Fueling and Sustaining the Fight: Projecting Power Anytime, Anywhere

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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. I’ll pay you later. This front row here, thank you. So good morning and welcome. I’m Larry Stutzriem. Call me Stutz, and I’m honored to host this panel. Our nation’s ability to dominate the battle space begins with our dominance in the air. Since World War II, Airmen have maintained air superiority over our adversaries, leading to decades of warfighting success. Our dominance in the air, however, isn’t just owed to the fighter and bomber pilots. Rather, our dominance in the air is underpinned by our unrivaled ability to project power across vast distances and to sustain our presence in an area of operations at a place and time of our choosing.

By the way, key to this imperative are the active and reserve duty Airmen serving across Air Mobility Command. These Airmen work around the clock and are ready at a moment’s notice to maintain, load, secure and fly global air operations.

Today, however, the threat environment is changing and the challenges to fueling and sustaining the fight are growing. So to discuss these challenges, we have a fantastic twosome up here, two panelists. First, the Commander of Air Mobility Command, General John Lamontagne. You bet. And Lieutenant General John Healy, Chief of the Air Force Reserve.

So gentlemen, let me begin with you, General Lamontagne. Our Air Force faces unprecedented demands across Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and the Arctic now, and with increased demand in each of these regions, today’s demands that is, does the Air Force currently have the right airlift capability and capacity to meet the increase in operational tempo?

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s a challenge, I’d say, from both a capacity and a capability perspective. A lot of people probably don’t know that our capacity is really informed by the requirements in conflict, and so the ratio between active duty, guard and reserve, you add that up and that’s what we need to win in conflict. And so that looks a little different in competition and in crisis. And so we are routinely challenged to meet those requirements around the world, both on the airlift and the air refueling side of the house in competition and crisis. We lean on our Guard Reserve friends all the time, but it is challenging. We’ll often take hits to our own readiness in the near term to meet some of those aggregated requirements around the world. So both on the air lift and air refueling perspective from capacity, it is challenging day in and day out during competition and crisis.

From a capability perspective, I would say we cannot afford to be static and the good news is our Air Force hasn’t been static. It might appear like we have because we’re still flying the KC-135, 61 plus years old in the fleet today. But the truth is that platform has not been static. At the very beginning it was an A model. We injected water into the engine to get a little more thrust on takeoff, and then it transitioned into the E model and then circa 1984 put some bigger engines on it. ’84 is the same year as the original Macintosh computer came out, and we’ve continued to not be static and add capacity.

Pacer CRAG was next in the late nineties where we got rid of the Navigator. We were flying across the ocean the way Magellan did, shooting the stars, shooting the moon, trying to navigate, so got GPS, some fuel management, and then about 10 years ago, upgraded the Block 45. That brings connectivity, I’ll say avionics, some communications and navigation improvements to the airplane. And it is time to keep going on that journey. Next steps are connectivity, both beyond line of sight, over the horizon, as well as tactical data links so that airplane can remain viable into the future.

The same is true on the airlift side of the house. C-17, we’ve not been static with the C-17. That is now 21 years old and that has been spiral developed since the beginning. General Healy probably flew on a couple of the early test airplanes and Block 1, Block two, I didn’t get in the airplane until Block 7. Today, Block 23, Block 24, but we have to keep going on the C-17, C-5, C-130 fleets as well with that beyond line of sight connectivity and tactical data links in order to keep those airplanes relevant going forward.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

I do want to want to point out, first I’d like to ask you a question a little bit about the future, but I want to commend your Airmen. They participated in a war game we did last summer and I was stunned. If there is any question about the warfighter ethos or warfighting mindedness in your command, there should not be. It was a pretty aggressive workshop and the results were fantastic too. So shout out to them.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Strong team of teams across the enterprise working to make that happen. We, a lot of times don’t have what we need in the airplane, to sense and make sense, but we’re going to get after it.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah. Impressive. Well, right now the Air Force we’ve heard and previous panels is conducting future force design and from your seat as the commander, what does right look like in terms of building that future capability to meet projected needs 10 to 15 years out?

Gen. John Lamontagne:

So we have to continue and modernize. That can be on our existing platforms but also on some new platforms. If we look back into our past, today, we’re flying a 61-year-old KC-135. So imagine if in our response to 9/11 Air Combat Command was jumping in a P-51 Mustang and Air Force Global Strike Command was jumping in B-17s and AMC was jumping in KC-97s and more, those airplanes would’ve been 60 years old around 9/11, when 9/11 happened. And so the 135 has served us well, but it is time to recapitalize that fleet going forward. We’ve done a lot of that great work with the KC-46. We need to continue doing that going forward.

And two of the big priorities for us are that connectivity that I talked to both from being able to sense and make sense of the threats in a move, counter move in the event great power competition breaks down and we get into a great power conflict. Great powers have systems that can range us from hundreds of miles away, both in the air and on the ground, and we need to be able to sense and make sense of those threats. We talk about pulsed operations with people that can shoot back at range. It’s not going to be a scripted play. And so we’ve got to be able to be dynamic, respond to some opportunities, and also respond to the threats. And so that beyond line of site connectivity, those tackled data links will help, as well as some defensive systems that we don’t have on the KC-135 today so that we can help mitigate that ourselves. There’s a lot of ways to mitigate threats. We can layer in defensive counter air and a couple other counter ops as well, but it’s helpful if we can defend from within.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. General Healy before we go into a few exploratory questions, I think it’s important if you could give us a little one-on-one on where the Air Force Reserve fits in because it’s important to sustaining and refueling the fight.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

Yeah, I appreciate the question. Thanks very much for AFA as always to get the opportunity to speak with a crowd like this. So it’s interesting. So when I come here, I’m as a MAJCOM commander, I’m the Air Force Reserve Commander, Reserve Command Commander, but I have a second job that I do in the Pentagon and it’s the component chief, the chief of the Air Force Reserve. And in that job, my two-digit title is Air Force RE, and I brought this up to Secretary Kendall, Secretary Ashworth as well, and I said, “Do you know what RE stands for?” And they’re like, “Typically, no, we don’t.” I was like, “Well, it stands for Reserve Educator.” And it’s like, “Does it really?” It’s like, yeah, I have no idea what it stands for.” But it’s what I do quite often is the education and it’s important that we get the opportunity to do this.

When I look at some of the things, for instance, in your opening comment, you mentioned underpinning everything that we do in the United States military. I look at it from the reserve perspective of when we started going through a re-optimization drill about a year and a half ago, we started looking very introspectively at the Air Force Reserve Command in terms of how we fit into each of the mission sets and with the other MAJCOMs and quickly determined that we, to use your word, we underpin every single one of the mission sets. We’re involved in every one of the AFSCs and every one of the MAJCOMs. And as we started looking towards what the optimization is going to look like in the future, whether it be institutional commands or service component commands, we started quickly realizing again that we need to underpin every single one of these mission sets because that’s just by nature what we do in the Reserve Command.

So to get a little more granular with what we do, we’re an efficient force, we’re an effective force, we’re an accessible force and we’re a supremely experienced force. So some of the things with regard to efficiencies, our business model is such that we save so much money in terms of how we operate. We’ve got 37 wings doing everything from fighter to bomber to AFSC to mobility. But of our 10 unit equipped where we own the bases or the remaining classic associates, we work 28 days of the month with only 25% of our population. So that 25% of the populations are the ones, the arts, they’re the AGRs, there’s some civilians that come and they keep the lights on, they keep the administrative books rolling, they’re flight commanders, squadron commanders, superintendents, it’s two days a month, that weekend a month where we roll in as a hundred percent force, that’s the only time we typically run at a hundred percent. So there’s tremendous amount of savings and efficiencies in that.

Specifically, we did a study just recently where we were able to differentiate and get independently validated that a strategic reservist is somebody who just does the weekend among two weeks a year. Costs about 28 cents on the dollar compared to the active duty. Whereas an operational reservist, which we’ve been quite active with for thirty-plus years, is about 32 cents on the dollar. So there’s a lot of savings.

Second thing to talk about is accessibility. And this typically comes up usually in some of these forums. If there’s ever any questions about accessibility, I’d be coming a little bit more blunt and I just assume you don’t understand authorities if you say we’re not accessible. Our bread and butter has been and always will be, we’re a volunteer force.

So when the Levant kicked off, we had folks at the 315th in Charleston who volunteered on a moment’s notice. We generated 32 aircraft out the door as a total force, put nine crews on the road within 48 hours, thousands of tons of cargo moved. I mean that’s what we are going to stand to the call when we need to. But we’re also a lot more predictable and we can provide predictability as a force with some of the authorities. If we knew we’re going to do a fighter drag in two years, three years, presidential election, we can program for those and we can assure access to the reserve component, especially when we need it in those cases.

Last thing because predominantly talking about big mobility right now with regard to airlift and with regard to air refueling, and while those are critical parts for the Air Force Reserve Command, we’ve also got some cats and dogs out there. They’re the H models that we got looking for constant employment. We’ve got earth, wind, and fire. So it’s some of the niche missions that we have. After a hurricane comes through and there’s a lot of infestation, we do spray to mitigate that. So that’s wind. We’ve got hurricane hunters, you might’ve seen them once or twice on tv.

And then we’ve also got firefighters right down the road here in Seasprings, the 302nd, during the LA fires, out of sequence, out of cycle training-wise in terms of being prepped, up on a moment’s notice along with the guard to make sure that we’re protecting the U.S. So quite a unique portfolio, quite an expansive portfolio and that’s just a mobility portion of the one-on-one for you today.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

And I’ll just add, we are committed to being great teammates and we are great teammates. We rely on the Reserves each and every day. That’s true at our headquarters. It’s true in our Air Operations Center. And just like he talked about at our classic associate units, a lot of teaming, you can’t tell the difference between an Active duty Airman and a Reservist on the flight line or in the air or the superb folks. It is a really powerful way to do business.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

And I will say in my career, often a Reservist was key to staff running really well because they do bring in outside experience on their duty and very helpful, a lot of ideas how to fix things and that. So compliments to all.

Well, General Healy, let me stick with you for a second. I want to switch to the topic of readiness. And for the last 30 years or so, there’s been a lot of deployments, high tempo, constant deployments, and this has impacted the Reserve a lot. To sustain and to refuel, so can you speak to how the Reserve has been impacted? What’s happened in these nonstop operations and are you having to do things to really maintain an increase even readiness in the Reserve?

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

So I think get more, what we always do is we adjust, we flex and we respond. So as I was saying before, we’re always going to stand up when the horn blows, but what we’ve seen is through 30 years or so of this operational tempo that we’re gladly to be a part of, what we see is the inability to kind of truly synchronize within our units. As we go through this re-optimization right now, this is working super for the Air Force Reserve Command because what we’re able to do, I use an example for instance of the 911th Airlift Wing Pittsburgh folks C-17s. I went to visit them about two years ago and from their previous ops maintenance deployment, they had some part or portion of their wing deployed every day in the period in between because of 1, 2, 5, 10 person UTCs. There was never any time when they had any part of their wing synchronized as a reset.

So as we go through optimization and we start getting into the AFFORGEN model and as we’re getting ready to push out the 911th as an XAB in a few months, for the first time in decades, they’re aligned with each other. So we’ve got a wing commander that is solely focused on almost all of his wing being in the available bucket right now. And that’s something, it might sound daunting, but that is actually more beneficial for a wing to be able to manage it that way. As we continue to go forward in the production of DCWs, again and having that unit of action, everybody’s on the same note, everybody’s doing the same thing at the same time. So the new cycle as we go through this is so perfect for the Reserve Command to falls straight in on. So with DCWs as we come down the line, we’ve got 27-1 and 27-2 that we’ve got a fighter wing for 27-1, Travis for 27-2.

And I always bring this up, we look at it through a unique lens in the Air Force Reserve. So 1 October, 2026 is anybody figure out how many days away? 575 days away for the majority of the audience out there. For the reserves, it’s 50 days. So that’s 18 drill weekends and two weeks of annual tour of what we can assure that we’re going to get training. So we have a battle with them that’s just a little bit out in front of most others. So we are taking advantage of everything that’s going on with re-optimization right now.

Quick note on concerns with regard to the operational tempo as it affects our aircraft. I’ve got 267 aircraft in the Air Force Reserve Command, 78% are over 35 years old. We are leveraged heavily in old things and that troubles me because old things typically are expendable things when it comes to programming.

It’s satisfying even though our oldest aircraft out there is the 135 that there’s a one-for-one recap for KC-46 because of capacity we can’t do without, but it’s troubling to see some of the other aircraft out there that are potentially less and less viable in the future fight. And we’re constantly looking at ways to keep it viable right now through upgrades. We use our own NGREA funds to do that to make them viable for the next fight so that they’re not as expendable in terms of programmatic cuts because they’re more expensive to operate now. They need more care and attention to go forward and that’s the big result that we see at the end of 30 years of operational use.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

And you’re echoing what the chief said in his keynote. Those charts were powerful that he showed about the age of the fleets and you’re just there to give evidence to that. That sounds amazing.

General Lamontagne, I referred to those workshops we did at AFA and one of our key findings is that in order for, in this case, CCA operations to work, you have to put some stuff in place to make sure that you can support that and sustain that. But generally, I’m just curious, when you talk about what AMC needs and what the greater Air Force is doing to set a groundwork for success in terms of sustaining and projecting power, what’s some thoughts on where that’s going right now?

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Great question. There are I think a lot of opportunities in front of us. From a CCA perspective, that’s one of the first capabilities, first weapon systems that we’re going to develop post agile combat employment. All of our legacy systems, all is a strong word, but most of them have a pretty robust logistics requirement that was based on building an operation at a fixed operating site that was well defended or relative safe haven as we had a lot of logistics that are really big and require a lot of lift to get there because that’s how they were designed. CCAs are going to be one of the first platforms developed post agile combat employment, schema Maneuver and CONOP where they can take that maneuverability and hopefully a light lean, agile approach into account from its inception. And so we’ll see where that goes. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in that space.

Some of the other things we’re doing in the Pacific is looking at how much we can pre-position from a war reserve material, pre-PO perspective. There’s a lot we’ll do there from a legacy perspective and then some opportunities on the CCA. If we can put a bunch of that stuff in place so we don’t have to move it and it’s available immediately, great. Don’t know what that looks like as we sit here this morning, but there’s some opportunities in front of us.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Definitely. So we’re talking about ACE, you brought that up, as an operating concept and that concept has to have survivability and there’s some questions about that, especially with respect to airlift and air refueling aircraft. So both of you, I’d like to ask you what new ways of doing business are needed to increase survivability, especially in the Indo-Pacific?

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

I’d answer first. I think ACE, I remember a few years ago as we were talking about ACE, it’s not as new as it was unless you’re the person going out and doing it for the first time. So as we start exercising and doing certification events, we’re seeing people go out and actually practice ACE and it’s rather eye-opening for them, but in a good way. They’re seeing what they want to see in the Air Force and doing what they signed up for. I think in looking at doing something new and maybe teaming that with success is not necessarily the thing we should be kind of focusing on, but leveraging our experiences and our experiences go back a long way, but leveraging our experiences to find out what things are right and then just doing them really well.

We’ve got a tremendously accomplished and responsible enlisted corps and I think when we start looking truly in the depths of what is going to make ACE work or not, it’s going to be trust, total force trust in terms of how we train to ensure that when we show up at whatever field for certification for actual employment, that there’s an established relationship and from a total force that there’s trust, not only from the highest leaderships, but as we look at employing ACE, we might have at the very forward edge some sort of element that’s 12 to 15 people, the expectation that a tech sergeant or a master sergeant is going to be in charge of that. So we need to start normalizing that understanding, first of all, normalizing the trust down to those levels, normalizing the acceptance of risk and understanding of risks so that when they do get in that position, they know we’ve got their back all the way up the chain and that they’re able to be effective moving forward.

It’s the core duties and capabilities of our supremely capable enlisted corps and non-commissioned officers and making sure that they’re empowered to do the right things well.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Completely agree with General Healy pushing decisions and authorities down to the lowest level possible so they can execute at the edge, perhaps being disconnected from C-2 for a period of time. They know what needs to be done and they’ll go do it. We clearly have to do some things differently. We can’t operate like we have been in the past. KC-135s have habitually operated at a one fixed location, went forward, done what they need to do at range, come back, regenerate and do it again on another day. I think they’re going to need to fly multiple times in the same day. Right now, a KC-135 crew, we’re changing this as we speak. Previously, a KC-135 crew couldn’t land at an outstation and refuel their own airplane. So as we enter a dynamic fight where we may have to divert, may have to take advantage of a couple opportunities or avoid some threats and go somewhere else, we can’t afford for them to wait on somebody else to refuel them, whether it’s an international airport or somewhere else.

And so we’ve got to remove some of those dependencies that we’ve relied on and we’ve been fortunate to be able to have previously and take those out.

And then exercising together. You heard the chief talk about one Air Force and more Air Force and so this is not just exercising with us but with our ACC, Global Strike, AFSOC teammates and doing more of that going forward.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

And I’d add too, I think we’re uniquely suited for that mission type order construct within the mobility community. I can think how many times does Captain Healy takes a C-17 with a crew of four and you get a frag that tells you what you’re doing for the next 10 days and we never actually trained to it, but the ability to say, “Hey, until you here otherwise, execute the mission per frag.” Those are the things I think that it’s the subtleties of what we do a little bit different in the mobility community.

I remember when I was at TACC as well, once a month we picked a unit and they had to paper themselves and get away from the luxury of having all the documents provided for them to take off out of their home station. So there’s some things that we’ve probably lost a little muscle memory on, but I think we are further down the road of being able to understand and execute mission type orders than other parts of the DoD.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

We’ve also strengthened our ability to push those orders. So the last couple of 618th Air Operations Center commanders have put some software in place where the team has it on their phone. All they need is a little bit of either a cell phone connection or a Wi-Fi, hotspot and they’re able to get connectivity direction and guidance directly from the AOC, including at the general officer level. I’m not saying we’re going to be doing it at the general officer level every day, we’re pushing that down, but we’ve built in that resiliency over time so we can take advantage of those mission type orders.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

And I have to remind the audience too that for 30 years or so, everything was centralized, highly centralized and from fixed bases and so forth. So I’ll just throw this one in there. The Airmen of the future that’s supporting the fight looks very different from today and actually maybe a better Airman’s life, more exciting in terms of the breadth of skills they have to have.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Absolutely. And so I think teaming and being able to do multiple things, being familiar with other skill sets, maybe not deeply qualified or expertise, but the, excuse me, availability and ability to be familiar with some things that need to be done and having the wherewithal to get it done when that person may have been taken out from some fire or otherwise, we got to continue to operate at the edge.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

Yeah, just simply, our Airmen are smarter than they’ve ever been. Our brand new officers are way smarter than I was when I came in, likely still are, than I am now. I mean, we’ve got people that are signing up to join our service.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Well, let me pull on this thread of survivability a little more, and I understand there’ve been some exercises in that venue and can you tell us a little bit, both of you, about what you’ve learned, what perspectives or lessons learned have come out of that?

Gen. John Lamontagne:

There’ve been a lot of exercises both at the wing level as well as 200, 300, 400 series. And so Bamboo Eagle, a lot of great work about 10,000 Airmen across a bunch of different mission sets just a few weeks ago. We’ve got the Mobility Guardian series of exercises that is now scaling to an Air Force service level exercise so that we can exercise not just at speed and at scale, but at range as well. And so no more pixie dust on the logistics challenges.

We’re also doing some of this real world. So if you look back towards what we did in Haiti, we had to exercise some agile combat employment. We were basically bringing in a bunch of support equipment for the Kenyans to provide security in Haiti, but it was a hostile environment. We were not able to stay overnight, so we had to bring the contingency response teams in every day, every morning and catch the equipment, offload it to the Kenyans and the Haitians, and then roll it up that evening, come back to Charleston. And so if you think about operations in the Pacific, same kind of thing, you could have an integrated combat turn with F-22s, F-35, where instead of bringing in mobility equipment, we’re bringing in weapons, we’re bringing in fuel, we’re bringing in a couple of ammo troops and we can land in the morning, catch them, rearm, reload, refuel, relaunch, get out of dodge and do it again.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

Yeah. So I’ve used this forum and others to kind of raise my fist, so to speak. There’s not enough exercise out there. So I gave very clear and specific directions ND order to my leaders to where there is a gap, where there’s no template, build it, take the risk, and I’ll cover that risk. Fail forward and keep trying. So when we look towards XABs, ATFs and DCWs, there’s a lot of requirements for certification and not necessarily the exercises to manage that. So my commanders took me at my word and they built an exercise that we just finished about three weeks ago called Nexus Forge. It was out in Honolulu, not as glamorous as it sounds. Read the Airmen and NCO page and you’ll see reports on it. But it was a certification event for the 911th Airlift Wing out of Pittsburgh and about a thousand people participating.

But what they saw was something that they’ve never seen before for the average age of our Airmen. They landed and if they wanted to sleep undercover that night, they had to build their base. For the medevac and the medical exercise portion of it, if they wanted a field hospital, they had to build their field hospital. We had security forces for multiple bases coming in, doing drone dispersion and so forth. We actually had an actual case of A2/AD and A2/AD in this case was the army denied and Army deferred us using one of the bases that they agreed upon. So we showed up at a base and they said, “Sorry, miscommunication, you can’t put your 400 people here,” as we landed. So that was something not scripted, but we excelled at.

We broke a lot of things. We broke a lot of paradigms in terms of what we thought we could do, we didn’t do well. What we didn’t expect we would do, we excelled at. A thousand people, 16 Aerovacs. We had 20 plus aircraft, four different weapon systems, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Canadians. We got the C-2 portion and the A staff certified for the XAB for Nexus Forge. So we’re going to keep pressing forward. The biggest thing for us is making sure that REFORPAC, which is danger close, has our draft version of lessons identified so that they don’t make those same missteps going forward as we go into this exercise season.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Wings and squadrons are doing a lot of work to sort of bring their own connectivity with them since we don’t have it at depth and at scale across the fleet. 305th did a good demo the other day when we were there and they’ve been exercising this in Bamboo Eagle and other places where they bring their own little mini tent, have a little mission plan and sell their own connectivity, and they can go get those orders with specificity at the edge where there’s nothing.

Other locations like Charleston that do have some of that connectivity, we’ve got small portions of the fleet that have that beyond line of sight over the horizon connectivity are able to do some of that in the airplane and they’re doing a lot of development and tests and experiments so that when they’re on the ground, they can maintain assay on what the threat picture looks like. That way if they need a bug out early before the threat is inbound, they can do that and have some good assay. We look forward to having that across the rest of the fleet over the mid to far term, ideally near term.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Hopefully we have the resources applied against that. It’s pretty exciting and it’s good press as far as, once again, I harken back to your Airmen in our exercises tremendously focused on this stuff and looking forward to make this happen.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

So that exercise is exactly what the chief talked about. These people are doing what they signed up for on the commercial now and they love it.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Right, exactly. You bet. Well, let me stick with the survivability, and you talked a little bit about it, General, but next gen platforms efforts to modernize the service, certainly strategic airlift, you referred to the age of the C-17 and of course refueling. You might describe, what might those next generation platforms or efforts look like down the road? Any further thoughts on that?

Gen. John Lamontagne:

Yes, I’ll take them one at a time. On the air and fueling side of the house, we’ve done a lot of work on analysis of alternatives for the next generation air refueling system, effectively known as NGAS. That work, most of that been submitted to OSD. We’re following up with a couple of finishing touches here over the next month or two, and it effectively looks at the trade-offs between how big does the runway need to be, how much fuel can you deliver at range, and then signature management for how far we can go forward into the threat environment and the trade-offs across those three. On the airlift side of the house, we are working through the capabilities based assessment on what those requirements would be for the next generation airlifter.

During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, those that flew the 141, we almost flew the wings off of the 141 and we want to figure out what those next requirements look like before we fly the wings off the C-17. Good news is I think we have a lot of time. There’s a healthy amount of life left in the C-17, but we want to stay in front of that so if necessary, we can replace it before we need to.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

How many uniformed members flew the 141? You still in uniform? I see a suit jacket on that one. Yeah, that’s aging myself. Sorry.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, by the way, I just want to say I did get a sorority on a KC-97 way back. It was pretty exciting. I was five. It is exciting and once again, I give all the credit to… In the past we’ve seen the sustainment piece pushed to the side and great grand plans that were made on the operational side, and we see that in the future, the requirement for sustainment refueling needs to be foremost in enabling the next operating concepts we’re developing in the Air Force.

General Healy though, we have a little problem with pilot shortage and some retention issues. I’m curious from your perspective, what is in the Reserve issues with respect to capacity of pilots?

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

So overall in the Air Force Reserve Command, we do well with recruiting and retention of pilots. So right now our pilot manning is at 90.1%, but there’s two parts to that. I’ve got traditional reservists, so your part-timers I’m at 99%. We’ve got no problem right now with part-timers wanting to come in, but our full-timers are at 78 and change, and that’s problematic, but it’s not unexpected based on airline hiring practices. So when the airlines are doing well, we see a dip in our full-time force and an increase in our part-time force. And then likewise, when the airlines are furloughing or not on a hiring boom, we see the exact opposite because people are looking for a steady paycheck. So what we’re trying to do though is increase sessions. Our business model for the entire Air Force Reserve Command is a 70/30 mix. So 70% of all AFSCs, we prefer to take them from active duty and thank you very much for training them because it’s a dollar issue.

If I’m 30% non-prior service, that’s a much more manageable bill on our behalf. The same holds for our pilot force. Ideally we want 70%. Well, right now overall for the Air Force Reserve, we’re doing about 67, 68% prior service. We need to boost those numbers up. One of the things we’re trying to do is increase the amount of pilot accessions specifically coming over. Currently, 70% of eligible pilots from the active duty come to the Air Force Reserve, which is excellent. It’s right on our business model, but I’d like to see it increase. So when I talk about some of the initiatives and why we’re trying to do this with General Spain, he says, “Are you just being greedy?” And I’m like, “Hell yeah, I’m being greedy.” This is a return on investment for the Air Force for the enterprise. So some deeper numbers into that 70.

So about 70% come a year, and that’s about 225 pilots. So when you have a ten-year active duty service commitment and you are an F-35 pilot and they’ve spent over $30 million training you and you decide to leave or not to take the bonus, mind you, the airlines are giving conditional job offers to pilots not signing the bonus two years prior to their active duty service commitment expiring. So it’s that point now that we’re involving ourselves with those potential accessions.

If I get somebody after the ten-year point into the Air Force Reserve Command, the likelihood that they’ll stay to the 20-year point, 90%, I’m sorry, 91% will stay to the twenty-year point, 86% will stay to the 30-year point. So now we’re really talking about a return on investment for the money spent, the training and the experience that was involved in those pilots. So what we’re trying to do is we’ve got a couple initiatives that we’re working.

The first is a pilot concierge cells. So my goal, like I said, is to get to 80, 90% of pilots assessed, pilot concierge cell, it’s brand new. It’s down the road at ARPC. It’s a handful of pilots. So expect as you’re walking into the Gaylord on Sunday and you see a line of 26 people to check into the hotel, but on the right you see Platinum Elite, “Please come this way.” And I walk over there and they’re like, “General Healy, can I get you a Prosecco and upgrade you and maybe gave you a thousand points?” Yes to all. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do now. So we have a team of pilots that are actually shepherding through people who might be coming over to make sure that there’s no barriers to that accession. Another thing we’re doing, it’s a pilot program. It’s called TFS2, Total Force Shared Service and General Spain, and I just signed off on it.

If you’ve got a ten-year active duty service commitment, I’ve promised that I won’t poach prior to the seven and a half year point, but if an individual identifies that they’re not going to sign the bonus, we’ve got an ability now to take, for instance, at Charleston, if you’re at a base where the active and reserve component fly the same mission set, the 10th year of that active duty service commitment can now be in the reserve command. You switch patches and you’re a reservist.

The caveat is that you owe that capacity to that active duty squadron so that there’s no loss of capacity for the active duty. If that individual gets a job in the airlines and goes to training, then it’s like the, I don’t know if it’s a thing anymore, but my mother had to co-sign a loan for my first car. The unit has to co-sign that loan for that person for that year. So the unit is responsible for meeting that capacity requirement. It’s going to free up pilot slots for the active duty. It’s going to free up PME and it’s going to increase that accession rate hopefully to get to a 91% retention rate for 20 years, 86 or higher retention rate to 30. I got you to 20 seconds.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Last word to you, General, if you want it.

Gen. John Lamontagne:

General Stutzriem, thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to have a good discussion here with the team. I’ll say this is all about the Airmen in the flights, in the squadrons and the wings across both of our formations. They have that strong warrior ethos just like you talked about. And we owe them the ability to be able to sense and make sense of the threats, take advantage of some opportunities and defend themselves from those threats. And we’re looking to set the conditions for them to not just survive, but to thrive in combat. And that’s what we’re focused on going forward.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Tremendous discussion today. On behalf of the Air & Space Forces Association, we’re behind you a thousand percent. Call us if you need anything. It will help where we can. Ladies and gentlemen, round of applause, please.