States and the Reserve and National Guard—about 440,000 enlisted men and women today that are serving around the globe.
Along with that, our leadership positions that we hold today are those of general leadership that we provide over our enlisted force and of course we do that with, in the active force, one percent of our fellow chief master sergeants, and about two percent of the chief master sergeants that make up our Guard and our Reserve. From those that I think have the most important jobs in our Air Force, and that's out on the flight lines and the shops and the sections and out there in the field leading our Airmen every day, and those that clearly are providing operational and strategic focus of leadership that comes throughout our corps.
I must say, what an incredible force that we represent today, as we see a force that is engaged in combat. I listened to Secretary Geren as he laid out just what our Airmen are involved with today globally, fighting the war, deployed—about 30,000 of our Airmen deployed. And I do appreciate and I think it is important for all of us to take away from what he presented—64 percent of our force today is engaged 24/7 in projecting operations that sustain the military and national defense force from communications to the transportation that is provided through our strategic and tactical airlift, to communications, intelligence, and that's something that is often not picked up about this great force that we have today. Sixty-four percent.
So if you peel off of that, then the number that are in the pipeline for training, the number that are PCSing and in transition in our Air Force, you take the 30,000 that we have deployed around the world today, and that doesn't leave a lot of this Air Force that's left that is not touched in some way in operations, and those that are not are conducting training to maintain the readiness of our forces today.
Additionally, we surged immediately to 6,400 of our Air Force, and as the Secretary highlighted, 8,000 of our Air National Guard and Reserve that are there in the Gulf States today. They have opened new bases, provided air traffic, saved lives and helping to rebuild the devastation that's in three States there today. What an incredible force and how proud we are to be able to represent such a force today.
It's truly a historic time that we serve in, certainly one with many, many issues and that's why we look forward to this opportunity in the next hour to be able to engage with you.
One of the most important things that we do, and I tell Airmen this all the time as I go around the Air Force—and I travel this Air Force for about 220 to 230 days a year, engaging with everyone from our youngest Airman to our most senior officers, and also as I speak before our Congress—and I know that each one of us here will say the same thing. The most important thing that we do is to communicate, talk with Airmen, not just talk at them. We look forward to that opportunity to talk with you, to take feedback from you or questions that you may have of us here.
General Peterson laid out some of the rules of engagement, and as he said, I will be the moderator, the facilitator, of this time. As you come forward with your discussion or questions you may direct them to any of us on the panel including myself, but for the most part I will take any general questions you might have and address them to one or maybe more of our panelists. And as I highlighted also, if you don't want to do that then you can pass it to General Peterson, and he will bring it forward.
We look forward to the next hour and we encourage you to engage us, to let us have the opportunity to discuss how what we see and maybe what you see as some of the most important issues that we face today. And if you have a question or something we aren't able to speak to intelligently, we will take your name down and we'll get back to you as well with that.
With that, I'm going to ask each of the panel members to briefly introduce themselves. I'm going to begin here with Chief Kriete. I've asked each of our command chiefs to highlight a key issue that they feel strongly about or want to bring before you. Thank you.
Chief Master Sergeant Ronald G. Kriete: Thank you, Chief. I've got to echo a thank you to General Peterson and the Air Force Association for making this forum possible. This is great breaking grounds to educate each other in an open forum. It's a great honor to be here with the Chief and my fellow MAJCOM command chiefs.
We sit behind closed doors a lot and sometimes we agree to disagree on things and we work a lot of hard issues, but I guarantee you one thing that we do not disagree on is taking care of our most precious asset, and that's our Airmen. One of these young Airmen is going to have to replace us one day and we want to make it better for them and give them all the right training and equipment they need.
I've been in Space Command now for a little over three years. I never knew how I got here, but I grew up fixing airplanes and now I'm in Space Command, and I truly believe one day we will have a crew chief flying back and forth to something. I'm envious of the young Airmen coming in today. They may be one of them.
We have over 700 of our Airmen deployed today, a little over 200 of them in Katrina relief operations—the first time in Space Command's history that we ever deployed our helicopter units, some of our helicopter units, from our ICBM field and one from Vandenberg, to Columbus, Mississippi. That doesn't seem like much, but it’s the first time in Space Command's history that we’ve done that.
General Lance W. Lord and I had a chance to go visit them Friday, and they're doing absolutely terrific work for us. What a blend. You talk about a blended unit, putting them all together at one base and trying to figure out the operations and who's giving the orders.
We also went down to Keesler Air Force Base and deployed our security force down there. Our great security force members at Keesler were protecting that base while base members’ families evacuated. So we put our security force in there so they had an opportunity to take care of their families. We looked them in the eyeballs, and they were proud to be there. Any one of them, all of them volunteered.
The Ops/PersTempo in our command is the highest it's ever been with the ICBM field, the upgrades that we're doing, and people ask me all the time, well you haven't launched one lately. That's a good thing. But we still have to upgrade the system. Our Airmen are doing it proudly.
I call them the quiet professionals and they're doing tremendous work for us and I applaud each and every one of them.
I'm looking forward to each and every question that is presented to us.
CMSAF Murray: Richard Smith?
Chief Master Sergeant Richard Smith: Thank you, Chief. Thank you to AFA for having us here this week for this great conference.
I'm Chief Dick Smith. I'm the Command Chief of the Air National Guard. I've been in this position a little over a year now. Prior to me entering this position I was the true citizen Airman that our militia is comprised of. Seventy percent of our force, of the National Guard and the Reserves, are citizen soldiers and citizen Airmen that have another job, another vocation, and do this as a passion or a second job.
For my first 30-some years as a Guardsman I was also Senior Vice President of a bank, until about a year ago when I went full time as the Command Chief of your Air National Guard.
If I was sitting here two weeks ago I probably would have had different issues that I'd bring to you to talk about as far as the force development of our young Airmen, but as you all know, the National Guard—both Air and Army—have been heavily involved in Joint Task Force Katrina since August 29th. I returned last night from New Orleans and Gulfport where I saw magnificent work by our Americans, our Guardsmen, our active duty members, in a truly joint environment of active, Guard and Reserve, Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard. You name it, they're there.
My primary concern right now is the 5,000 members that we have deployed in the Air National Guard to primarily Mississippi and Louisiana, to our Guard members in those States who have lost everything. The caliber of people that we have who are Guardsmen who on one day lost their entire house, everything they owned, and were at Gulfport Airport opening up the runway the next day. I have 130 Airmen at the Gulfport CRTC that have lost everything. Right now that's my primary concern; taking care of those folks and their families.
The same in Louisiana at Belle Chase. The problem's even larger there. We haven't even made contact with all of our Airmen from the 159th Fighter Wing as the communication in Louisiana is very sporadic and in some cases non-existent as the water is everywhere.
But it's Guardsmen coming together, helping each other and helping the community. As I toured the food distribution centers in Mississippi, as the population drove through with Air Guardsmen and Army Guardsmen passing out water and diapers and food, it was, “thank you, Guard, thank you.” It was just awesome.
But in addition to those 5,000 Air Guardsmen that we have deployed, in addition to the rest of the Air Force, the Air National Guard piece of airlift to me is very significant, in fact huge. The Air National Guard has flown over 2,400 sorties to Mississippi and Louisiana, have hauled over 21,000 passengers, both in and out, and over 11,000 tons of cargo to support the effort. It's ongoing, but the morale is high with our folks.
We have three EMED clinics that are all Air National Guard setups. Two in Mississippi, one in Louisiana. Some of you may have seen Fox News on Friday night. They did four or five different live broadcasts that were four minutes long each for the new EMEDs concept that is deployed and now has replaced the civilian hospitals.
So what's on my agenda right now, the largest issue facing the Air National Guard obviously is Katrina. Taking care of the people in those two states and our Guardsmen that are proud to serve and have put their personal issues aside to go serve, what they were trained to do in defense of their country and in securing the population of our great United States.
I'll be happy to listen to your questions and help answer your questions as we go through this panel, and I'm certainly honored to be here. Thank you for having us in this forum.
CMSAF Murray: Chief Winsett?
Chief Master Sergeant Jackson A. Winsett: Good afternoon. I'm Chief Jack Winsett, the Command Chief for Air Force Reserve Command. Sir, I'll echo the sentiments of my peers and say thank you and thank the AFA for allowing us the opportunity to have this forum.
It's a pleasure to be with each of you, and as the other segment of your citizen Airmen. I have the distinct privilege of representing 60,000 men and women that are the enlisted force within the Reserve Command and it truly is a pleasure and a privilege.
As Chief Smith so eloquently stated, we too are involved in relief for Hurricane Katrina, but at the same time I also have about 3,300-plus Reserve personnel that have been mobilized and deployed in the fight on the global war on terrorism.
The majority of those persons were volunteers and, believe it or not, they actually left a civilian job where they were comfortable, with their families, but we asked them if they would do a particular mission for us and they volunteered. That's incredible. That's unbelievable. But that's the quality of persons that we have and that you have and that this country has in the men and women that are Air Force Reservists.
It's a pleasure to be with you. Again, I too look forward to your questions but I want to leave you with one thought … One of my largest desires is to ensure that there is a continuing education within the Air Force Reserve Command that follows the sentiments of the Air Force Association Conference. Development of our personnel is absolutely key and paramount in anything that we do. So that is my push within the Air Force Reserve Command.
I'm glad to be with you. I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
CMSAF Murray: Chief Popp?
Chief Master Sergeant David W. Popp: Good afternoon. I'm Chief Master Sergeant Dave Popp, and I have the honor and privilege to represent the CEOs—that is civilians, enlisted and officers—of Air Combat Command (ACC). Sir, thank you for inviting us. As my peers have said, it's really great to be here and to see so many enlisted people here in the audience. This is my fifth time to attend, and it's getting better every year. I'm looking forward to the agenda and hearing some of the other speakers that we have scheduled this week.
As the U.S. Air Force's combat air force lead for bombers, fighters and ISR, we're engaged all over the world in ACC. It's no surprise to any of you, but it's not only the global war on terrorism, ACC also has members involved in Joint Task Force Katrina.
I have a sit rep I just received on my blackberry earlier today from 1st Air Force, and that's our warfighting headquarters that's working with NORTHCOM from Chief Al Usser. Al is one of our guys that is a Total Force command chief. His coordinating efforts to make sure that we have the right people, the right supplies and the right resources is truly noteworthy.
Also I get a sit rep every day from the 4th Fighter Wing Command Chief, and he's down at Louis Armstrong Airport talking about everything that they're doing there to take care of not only our people and our troops, to make sure that we can get folks back to normal in that part of the world.
In ACC, General Keys recently joined us and he's laid out a strategic vision. As I speak to our groups around our command, I tell them you have to know the strings in order to pull the rope. You're probably saying, “well what is the rope?” In ACC we have a plan that talks about what we're going to do tomorrow and all the way out to 2025 dealing with transformation, recapitalization, our organization, most importantly our people, and how we're going to work the expeditionary Air Force. A challenge that I work every day is trying to make sure that our young senior Airmen and our NCOs are prepared to lead both at home station, because sometimes they're the left-behind leaders, and also leading those convoys and leading out there at Balad, Bagram, Baghdad and the other places that we are deployed to around the world.
So I, too, am looking forward to your questions, and once again, thank you AFA for allowing us to come here today. I'm ready to talk about the mission of ACC and the CEOs that we have in our great organization. Thank you.
CMSAF Murray: Chief McKinley?
Chief Master Sergeant Rodney J. McKinley: Good afternoon. I'm Chief Master Sergeant Rod McKinley. I'm very humbled to have this opportunity to represent the outstanding enlisted men and women of the Pacific Air Forces.
I've got to tell you that at this point in time in my career in our Air Force I've never been more proud to be called an Airman. I say that not because I'm a chief master sergeant, but it's because of the quality of the Airmen that we have out there in our Air Force today. And when I say “Airmen,” I'm talking about capital Airmen from Airman basic through four-star general and also the Total Force. Our Airmen are out there doing things that we've never dreamed about doing before. We're working on the flight line, doing aircraft maintenance on aged jets, but we're still maintaining FMC rates. Our security forces are going places all over the world and doing wonderful things. Our services personnel, they deploy and they keep the morale up at the deployed locations, and all the other AFSCs are doing wonderful things.
Our transporters, as you well know, are out there in convoys. Just recently they were driving buses and doing all the things at the local bases, but now they're out there doing convoys for the Army and they're manning machine guns and doing an outstanding job. And if you go ask the Soldiers, they probably prefer to have Airmen out there because they are so well trained and doing an outstanding job.
Not only are we doing an outstanding job, but we're doing it with a lot less people. This time last year we had 25,000 more enlisted people than what we have today and our tasking hasn't gone down. We're still doing the same amount of work, maybe even more, but we're doing it in an outstanding manner.
So if we want to talk about the health of the fleet of our Airmen, our health is very good. The morale is high. They're dedicated. They're out there working hard.
We have challenges ahead of us, challenges with jointness, new weapon systems, funding issues, but you can count on one thing. Our Airmen are there, they're going to be dedicated, they're going to get the job done.
I'm looking forward to your questions and very honored to be here today. Thank you.
CMSAF Murray: All right, ladies and gentlemen, the floor is yours.
Q: Today our society's faced with many problems such as sexual assault, suicide, religious intolerance and stress, both in the workplace and at home. For Chief Popp, sir, how is Air Combat Command working to resolve these tough social issues that our Airmen of today face?
Chief Popp: Thank you. That is a tough question. All the MAJCOMs and the Guard and Reserve, we all face that. It's a problem that society has and we also have in the Air Force.
Our approach within ACC is we've taken a good, hard look at our first term Airman center programs and how we indoctrinate our Airmen as they come into our force. We've also looked at our other NCO professional development course to focus on those things that help them be educated on what the rules are and what our standards of performance and behavior should be.
It's interesting that sometimes we find people that just say they didn't understand the rules. So that's been our approach, is to make sure people understand the rules, and then when someone breaks the rules, to take swift action and make sure it's not reoccurring.
We're starting to focus on this in basic training, and also in our PME programs. We just had a bottom-up review of our PME programs and we're looking at it there, too, so we can make sure that our ALS students, those senior Airmen going to staff sergeants, those technical sergeants going to master, and our senior NCOs are also in tune with what the stressors are in today's force.
That's what we're doing in ACC.
Chief Winsett: I can also say to you that from the Reserve side of the world, those same sentiments are being echoed, even though we don't have first term Airman centers, we operate under a scenario called an NCO leadership development and senior NCO leadership development program, along with the traditional ALS. Those same types of scenarios are being addressed there.
We don't sweep things under the rug. When we have a problem, we address it, we deal with it head on, and we take care of that problem.
Chief McKinley: I'll add a little bit more to that. I think it's about leadership. We send our young men and women to basic training. Basic training is outstanding. We teach them great things, we teach them all about leadership there and how to be good Airmen. We have Warrior Week. We say, “now you are Airmen.” We send them to tech school and we reinforce those things at tech school. Once they get to their first duty station it's upon us as leaders to make sure we reinforce those things they learn in basic training and tech school and we keep them alive.
That's leadership, by getting the person when they get to the first base, we make sure we have a great sponsorship program. We get them out there, we make sure we get them into the dorms, into base housing, wherever they're going, but we take care of them from day one and we don't let them slide on any issues right there. We make sure it's leadership from the very beginning. We do this and we stay with them and we have good performance feedback and good counseling and good mentorship as supervisors. We're going to stay on top of them. When we see a problem with an Airman, we're going to recognize that and we're going to fix it before it gets bad.
CMSAF Murray: I think it's important to recognize that our Air Force in no way is shirking away from tough issues and problems. Sometimes we've found criticism in the press and many other outlets. It's pointed a lot at our Air Force Academy. Yet we took this, it is a societal problem that we have taken on, and faced it firsthand.
I was encouraged just before I stepped on stage by a young lieutenant from Edwards Air Force Base that's out here in the audience. She just had the opportunity to be able to see a video that has been released by the Secretary and the Chief of Staff to the field. I have a part in that video, [Former Air Force Chief of Staff] General John P. Jumper is in the video, and then Lieutenant General Roger A. Brady, who has had a lot of this saddled on him, leading the efforts of our Air Staff as our DP. But right in the middle of that is a very frank presentation of this issue dealing with the rape of an Airman. It is educational. This young lieutenant is also a volunteer and stepped up and received her training as a victim advocate there, as a leader out at Edwards Air Force Base.
This is something that we all need to continue our involvement in, our education in knowing what our Air Force, Department of Defense and what our Air Force is doing to make sure that we can identify these incidents, and if there would be the possibility of eradicating any situation where one Airman would harm another Airman.
Q: Given the decreasing size of the Air Force, its expeditionary nature, and the increased responsibility we're putting on our most junior force, could you characterize for us the quality of that force, specifically in terms of the value they're bringing into the Air Force and perhaps how we have changed our training of them to make them more effective?
CMSAF Murray: Chief Kriete, do you want to speak to our BMT review and the comments that the major's made on how we are shaping our Airmen today, and look into the future?
Chief Kriete: Yes, sir. Several months ago we did a BMT review and it was earlier, about a year earlier, than we anticipated it due, but we had to change the mindset a little bit on our basic training.
Many great ideas went into play and lots of good ideas got down on ink. Now some of it has to do with a dollar amount to extend our BMT to put some things in there that are expeditionary in mindset.
One that comes to mind was as soon as they get off the bus down there you put them into a warrior mindset, you hand them an M16 so they can carry that M16 with them the whole length of basic training. We ran into some issues with that, but I think we're going to get through that.
The one piece of it, we call it “Warrior Week.” The issue came up, why is it only a week long? Being a warrior should be from the time they step off the bus until the time they leave and continue on into their first operational base. So it's a culture mindset that they're coming into that we have got to put some warrior mentality into basic training.
What we've been doing for the past several years, we just keep adding things to basic training. That's great, however, they're only getting a snapshot. One of the recommendations was, we have one of the shortest basic training environments of all our services, the shortest amount, so we're requesting to extend that so we can give them, I don't want to say better quality, but maybe lengthening some of the specialty.
If you look at shooting an M16 in basic training, they should be at a full-up round when they leave, not just learning the fundamentals of which way the gun needs to be pointed. I'm not saying our basic training has been bad. It's been very effective. It's been very good throughout the years, but maybe it's time now that we take a hard look and enter the expeditionary mindset right from the day they put that uniform on until the day the leave our Air Force.
CMSAF Murray: Chief Popp, you led the vision panel in our PME review. Would you care to comment on how PME ties into our force development?
Chief Popp: Yes, Chief. As we looked at our PME continuum we said when is the right time to have PME for our future Airmen and NCOs? What we decided was our phase one should be at about the 36 month point, about three years. The reason we say that is, and many of you know this ... You've been to an ALS graduation, you've see how pumped up our Airmen are and how excited they are about the Air Force, and all the knowledge that they have about I'm ready to be a leader. “Please put me in, coach. I'm ready to go and be part of the team.”
So what we looked at is, in our continuum, we said they're going to have PME, their first step, at 36 months time in service.
Next we said, “when should the next phase be in our PME?” We said if we look at our AEF Air Force and we know the AEF drives the battle rhythm of everything we do, possibly we should have a flex period for the second stage, because we've already given them basic leadership skills and also methods on how to write EPRs and give counseling to other Airmen and those kind of things. So our second phase would be kind of a three-year window. That would be looked at between five and eight years, and we would say that would be their second phase. Also for the NCO Academy, Senior NCO Academy.
Some things that we also took into consideration were that these are the latch-key kids, the generation next, the X-Boxers that are coming into our United States Air Force. They're used to high speed. They're used to extreme happening. We say that you're joining the extreme Air Force. They like that instant gratification and a challenge.
So we also talked about how can we prepare these Airmen, those senior Airmen using their first stage of PME and our other NCOs, how can we make sure that they can train our Airmen to think about the team, that you're going to be on a team, and it is going to be an extreme sport, being in the expeditionary Air Force, and this is what you belong to. Something bigger than you… That's what we'll be focusing on in our PME, to try to help us take today's Airmen, today's citizens that come in, and be our Airmen. We're happy to have them.
Another thing that I often talk about in ACC is, as you look at these Airmen coming in, they're very smart people and they're ready to go, so put them into the game and don't delay their training because we need them to be trained and to be a full round up in what we're doing with the Expeditionary Air Force.
CMSAF Murray: I’d like to highlight some things that are very important to know about this generation that is coming into the force today.
Number one, as you highlighted, we are a smaller force by, as Chief McKinley cited as well, 25,000 less enlisted Airmen, but that's just putting us within our authorized end strength. We did not kick 25,000 Airmen out of our Air Force. We did not recruit up to 14,000 Airmen last year as we worked to that goal.
In the meantime, all quality indicators of the Airmen that we did recruit into the Air Force have steadily increased over the last three years, to last year having some of the highest quality indicators of aptitude in education that we've seen in our force in several years.
Four percent of our enlistees have associate and baccalaureate degrees and the education level continues to rise.
Over the course of 2004, Sheppard Air Force Base reported a decrease of 200 Article 15s given to Airmen of the 18,000 Airmen that come through there. 18,000 Airmen a year that come through there, having only 200. So we have indicators that are showing us that our force is better, those that we recruit. But we're not letting it rest there. We're investing. And as Chief Winsett highlighted to you, as we look at developing Airmen, that competency today, and as Secretary Geren so eloquently spoke about character and knowledge and the readiness of our force, from the very beginning setting and establishing that this must be an expeditionary, combat ready force. The core values are what drives us from the very foundation to establish that. The linking, not leaving to chance one bit of the linkage of training and education and experiences that take us not through a four year enlistment, or a six or an eight year, but to take us through a continuum of 30-plus years of how it all ties together.
Q: I recently returned from Iraq on a deployment. I went as a communicator, but I ended up doing things like convoying every day, manning the 240 [caliber machine gun], manning a 50 [caliber machine gun]. Is anything being done to make sure that we're going down there trained? Because I know many Airmen are doing these things and we have no idea how to do it.
CMSAF Murray: There's training not only from the Air Force but in each command. Chief Popp, do you want to lead that one off?
Chief Popp: In Air Combat Command we have an Expeditionary Combat Airman's Course that we're teaching at every base to make sure that people have the basic lifesaving skills before they deploy.
One of the things that we found out as General Keys and I have done some base visits is that sometimes the training doesn't match what actually is taking place. So this weekend we're taking off again for Southwest Asia and we're going to do a sweep through all the bases that are over there and kind of evaluate our training program that we're doing within ACC to make sure it matches.
Some of the things that we're doing, we are actually training in convoy operation at our ACC bases. Now we know that sometimes it's pretty hard to duplicate, but with the miles, gear, and some of the other training that we have, we're trying our very best.
To address your specific question, that you went as a communicator but they asked you to do other things while you were there ... We take this back to 9th Air Force and back to CENTAF and we always ask about the requirements. Why do you need our Airmen to come forward? What is it that they're going to be doing? How long do you need them? What skills do they need to bring with them when they come? So that's a constant validation process because our idea is that we only want to send as many people as the combatant commander needs, but we also want to make sure they're trained and ready.
So hopefully we can make sure that people are trained and we're trying to do our validation process by doing base visits over in Southwest Asia to make sure that our training matches the actual mission that's being performed.
Chief Smith: In the Air National Guard, our members also fall under the MAJCOM, so if ACC has a training program, as the Chief talked about, we fall under that. But with our membership disbursed so widely throughout 54 states and 88 flying wings we also have some of our own training in addition to what the MAJCOMs provide.
We attend the Silver Flag trainings and the convoy driver training and so forth, but we also at one of our CRTCs in Wisconsin have an “ability to survive and operate” school, where we go a wing at a time to get that combat skills training with our chemical suits and the attacks and everything that we need to deploy our Airmen. So we continue to keep that on the forefront in the training before we deploy our Airmen into the AOR.
We're also looking at some of our own, I don't want to say in-house, but some of the things we can look at. What do Airmen really need as a Guardsman to supplement training that we can give them because they're not full time? As I said earlier, 70 percent of our force is only there on weekends and so many days a year. So we're looking right now with our Air National Guard training office as to what training courses we can develop that are Guard specific, that supplement what we miss by not being on active duty 365 days a year. So it's very important that we train our Airmen properly before we send them into those places and deploy them.
It's obviously high on our radar screen that we take care of our folks, give them the tools and training that they need before they go over.
CMSAF Murray: I think it is important to recognize that we are in a constant state of training for all of our Airmen. It's an OJT training that goes on for skills development, it's ancillary training that we believe establishes the foundation for our Airmen in weapons qualification, in self aid and buddy care, in the ability to survive and operate in a wartime environment to include chemical, biological and threats against us from IEDs or attacks. That's all part of the operations and training and exercises and all that we do.
At the same time, I think what's really important to recognize, too, is how well we have taken lessons learned and used them to update our training needs specifically, by employing the vehicle operators and those like yourself that may be in convoys or in environments to where you're not working in the perimeter, but you're in a combat zone and working outside, or going outside the perimeter that perhaps you need enhanced training.
For those in the convoy operations, we set the BC3 course and have adjusted it three times.
So as we look ahead to the future we ask ourselves questions, and there's a white paper that has been written and we're formulating today in the Air Staff: What does the basic Airman who's primary mission and job in a deployed environment, and who works inside the perimeter, what are they going to need to survive and operate and be able to maintain the defense of that base and do their jobs? What does the Airman that may live inside the perimeter but who works outside the perimeter—contingency response groups, combat comm, that you could be associated with security forces and others—have in terms of extra, enhanced training for that? And then one other, the combat Airman, of course, combat controllers, TacPs, combat weather, those that are on the battlefield every day that have a set of training that goes above that. Then make sure that we have a continuous way to be able to deliver that.
Recently we've seen, in one of the joint taskings, that civil engineers are going to be embedded with Army units. They're at Fort Carson and other Army bases today getting their training from the Soldiers and the fundamental training that Soldiers normally get that we had not provided for Airmen before.
So the Air Force is approaching this. There are multiple means and ways that we need to train Airmen. It's identifying those Airmen and continuing to take that on.
The other issue is, as an NCO, it is your need to be able to identify what training you and your unit have to have as well.
Q: Recently we've canceled Professional Military Education (PME) graduations for our enlisted force because of funding. Some people think that it sends the message that PME is not that important a milestone to our enlisted troops. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Chief McKinley: We looked at the graduations and the amount of money that we were spending on the graduations, and right now with our funding, that was the decision, to cancel the graduations for the next three classes.
Going to the graduations and talking to the students, generally every student that I talked to would prefer not even having the graduation; they prefer to just do an afternoon event in the Senior NCO Academy or the NCO Academies and then go on from there.
There is a lot of talk out there as far as a lot of faculty. I know they miss the fact that they don't have the nighttime graduations, but it was strictly a funding issue and the decision was based on whether or not at this time with the funding issues in the Air Force, that it was the right thing to do, to continue. I think it came out to something like $9 million of what it was costing us for three graduations across the Senior NCO Academy and across the NCO Academies across the Air Force.
So we're going to look at that and see in the future if that's something that we need to continue to do, or go back the way it used to be. But we're looking at that very closely. We're getting feedback from the different academies. We're getting feedback from the students. Then we'll gather all that information and make the right decision on where to move forward from here.
Chief _______: Be assured of the fact that we are not canceling graduations. All of the pomp and circumstance associated with an individual completing his or her professional military education is there. It is there. We've ensured that the types of things that are important to Johnny Three Stripe graduating from the Airman Leadership School, or Staff Sergeant Suzy Jones from the NCO Academy, or Master Sergeant Joe Smith from the Senior Academy, are there. We understand it, we respect it, but at the same time we had to look at our fiscal responsibility as well. But please don't think that graduations are being canceled because they're not. We just moved them to a different venue at a different time, again with an increase in the pomp and circumstance and the glory that is associated with an enlisted person completing his or her professional military education.
Chief _______: Let me just add that change is hard. For years the Air Force has been accustomed to, on the enlisted side, a formal graduation. So the minute you change something you're going to have some reluctancy out there to change it. But the thing we have to keep in mind, if you need the money to buy bullets, you buy the bullets. Leadership looks at where we can cut back on things, not that we want to, but it's a matter of supply and demand.
The other fact of the matter is that PME, the education portion of it, has not changed. In fact we're making it harder and more demanding and we're inserting expeditionary type instructions into our PME. So if you peel that back, if you just look at the graduation and focus on the graduation, it's very misleading. You have to peel that back and look at what we're doing with our PME today.
CMSAF Murray: Our Air Force faced one of the toughest challenges it had with the budget last year and this year. To continue to be able to fund the war efforts and now there's no telling what the bill is going to be that the military is going to face in the Katrina relief efforts... We looked across the board of how we will come up with $3.1 billion on a must-pay bill, everything was on the table.
What we would not accept and did not want to accept was a cut in training or cutting education. But if we can save $9 million a year, and that was the thing that was looked at, then that's something that is important and should be considered.
The fact of the matter is that the Secretary of the Air Force asked us to look at the, for three classes of all of our PME, the last two of fiscal year '05 and the first of fiscal year '06, so a message was released that we would curtail nighttime graduation banquets and not have TDY travel from commanders and first sergeants and others into these graduations at our NCO Academies, Senior NCO Academy, and we also included the First Sergeant Academy, into that for three classes.
Now we have two more classes to go to be able to do that. Then the question is to look to the future. Should we continue to be able to take that $9 million and put that back into something else? Right now we need another $3 million to be able to fund the weapons we want in basic military training. We need another $23 million to increase our basic military training. We believe in the fundamental importance of our training, so can I use some of that? Right now that money goes to individual commanders and all that may fund that per diem, but if you think of it in that way, then I think that that is something worthwhile for us to look to the future.
And yes, some will criticize. Well, that's been traditional. We've done this for all of these years. But mine is about capabilities of this force and what it takes to be able to continue to fund that, and if I look at those offsetting priorities…
The other aspect is that we added to the NCO Academies in that message a Dining In, which is part of our heritage, that we had only been teaching at the Senior NCO Academy. We now have those students planning a Dining In.
So as we look ahead to the future, I'm not ready and prepared to say what the policy will be and we will work with our senior leadership on that, but I can tell you that it is something that we are not taking lightly as we look at our way ahead. So thanks a lot for that question and letting us address it.
Q: My last assignment was at the Air Force Academy and we saw junior and senior cadets kicked out either for military, academic or athletic deficiencies. My question is two parts. From the senior enlisted perspective, what is your opinion when that happens and you take a cadet that was kicked out into the enlisted force? And do you feel that should be an option? [Laughter]
CMSAF Murray: Chief Smith says they go to the Army now. [Laughter]
There have been no Airmen or cadets that have been discharged from the Air Force Academy for integrity, honor conditions that have transitioned into our enlisted force. There have only been a small number of cadets that actually did take and choose to be able to repay their obligated service at the point in time that obligated service was required to be repaid of them, either by time or dollars, that chose to request that they could become an enlisted Airman. And every one of those that have come into the enlisted force have come across my desk and the desk of the command chief master sergeants, and there has not been one of them yet that have not been able to complete their obligated service in under exceptionally honorable conditions.
So a process we have to be able to vet through our system the recommendations that come from the instructors at the Air Force Academy, that's taken through the Superintendent of the Air Force Academy, that comes through the Secretariat Personnel Council at the Air Force level to include the Command Chief of the Air Force Academy here and myself. I have no issues with that whatsoever.
In fact, I do know of a Chief Master Sergeant that serves in our Air Force today that was released from the Air Force Academy in his fourth year and he has now had an over-20-year remarkable career to become a Chief Master Sergeant.
So for every one of them, it's a case by case situation that's looked at according to ability. Most of them just have done their obligated service time and separated. And you know, they've separated better for it because they served in the greatest enlisted force in the world in doing so.
So I don't have any problems with it. I don't think that you'd find out any problem, anything up here. Sometimes it's just a perception that somebody can't make it at the Air Force Academy, how do they become an enlisted Airman? If they can't make it at the Air Force Academy because of dishonor, then I don't want them and I'm not going to accept them in this enlisted corps. But if it's other means than dishonor, then I find that it may be—I've often said the Air Force took a chance on a farm boy from North Carolina and gave me a great opportunity, so I think it's important that we give people an opportunity to continue to serve.
We had another one that was released that right now is being viewed for an opportunity to go back into officer candidate school, and I think that within a year he'll be back as an officer as well because we've given him an opportunity to serve in the enlisted corps.
Thank you for the question.
Q: I've got two questions. One's regarding the 362903, and I was wondering if there is a better way for us to get changes to the 362903 out to the field. One example I have is walking and talking in uniform on a cell phone and in the Lance Armstrong races. Then my second question is regarding the PT shorts. I was just wondering, have you heard any complaints about the length of those shorts? [Laughter]
CMSAF Murray: General Moseley has asked us to commission another uniform board that will be coming up here. I just spoke to General Brady right before this session. In October we will have a uniform board that will address these and many other issues.
The Air Force Instruction 362903 for dress and appearance has been in coordination for a long time. [Laughter] It is on 20 CD disks. Can you imagine coordinating on the volume of information that's in that AFI on 20 CD disks? But we will continue to press forward on that. Yes, we have a long list of issues and things with the fitness uniform. Some of those have been specifically addressed in a message recently. Others will be I think forthcoming and we're going to try to make it as quick as possible.
I think that every one of us here at this table can share frustrations with you with on that, and we take responsibility for that as well. General Brady takes that very seriously, as we look ahead to the future.
We've got a lot of uniform issues on the table right now. We're working to field a new battle uniform, new utility uniform for us, so we've got to step out on that. We've got to get that fitness uniform and we've got to give you an updated AFI that takes and wrestles with some of those issues for our uniforms.
But there's one thing that continues … Most things about the wear of the uniform can fall into the common sense category and master sergeants can make the decision on it. So keep going and making sure that our people wear their uniforms properly and look good and clean and orderly and disciplined in their uniform. Thank you.
Chief _______: We have a lot of questions Air Force-wide on the PT gear, whether or not you can wear the headphones when you're working out, whether or not you can run with a ball cap and all that stuff. So right now all the MAJCOM command chiefs, we're collecting all the questions in our command and we're going to forward those to Senior Master Sergeant Dana Athnos, and she's going to gather those up for the next Uniform Board. So it's a good opportunity, if you have those type of questions, to forward them to your MAJCOM command chiefs. We'll put them together and we'll get those answered for you.
CMSAF Murray: General Brady did tell me—and Senior Master Sergeant Athnos is in the audience out here, so you're welcome, Dana. [Laughter]—that he is about to release a message that will go to your MAJCOM DPs, that will go to the field, that will call for the inputs to be made.
We have processes that are identified in that AFI, a chain of command and process that works through that and all of that will be called for and come forward so that we can wrestle those down.
General Peterson: We've got one from the audience here. Are there plans to start some type of PME for newly promoted chief master sergeants?
Chief Winsett: There is a new Chief Leadership Course that is an eight-day course that's held at the Senior Academy on Gunner Air Force Base in Alabama for persons that have been selected for chief master sergeant in the active force, Reserve and Guard. It's ongoing as we speak. As a matter of fact, I believe the next class is, I want to say the October/November timeframe, but there is a new Chief Leadership Course that is online for newly promoted and selected chief master sergeants.
I know within the confines of the Air Force Reserve Command, and I'm quite sure with the other major commands, newly selected, promoted chief master sergeants go through a command chiefs orientation course. Within the confines of the reserve command, we did not have a program like that, but one is being developed as we speak.
CMSAF Murray: The next class actually, to make a correction, is going to be in February with the new class. 100 percent of the active duty chief master sergeants will attend in the first year of their selection, and we are encouraging the Guard and Reserve to send as many as they can.
We recognize, and as Chief Smith highlighted, that 70 percent of our Guard and Reserve are traditional Guard and Reserve. We know that in all of our other levels of PME we have actual courses, correspondence courses, they can use as equivalent. We do not with the Chiefs Course yet, but we're continuing to work that.
But we've added a lot of education responsibilities and that's one of the areas where we felt like we needed to focus more efforts in this broadening of knowledge for chief master sergeants.
We completed three classes, had great feedback from those, and our intention now is that the course will move forward for all of our new chiefs.
I think we are coming close to the end of our session time so we'll take one other question or feedback from you.
Question: The word on the street is that fitness scores are going to be documented on the performance reports. Are you concerned the fitness scores are going to become a discriminator for promotion?
Chief Kriete: It's too early in the game to decide if it's going to be a discriminator. The main thing we need to focus on that we have a viable PT program in our Air Force today, thanks to General Jumper and Chief Murray. Working through the issues as to whether it needs to be on the EPR or not—I'm not sure we need to be concerned about that issue. Will it be a discriminator? Not if you pass it won't be a discriminator. [Laughter] I think that's what we need to be focused on, is how we bring the readiness of our force up from where it is today.
A year ago today, our force was less fit. So if you keep looking at the numbers of where we're headed with the readiness and focus on our readiness and don’t get so focused on whether your score's going to be on your EPR … Is that really a big deal? If you get a 75 versus a 95, I'm not concerned about those folks that are passing. Me personally, I'm concerned about that person who is down in the 50 percentile. Is he or she mission ready? That's where I think as leaders we need to put our focus on and help that individual get to mission ready status.
CMSAF Pope: As we evolve in our Air Force, we pick up the AEF mindset and we know that that drives our battle rhythm. I think also, Chief, it's some changes that you and I and some other chiefs up here have talked about for years and that's the whole person concept.
We look at that and you remember that as duty performance, self improvement, being a leader in the community, and now fitness. Will fitness be the only discriminator that causes someone not to be promoted? Maybe if they don't meet standards. But when you look at the other four factors and you say it takes all four of those factors to be possibly a leader in our United States Air Force, with duty performance being the number one thing. The reason the taxpayers pay us to come to work to fight and win America's wars and to help out in humanitarian efforts, fitness is part of that.
So the whole person concept in my mind and what we talk about has changed. Ten years ago, 15 years ago we were not that concerned about PT and physical fitness. Now what I see and what everyone else is seeing is people are involved in PT programs. Why is that? Because it's all about readiness.
When we go forward and we're challenged in some of the conditions that we're in, either in PACOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM and some of the other places, we've got to be fit and we've got to be ready. So if it's documented on the performance report I consider that as just one of the factors in the whole person concept.
General Peterson: Chief, will it be a discriminator?
CMSAF Murray: Yes, it will. How will it be a discriminator, to what extent it will be depends on what and how you want to categorize it. If you want to categorize it in how it's marked on an EPR or an OPR, which are the proposals to be able to do so, to document it both in our fitness reports, then to some degree it will.
The difference of discrimination between a 50 and a 75 and an 85 and a 95, those things will come to one either meeting standards or not meeting standards or exceeding standards. I can tell you it's been a discriminator today for eight individuals over the past year as a life or death discriminator, because we've had eight Airmen that have died in association with physical activity.
Now I ask the other side of that ... How many Airmen have extended their lives, how often have we saved lives? It's a readiness issue for us. We're not going to back away from that. We must be, and every one of us can look ourselves in the mirror and should look ourselves in the mirror regarding the level of activity that we engage in to maintain a healthy lifestyle and that health is more than just physical fitness, but that’s a big part of it. I’m greatly concerned about the Airmen that we have, that we place in situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places, about how fit they are to be there—physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally—and fitness is a part of that.
So yes, it will be a discriminator. It will be a factor as we go forward on those reports.
It is difficult to change and set policies and to think through all of those things, especially when it comes to documenting them onto a record, and that's the reason you haven't seen a policy released yet, and there's been lots of discussion on that. It is now at the two-digit level, the three-star going to four-star general level of our Air Force, as we think through all those things, and lots of great minds are working on it. But we must, as Chief Kriete and Chief Pope have highlighted, continue to emphasize improving the health and well being of our force. So thank you very much for that.
General Peterson, I think our time has come.
General Peterson: Well, I've got four more questions, Chief. [Laughter]
I just want to say thank you very much, Chief, for your and all our command chiefs' leadership. Thanks also for taking this time to spend with our Airmen and our force. It's been very informative to us all and we appreciate you being the great leaders you are in our force. [Applause]
CMSAF Murray: Thank you, very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
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