Keynote Address—Innovating Faster: Acquisition Transformation

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

Dr. Troy Meink:

Thanks for the AFA for bringing us together once again here in Colorado. It’s great to be here today. There’s been a lot going on. Looking forward to talking to you a bit about it today. Also I’ve been pretty excited to say the least over the last couple weeks. For the first time in the 10 months I’ve been on the job, most of the key leadership in the department is now in place. So I’ll start with a couple of hails and then one farewell. First, welcome to our new Chief of Staff, General Wilsbach. Great to have him on board, Cruiser. So the focus he has already brought to the fundamental mission of the Air Force is impressive. We are lucky to have him on board flying, fixing, and fighting for our entire Air Force. So welcome aboard. Also as of two weeks, welcome to the new Vice Chief of the Staff, General Johnny Lamontagne. His extensive mobility experience will be critical to the team and it’s great to have you on board. Also welcome to the new Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Chief Wolfe. So are you picking up the sense that there has been quite a bit of change in the last three or four months? So that’s great. So his focus on support of the enlisted forces is already making a difference, so great to have you on board. Finally, a big welcome to the key civilian leadership that has come on board over the last few months. Now I know it’s been a little bit longer than that, Matt, but welcome to you as well. And you know, salty, benign, not exactly new, but really glad to have you as well. Okay, but I’d also like to give one farewell to Lieutenant General Bauernfeind as he finishes out his tenure at the Academy. Over the three decades he’s been in service, he has demonstrated a deep dedication to the mission and the Airmen behind it. Thank you for all you’ve done. Your legacy won’t be forgotten, so thanks Tony. Appreciate it.

So this afternoon I’d like to touch on a few things. First, an update on my priorities after being in the job for almost a year. Mostly the same, but one change or addition. Secondly, I want to highlight some of our successes over the last year. You’ve already heard a little bit about that, but I’m going to do some more of it. I expect you’re going to hear a lot of that. And finally, I’ll spend most of my time talking about acquisition transformation, which I’m sure everybody is looking forward to talking about.

So I’ll start with priorities. They remain pretty much the same. Modernization, readiness, people. Our fundamental mission also stays the same, defend the homeland and deter all adversaries. However, the world, as we know, continues to evolve. Defending the homeland includes the entire hemisphere, from violent extremists to drug trafficking to border security, missile defense, then of course our primary mission, nuclear deterrence. From a conventional deterrence perspective, we remain focused on China. Last year we executed REFORPAC, the largest exercise in Indo-Pacific theater in our department’s history. China continues to expand and modernize its military and at an extremely fast pace, making deterrence in the Indo-Pacific our biggest challenge by far. Given that threat environment, the Air Force and the Space Force must be ready at any time for any threat across the entire spectrum of conflict. And here’s how I see the change. We can’t think about modernization and readiness as an either/or. That will not work. We have to do both simultaneously, along with a focus on production and sustainment. All those come with different challenges. We must be ready to fight tonight, but we also have to be ready to fight next week, next month, next year, next decade. That’s what our nation has asked of us for the last 250 years and that’s what we will continue to provide into the future. So just look at what we’ve accomplished over the last year. First and foremost, we got the mission done. Just look at Midnight Hammer, absolute resolve. Can’t go into the details here, but it had a fantastic discussion this morning and a different session on that. It’s just still the complexity of what we did there, I think the general public, I think even a lot in the services don’t really fully understand. It was truly amazing. And that kind of, like I said, that kind of success does not just happen. You have trained hard every day on console, on the flight line, or at the range. From department level all the way down to base level exercise and everything in between. You’ve been pushing hard to stay ready and I thank you. And we’ve also made significant progress in both modernization and production. And production actually is one of the things that I way underestimate coming into the job. I didn’t fully appreciate how many challenges we were having getting production up in many of the weapon systems. And it’s also one of the, one of President Trump’s priority. That is reviving America’s industry base after really decades of neglect. As part of that, we are supercharging the defense industrial base. In 2025, we started to ramp up production aggressively. F-35s, F-15EXs are delivering at a faster rate than ever. Now, not as fast as we need and want, but faster than they have in the past. B-21 is doing well and we recently reached an agreement to ramp production capacity. Same story for munitions where we are boosting production fast. Sentinel is definitely moving in the right direction. We put an immense amount of work into restructuring that program over the last 18 months and now we are executing rapidly. The testing program for the missile is proceeding well. We’ve put, we’ve also put a full booster together for the first time and we’re planning a pad launch next year in 2027. The infrastructure side of Sentinel will end up being one of the largest public works projects since the Minuteman program in the 60s and this is a huge, huge challenge. Our collaboration with the Sentinel DERPM, General White, who sits just a few doors down from me, has let us accelerate across all of these efforts and I’m super happy where we are. CCA, F-47, and our other aircraft programs are also making incredible progress. CCA in particular has two prototypes flying and we’re already flying autonomous test missions, which is just amazing. On the space front, we launched more rockets and put more capability into orbit than ever before. It was amazing how much we did last year in space. And we continue to improve our space demand awareness as we increase our commercial partnerships and field new systems like DARK and look at replacing GSAP down the road. We are now delivering proliferated space architectures, including some in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office, where I used to work. To take full advantage of the large constellations we’ll have on orbit, the old manual ways are not going to cut it. We need to automate virtually all aspects of operating and orchestrating satellite constellations. That’s where another big success story comes in. Progress on the DAF battle network. A key part of our vision is to fuse sensor data across the entire Department of War to deliver tracks and targets. Over the last few years, we’ve built out the necessary software, hardware, and network infrastructure. Now it’s time to test it. To that end, the DAF is launching a series of experiments we’re calling Ringleader. We’re using live data from our new proliferated space systems and other sensors to track targets at speed and scale. That’s the key part, speed and scale. We’re also inviting other services and industry partners to bring their technologies and ideas to see what works best. If you step back to look at all the things we’ve accomplished, you’ll see it’s been a remarkable year. I’m incredibly proud of everything this team has done.

Now, on to acquisition transformation. So I truly believe we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do the things that we need to do to make acquisition work down the road, maintain our advantage, and secure our national security. We will get this right. Last year, Secretary Hegseth announced a number of high-level changes creating the warfighting acquisition system. We’ve also gotten great support from the Hill, particularly Chairman Wicker, Chairman Rogers, and many, many other members of Congress. The Department of the Air Force is moving rapidly to take advantage of the offered flexibility. We do not want to pass this up. Our focus is to deliver mission-effective capabilities faster, and to do that we must innovate faster than our adversaries. The entire acquisition enterprise is doing the hard work from the top all the way down through the workforce to make the changes that are necessary to do this job. I’ve always believed you need three things to be successful in delivering capability of the joint force. You need to have the talent, empowerment, and the right resources. I’m going to talk about two of these today, empowerment and resources. So let’s start with empowerment. A lot of discussion on this topic, basically authorities in some ways, but authorities are not necessarily, authorities are necessary, but they are not sufficient to fully empower a team. Let’s say that again, authorities are necessary, but they’re not sufficient to fully empower the team. I’ve run a number of high-risk programs in my career, and I’ve actually been told, fortunately not by my direct boss, but I’ve actually been told, “Fine, go ahead and do it, but if it doesn’t work, you’re done.” That is the opposite of empowerment. That doesn’t work. We can give our people all the authorities we can think of, but unless the team feels they have our support, nothing is going to change. This is ultimately a leadership challenge for all of us. The good news is that the president, Sec War, Deputy Sec War, on down to the ranks, is pushing the right way, and I think Congress is as well, at least for the most part. In the past, we’ve tried a few different organizational structures in an attempt to increase acquisition performance. The Rapid Capability Office, which has been very successful, SDA, also successful, and then the Program Executive Officers, which we have today. So what we are doing now is taking the things that have worked from all of those models and putting them together into a single construct and delivering that and applying it across the entire department. Not one or two little stovepipes, centers of excellence. We’re going to do it across the department. We’re moving to basically two models of how we’re going to manage portfolios. One is a direct reporting portfolio manager, or DRPM. I think we have one or two of them today. I think Dale’s here, and I think General Guetlein might be here. Which report basically directly to the Deputy Secretary of War. The other is the Portfolio Acquisition Executives, or PAEs. Both represent real change in the critical need to empower those responsible for delivering capability to the field. I intend to closely model the authorities of our PAEs after the DRPMs wherever possible, to include having some of the programs report directly to me if necessary. So what are those authorities going to look like? We are moving support functions directly under the PAEs. You’ll also see more ability to make requirements and program level baseline trades at the PAE level. Example, we’ve delegated about 85% of our contracting authority to the PAE’s chief of contract. Doesn’t seem like a big deal. That is a huge deal and the ability to get stuff done quickly. We’re working with Congress to get PAEs more resource flexibility, consolidated program elements, and increased reprogramming thresholds to make them much more flexible and adaptive. Now this of course has to come with the right level of transparency to our oversight bodies. We need to make sure what we’re doing is visible. That’s critically important. But there’s also more to come. We are working to streamline and delegate similar authorities in airworthiness, personnel, foreign military sales, security facilities, and more. We’re taking a holistic look at the problem to make sure we get it right. So that’s more or less the down and in piece of how the PAEs will work. Now for the kind of the up and out piece of requirements and resources. For the PAEs to do the job effectively, they need to know what problem they are supposed to solve and how they’re going to pay for it. Not only this year, but in the five-year plan. To do that, they need to work closely with our requirements and resource functions. Historically, we struggled getting a clear picture of how priorities from across all of our mission areas integrate together. Believe it or not, I actually get asked regularly about who owns a priority list for the two services. There’s been a lot of discussions over the past two years about how to do that and how that integration is going to work. And we’ve learned some lessons from those efforts. Today we’re moving towards really a couple of new models. One on the air side, we are rewiring A57s to A57 to move faster and make sure that our resources match our enterprise priorities. A57 next will be led by the Chief Modernization Officer who, among other roles, will integrate priorities from across the MAJCOMs and service elements to be the single source of modernization investment priorities. On the space side, an expanded Space War Fighting Analysis Center will fill a similar role. The objective force that they will design will be critical as the Space Force expands even faster in the next few years.

So to wrap things up, I just want to reiterate this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, really once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to fundamentally reshape our acquisition system and we really need to get this right. If we want to maintain our national security going forward and keep ahead of all adversaries, we have to get this right. We’ve also done some incredibly impressive things over the last year and it’s always thanks to our Airmen, Guardians, and civilians on the team that we’ve made that possible. I am super impressive. Those on the ops side have pushed hard to execute the largest exercise in our history and flawlessly executed operation missions across the globe. On the modernization side, our efforts are only accelerating and are really starting to pay off. No matter how much things change, one thing is constant. The talent we have in and across our department. It continues to amaze me on a daily basis. Thank you for all you do. Fly Fight Win, Semper Supra. Thank you.

But we’re not quite done. Burt, you want to come up? We’ll have a conversation.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary. That was very informative and I really appreciate you spending the time to explain some of this stuff to us. There’s a lot. It’s been a busy year and a lot been happening. Of all the changes as you just laid out, and you can talk either in terms of the acquisition or overall, what do you think has made the biggest impact so far? How have you seen, what kind of successes have you seen from some of the changes you all have enacted?

Dr. Troy Meink:

On the acquisition side, you really have to do all the things that we talked about. You can’t just fix one piece. You really do it across the board. You need to make sure you structure these PAEs in a way that they have the right talent, the right authorities, and then you got to work the rest of the requirements and resource process. And then the support function, the talent, to make sure that we’re growing the talent to do these jobs. I mean, I had detailed discussions on the space side with General Saltzman, hours and hours of discussion how we’re going to grow the workforce. And part of the challenge there is the Space Force is, percentage-wise, is growing so fast, right? They just have so much to really get that success. So I think the talent people, even though I think the Air Force as well as the service is going to grow significantly, they have a lot larger base to work from. So I think all those have to come together to be successful. So I think there’s a lot, always have a lot of debate. I sometimes look at the social media comments, right? Same old, same old. We’ve seen this every seven to ten years. We’ve seen this. But I think what people miss is that we actually do know how to do this, right? It’s not like there’s not existence proofs out there where this works. The RCOs have worked very effective, not only in the Air Force, but in other places as well. SDA is just getting going, but it looks very promising. Not Space Domain Awareness, the Space Defense Agency in this case. I came out of the NRO, the towers at the NRO operate very similar to how the PAs operate that we’re talking about. So it’s not like we don’t have successful existence proofs of this work. It’s just we’ve never really done what it takes to apply that across the entire department, across both services, right? That’s the challenge. Because you can see in those areas where in even some cases we’ve applied it partially. I would argue one of the things, an F-47, what we’ve done with some of the B-21 work initially, they did a lot of these things and those programs benefited from that. So it’s really just kind of taking an enterprise look at this and applying it. We have just phenomenal support from the Secretary and Deputy Secretary. I mean we have some very unique individuals and it is amazing how much progress we can make when we have their support.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Well it sounds like in that vein that the PAE has a lot more authorities, like you said, and a lot of it comes in combining the acquisition and the contracting together and being able to control some of the funding and where the budgetary authorities go to, right?

Dr. Troy Meink:

Yeah.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Is that the biggest difference between a PEO and a PAE?

Dr. Troy Meink:

On the Air Force side of the House, a lot of the PAs are very similar to the PEO structure. But yes, now they have all the contracting, finance, all those people directly under the authorities of the PAE, which makes a huge difference. Also, like I said, the resourcing, how you manage the resources. Now again, they still have to work with a larger enterprise and so that’s outside the PAEs and we’re doing a lot to look at how you dramatically simplify the requirements, resource, PAE discussion. But we really simplified that down and keep it at a very high level so that those discussions and those decisions can happen quickly. Also, expanding the scope of the PAEs. Right now, the PEOs kind of end after they hand over, once they go into production, they hand over the sustainment and everything. Now the PAEs are going to be more involved, not just in the development, but also in the sustainment part of the challenge. And I’ve seen that work very effectively to where when you have to worry about sustainment when you’re doing the development, you spend a lot more time making sure that those things are sustainable. And we’ve seen areas where that was not done and the results weren’t great.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense when you’re responsible for the life cycle instead of just throwing it over the transom.

Dr. Troy Meink:

Right. And there’s always going to be teaming. It’s not going to be all or one. And there’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all for all the PAEs. Some are very different than others in what they’re building and what they’re developing. So you’re gonna have to tear out a bit for every one of the PAEs, both on the Space Force side and the Air Force side. And they’re going to be different. The Space Force doesn’t really have a scenario where they have depot level maintenance of thousands of aircraft. Right. So theirs are going to be a little bit different. But the general focus will be that kind of empowerment and ability to move and adapt flexibly. And again, you know, the key thing is when you do empower the PAEs and you empower the program managers, the way we’re talking about, you got to make sure you have the right talent in place. That’s a lot of responsibility. A lot of responsibility.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Well, you’ve made the shift from about seven or eight so far and you’ve got a few more to go.

Dr. Troy Meink:

So yeah, there’s going to be…

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

What kind of timeline are we looking at?

Dr. Troy Meink:

I mean, we’re still refining it. We’re looking at… it’s probably going to be a nine on the Space Force side of the house. It’s going to be 18, I think, is where we’re at on the Air Force side of the house. I think we’re pretty certain we’ll be at 18. There’s two have been put in place on the Space Force side and five have been put in place on the Air Force side. And part of what we’re doing is we want to kind of let it run through one budget cycle a little bit before we instantiate it across the entire service. You know, there’s going to be some things we’re going to say, “Hey, that was wrong,” or “We need to do more here.” We want to kind of get a little bit of learning on both services before we put that out to all of them. But we’ve kind of already identified them and so within the next year or so, it’ll probably be within the next year, 18 months, at the very longest for the tail end ones.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Okay. So let me ask a question on the DRPMs. That sounds like a PAE on massive steroids and they’re reporting directly to the DepSec War. But you have General White pretty close to you, right?

Dr. Troy Meink:

And General Guetlein isn’t all that far away either, by the way.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

So you’re directly involved in all the issues that they are working. It’s not just their divorce from the Air Force or the Space Force.

Dr. Troy Meink:

No, it’s not. I know there’s been a lot of concern. I read a number of articles and others about how this is all going to work. I think what is missed sometimes is a lot of these programs, or oversight in the third floor of the Department of War. And to a degree, the Deputy Secretary has pulled a lot of those authorities and discussions up to his level to make those decisions quickly on those really no-fail kind of endeavors. And the PAEs, we’re really looking at doing a lot of that too, is kind of consolidating down and pulling those reporting up so that that decision chain is much, much, much, much shorter. There will be a few differences, but in many cases, there’s a lot of the same kind of authorities that the DURPM has that we’re going to give the PAEs as well. And you’re not going to do it, there’s a reason why they didn’t do DURPMs across the board, right? The deputy only has so much time in the day. So same thing on my level. I mentioned I might bring some of them up. There might be one or two portfolios that, just because of the criticality of the executing, kind of a no-fail, that I’ll probably be more involved in. But I can’t, you know, none of the senior leadership can be in the weeds on all of them. So it’ll be a balance, right? It won’t be a one-size-fits-all for all of them. But I think the deputy and Dale and General Guetlein have been very collaborative and most of the discussions, it’s a team. Because, you know, and Dale, you can jump in here if you want to correct me, but the programs that sit in there are the core Air Force programs, right? These are the future. We see it just like the deputy. These are no-fail programs. We need to streamline down kind of the bureaucracy associated with how we have traditionally executed them and really focus on them. Because again, they’re no-fail programs. But, you know, we have to do the same thing in the PAEs, right? I mean, we don’t do anything that we’re okay to fail with, right? In the end, these things all have to deliver. And so there’s going to be a big focus on trying to do as much as that streamlining and helping out the PAEs as we can.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Okay, well let me ask you a two-part question. So the first part is, as you made these changes in the PAEs and you look to the future, how is that going to affect programs that are currently in production right now and how will that affect those kind of programs?

Dr. Troy Meink:

I think it’ll vary. You know, like I mentioned, we’re expanding kind of the authorities of PAEs to go, not take over all of sustainment, that’s not what we’re talking about, but extend down in sustainment. So even the programs that are in production, there will be some, they’re in production and in sustainment, right? You will see some changes in how that works. And then of course, the newer programs, you’ll see a lot of change in how that works, right? And the programs that have just been stood up in the earlier mid-phases of development, you’ll see a lot of the impact of those. But it’ll vary. I mean, some, you know, a missile that’s been in production that doesn’t have a sustainment tail, you probably won’t see much change there, but you will see it on most programs.

 

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

How about then if things that are moving down the road and all of a sudden new technology emerges, is this going to also help streamline the ability to get that new technology into current production or things that are already fielded?

Dr. Troy Meink:

So I think that’s a little bit different. I mean, it’s all part of kind of what we’re doing in acquisition and integration, but it’s really kind of separate from, I would argue, from acquisition transformation and what we’re doing. We’re doing a lot in areas. I know in some of the new, you know, down at Eglin, some of the new weapons systems are developing. They’re trying to do it very modular so you can change out components more easily than we have in the past, change out a different sensor or a different seeker, do those sorts of things. A lot of that has to do with having an open architecture. I know where we saw that on the B-21 and I know they really, really pushed it hard on the F-47 is to have a government-controlled open architecture so that we could bring in different vendors. That only helped for bringing in new technology easier, but it also helped for ensuring that we had more competition, right? We opened up competition to more vendors, not just more competition, but a larger set of vendors could participate in that competition. I think that is a huge, huge success. So it’s not necessarily acquisition transformation, but that is some of the things that I know the team, both on the space work side and the Air Force side, have been working to try to allow that to happen, particularly when so much of the systems we have now are software-driven. I mean, even though the F-35 has been built a long time, it’s a heavy software program. One of the key schedule and other challenges on those platforms is delivering software. So having an open architecture where you could have more participants play and chunk it into pieces is the way we’re going across the board.

 

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Good. So when we…

Dr. Troy Meink:

By the way, having munitions that are a lot cheaper and you can use them or throw them away makes upgrading them and bringing in a new technology a lot, lot easier than a really expensive piece of hardware, right?

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah. Yeah. The magazine depth is really important as we look to the future and some of the fights that we might anticipate, right?

 

Dr. Troy Meink:

Yeah. I was actually surprised at how much trouble we were having, and not just the ramp up of production we are having, but the contractors were struggling to get to the production rates that we already had in place, right? Just weren’t meeting the production numbers. I think it’s… I’ve talked to all industry here, so I’m not going to poke anybody here publicly, but doing the investments to… And you get to the president all the way down, doing the investments to increase, update the facilities, increase the production rates to support national security. We’ve really let that atrophy and that needs to change. And I think we’re having really good discussions and the government has to commit to longer term deals too, which has been a big push for the deputy. We’ve been working at a lot on multiple. The government needs to commit to these long-term deals and we’re trying to do that at wherever we can, but industry is going to have to respond. They’re going to have to do what they need to increase and sustain those production rates and meet the specs.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Well, without talking really about what happened this morning, but a lot of the comments from industry was that they were welcoming these changes and they were happy to be more on the team and looking forward to helping making this all happen as we move into the future. And that’s the impression I got from some of their comments today.

Dr. Troy Meink:

I think that’s true. In almost every case, I think the proof’s in the pudding. A lot of good discussions going along. We’re starting to make some of these long-term deals. Now both sides have to deliver. And that’s that’s hard, right? Particularly in some of the newer systems where we’re just trying to get them into production. That’s even harder. I always said that the easy part is building the prototype. It’s turning that prototype into something you can actually build is the hard part, right? And actually building it is a hard part.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

So as we stood up the Space Force over, you know, as they started and then over the last six or seven years, it seems like a lot of their procedures and the way they looked at the world was with this kind of mindset. Flexible, empowering, pushing stuff down. So it seems like this kind of philosophy would be readily accepted by them. They have less bureaucracy and a more culture. I mean…

Dr. Troy Meink:

Somebody is smiling and shaking his head, yes. But I don’t know if I believe that. I think that’s probably not true.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

You don’t think so?

Dr. Troy Meink:

That was a joke, everybody. Okay. That was a joke. I just couldn’t let Salty enjoy himself too much. I think there is in some ways the small size of the service is a disadvantage, but in some cases it’s really an advantage, right? And I think you’re kind of mentioning that right now. Also, I think part of it is the space environment has changed so massively. I mean, was 160 launches last year, Salty? 168? Something like that. I forget what the number was. Never in the history of the country, history of the world, has anybody even touched something like that. So it’s almost like we’re forced to be a lot… They’re being forced to be a lot more flexible. I think they’re doing so. I mean, what they’re doing with SBI, I didn’t mention that, but the Space Interceptor Program, you know, it holds, you know, again, they’re in the phase where got a lot of competition, a lot going on. It looks pretty exciting, but the press is going to be putting, they got to get these things, they got to get it right and get it in production. And the big thing is, I think sometimes we forget and we’ve forgotten it in some of the munitions where we’ve pushed them into production, pushed actually prototypes or R&D things into production. The costs are too high, right? It doesn’t matter if we have an SBI interceptor that works perfectly under all conditions. If it’s too expensive that I can, and I can’t build enough of them to be effective, it’s a failed program, right? Even if it does everything perfect, you know, that’s two, three times more than what I can afford, or even twice as more, it’s a failed program, right? And we’ve got to get that right. And I know the team is in the contractor industry base is really great there and looking at how they can do things and drive those costs down. But that’s critically important. And I think both services are being very flexible there, but you’re right, the Space Force, probably a little bit more just because of its small size, right? Yeah. But I’m seeing it across the board.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah. And on the other hand, we’re trying to increase the size of the Space Force too, because they need more of everything because the job is so big.

Dr. Troy Meink:

Yeah, I mentioned that before, the Air Force picking up, you know, a bunch of work, maybe only being 10, 15%, or the Space Force picking up a bunch of work, it may double the number of acquisitions they have. I’m not saying don’t take that as that’s what’s going to happen. But from a percentage wise, there’s no question the Space Force is going to grow quite a bit compared to the other services, at least, I’m assuming it will, given the focus on what we’re trying to do. No foretelling budgets, but it looks like there’s a lot of push, even in the 26th bill to dramatically increase what the Space Force is doing. So it’s going to be hard left, right? I think they’re positioned to do so. They’re really working hard on it, but it’s going to be hard left.

 

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

So as these changes get enacted, you know, and I know that you had a lot of discussions with the leadership, you guys went down into the Worker Force and talked to them about these kind of things. But how do you sustain this over time? Are you guys thinking about how we bring people in, how we train them throughout their careers, how they educate? Is all of those things still in work?

 

Dr. Troy Meink:

Yeah, a lot of… again, Salty smiling at me. A lot of texting that until late last night. Yeah, I think across the board, again, just due to the growth that’s going on in the Space Force, there’s a lot of, there’s been a lot of discussion about how we make sure that we are growing and maintaining the talent. If people in these program offices and the PAEs, you know, can see how important the mission is, and they have the flexibility to really make a difference, retention is a lot better, right? And the services, neither the Air Force or the Space Force have a recruiting problem at all, right? This is, I think one year during COVID, we did hit our goals, but other than that, I think we’ve been, the services, both services have been great. So that will have to be a focus as well. Well, I think we’re in pretty good position on that.

 

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Yeah, we’re kind of coming toward the end of our time here, so let me just switch onto another subject. You mentioned last year when you came on about, you were a little surprised about the readiness of the force and the issues that they were facing. How are you looking at it now? And how are you looking at it as we move into the future?

Dr. Troy Meink:

Yeah, the first, I think the first three trips I was on was, I think I went to Global Strike on the Air Force side, Global Strike, Air Mobility with General Lamontagne, and then ACC with Cruiser, and I was shocked. I mean, I go to the numbers, but I was like, this is just unbelievable, right? The state of it. And it is a combination of, again, we under-invested. There’s no question about that, we under-invested. But just as big is we were delivering weapon systems, and the contractors were, they were delivering hardware that was not meeting the lifetime expectancies of various components, right? You know, even, so that aggravates the under-investment problem, right? When components on the aircraft are not lasting as long as they should last, and you’ve already been kind of aggressive in your assumptions on what your maintenance costs are going to be, those two just really put you into a hole, and that’s what we did. And I think that the good, the very good news is, you know, a number of conversations earlier with the Secretary and the Deputy, and they saw it, and they are supporting a significant increase. Again, as we go forward, budget’s always uncertain, but as we go forward, a pretty significant increase in readiness across the board. And now the contractors are going to have to, they’re going to have to step up, and I’ve already seen some of the, some really good actions on their part, but step up and make the investments they need to invest, and then make sure the parts are meeting their life expectancy. And then, and then just as importantly, as we build out the new systems, make sure that they are easier to sustain, right? Easier to maintain so that it’s easier to keep those readiness levels higher. So it’s, I mean, I’m not something I knew coming into the job, but I’ve been coached quite a bit on that, is, you know, those readiness curves take a while, those availability curves take a while, take a while to roll over, right? You can’t just snap your fingers and do a step function, right? But I think we’re on the right path. And then I also see there are some technologies, I think how we do maintenance and scheduling maintenance, and you know, some of the AI tools that are used in industry now, I think we can apply more of those to help improve the availability of the aircraft as well. But there’s definitely a lot of focus on that, definitely a lot of focus on that, which is what was needed. Yeah, I think, and I think people just — I’m sorry to go on — people, they see us do these, these exercises, right? These, these are these big operations. Aircraft work just fine. Yeah. But there was an implication to generating that power. There’s an implication to the long-term availability to do that again. And we got to make sure we fix that. And the team’s doing a great job.

 

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

And communicating that with Congress and the other folks in it. Yeah.

Dr. Troy Meink:

I think it looks to me like we’re gonna get a lot of support in that area.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

That sounds great. Well, we’re coming to the end of the time, but you have an enormous amount of people in here. There’s a bunch of Guardians and Airmen in industry. What is it that you want them to remember from today? And what kind of message do you want to leave them with?

Dr. Troy Meink:

So again, I, we always say it, because it’s true. You know, we have a phenomenal team, the Airmen and Guardians, the civilians and what they’re able to generate, and the amount of power. Matter of fact, I was asked by a very senior leader, how is the US able to do this, but other countries can’t? Right? You’re talking about, you know, a Midnight Hammer or Absolute Resolve, right? How are we able to generate those? Because we have an extremely well-trained, talented workforce with equipment that works pretty darn good. And we have to continue that, right? We have to push that hard, because some of the operations we have right now are not the operations that we’re really concerned about in China or other scenarios where it’s going to be a lot bigger effort. So we have to improve that readiness to make sure we deter against that. And then we have to make sure that we are doing what’s required, both from a production and a new development perspective. Otherwise, we will not be able to maintain that advantage. I am super positive right now for what’s going on. You know, we’re getting good support from the Hill. We’re getting good support from the President on down. But we have to execute, right? We have to execute, but I’m confident we can do so. So thank you, everybody.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.)

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.