Keynote Address—Fly and Fix: Empowered by Airmen
February 23, 2026
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
Well, good afternoon, Airmen and Guardians. It’s great to be here today, and I want to start by thanking the Air & Space Forces Association, especially General Burt Field for hosting us, and for the work that AFA does every day to support our Airmen and Guardians and their families. Your advocacy and partnership matter, especially today. Well, this is my first AFA Conference as your Chief of Staff, and I’m really excited to be here. As an Air Force, flying and fixing aircraft is the most important thing we do. Why do I say that? Because when we fix, we can fly. It allows us to get the reps and sets we need to build proficiency and combat credibility. And when our Airmen are prepared, we provide deterrent value. If that deterrence fails, we are ready to fight and win decisively. Regardless of whether you’re a maintainer, an air crew, or from any other career field, your efforts are geared to enable this core purpose. I have set three priorities for our service to accomplish this main purpose of flying and fixing, the first being readiness. Without it, we would fail the Air Force, the Joint Force, and the American people. The next priority is modernization, which is what we need to maintain our air dominance tomorrow and into the future. Our third priority is taking care of Airmen and families because combat capability is built on people. These priorities keep us focused on what truly matters. Today’s environment is complex and ambiguous. Our adversaries are designing their strategies around speed, speed of decision, movement, and mass. They believe they can move faster than we can respond, complicate our choices, and force us into reaction instead of initiative. They are betting that distance, complexity, and bureaucracy will slow us down. It’s a serious challenge, and it demands urgency and unity of effort. Fly and fix is not only our purpose, but also how senior leaders create options for the President. We put that on display recently by playing a critical role in Operation Absolute Resolve, just like we did with Operation Midnight Hammer. We have proven time and again the capacity and the capability to strike anytime, anywhere. This success starts with daily competence. The reps and sets we must, the reps and sets must be done right by professionals who refuse to accept average as good enough. I’d like to introduce you to an Airman who will share with you the Air Force doesn’t just win because one person is exceptional. We win because every Airman executes discipline all day, every day. Lieutenant Colonel William “Skate” Parks is one of those Airmen. He led his F-16 squadron on a deployment last year. Skate’s family has a long history of military service spanning every decade since World War II. Skate found himself and his wingmen engaged in combat. His actions that night over the desert earned him both a silver and a bronze star. Let’s hear more about that from Skate.
[Video] Lt. Col. William “Skate” Parks:
Kind of a big mission with a lot of turning pieces, dual strike locations and targets as we’re integrating both suppression of enemy air defenses, strike assets, and our defensive counter air assets in the Red Sea. Are we getting the people airborne, our war fighters airborne? Are we getting the repetition, the readiness, and the training they need so that in the moment they can execute? But you can’t do that without the second part which is the fixing. If I don’t have the maintenance team getting everything prepared and getting the aircraft ready and able to fly months and years prior to build those repetitions, it’s nearly impossible to go and execute that night. It’s getting airborne and working with the C2 agencies to make sure you get to the right place at the right time. With the tankers, making sure that you’re receiving that gas. As you move into country, now it’s on you. You’re fighting, you’re making sure that the strike assets that have come across from hours away are there at the exact time to hit the target and that they’re supported to execute that mission. It’s having the command and control agencies back you up to help you survive. And with tanker crews accepting risk that they don’t normally accept to do for you because they know it’s right and they know it gets the mission done and it saves assets. It’s the fact that all of that is happening in the background and I don’t have to put a second thought to that and I can stay focused on the mission.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
When you hear Skate talk, notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t make it about himself. Skate understands that it’s far more than the F-16 pilot that ensures mission success. Instead, it was the collective effort it took to launch one combat sortie. Flying and fixing is about the maintainers generating the aircraft. The weapons troops loading with precision. Intel sharpening the picture and defenders securing the flight line. It’s tankers extending their range, planners stitching the timeline together, command and control assets communicating clearly and providing timely information to our shooters. It’s Airmen doing hard work so when the nation calls we don’t improvise, we fall back on our training and we execute. There are so many instances of teams that embody quiet, determined resolve every day. I immediately think of our missileers who are pivotal in providing credible deterrence for our Air Force. Our missile crews carry responsibility that never takes a day off. Their work isn’t dramatic because when they do it right, nothing happens. An adversary thinks twice and that’s the point. We place this burden on some of our youngest officers like Lieutenants Harrison Martin and Alyssa Vasquez. Both are relatively new to the Air Force, hailing from different parts of the country and were inspired to serve by their families. Lieutenant Martin has excelled winning the missile crew of the year. Lieutenant Vasquez won crew of the quarter twice. They prove their competence and hold each other accountable daily. I saw it back in November when I was at F.E. Warren. The missileers up there throughout our Air Force know their stuff and make the difficult look routine. Let’s watch.
[Video] 2 Lt. Alyssa Vasquez:
We’re continuously deployed every single day and we’re ready to fly the Minuteman III at any moment at the President’s orders. There are many aspects of our job that make it to where we’re the cornerstone of national defense.
[Video] Lt. Harrison Martin:
To me, it feels like we have the most important job in the Air Force. We’re the ones out there tripping out every single day owning that no-fail mission and it’s a responsibility like no other. – In the big picture, we’re in the fight 24/7, 365 and that fight is won every single day by holding our adversaries at bay with our nuclear deterrence.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
I know tripping out every day means something else. But in this case, it’s about the professionalism these Airmen execute every day when they make the trip out to the missile alert facilities. That is deterrence, disciplined, accountable and precise 24/7. And if that deterrence fails, their credibility is what allows us to fight and win. Both are in the audience today. Can Lieutenants Martin and Vasquez please stand up? – I think it’s important at this juncture to define readiness. Each squadron in our Air Force has a specific mission. If the personnel in that unit can accomplish the mission, that squadron is ready. Anything else is unacceptable. – One of our outstanding Master Sergeants from the 823rd Red Horse Squadron understands readiness. Master Sergeant Dylan Ashley is a standout leader as the Special Capability Superintendent and leads several Airmen in building, repairing and maintaining airfields. His team is always on call and got that call with less than a week’s notice to improve a vital airfield for the Joint Force. I’ll let him fill in the details.
[Video] Master Sgt. Dylan Ashley:
Five days, that’s the warning we had before we got the order to deploy to Puerto Rico. What followed was definitely not ideal conditions. It was degraded infrastructure, subpar equipment and Airmen who were young, they were motivated but no prior experience in milling over a plane, an airfield, and that’s what Red Horse exists to do. When the Air Force says fly and fix, Red Horse definitely makes it real. We are the force that moves first, builds fast and delivers access where none exists so airpower can deploy, sustain and dominate. No runway, no mission, we solved that problem. Puerto Rico proved it. Rapid global response, joint integration, mission success with no margin for failure. This squadron didn’t just restore an airfield, we enabled the Department of War to project airpower. That is the expectation and that is the standard of Red Horse. The legendary 823rd Red Horse Squadron stands ready any time, any place, whatever it takes.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
Don’t you just love his attitude, how he internalizes the unit mission and how he totally gets the big picture? Master Sergeant Ashley doesn’t just direct, he leads from the front. Dylan always feels at home getting the job done with his Dirt Boys and today we are able to get him out here in the audience with some of his teammates. Can Master Sergeant Ashley and the members of the 823rd please stand? – Well readiness looks different depending on your job. For some it means leading Airmen in the dirt. For others it means ensuring aircraft are ready to fly. When your job is ensuring the availability of aircraft with an average age of most grandparents, it becomes a little harder. Being a maintainer can sometimes feel thankless. You are fighting an uphill battle, planes will break, and there are routine maintenance and inspections that must occur. This is coupled with supply chain challenges, executing the daily training, let alone for a surge or a deployment. However, our maintainers constantly rise to the occasion. At all levels they move mountains to ensure the fleet is ready to fly. Generating the B-52 to fly regularly at Barksdale and Minot is exactly this type of readiness challenge. One of their superstar maintainers, Tech Sergeant Nikolis Hyatt brings his enthusiasm and expertise daily. Nicholas joined the Air Force not only for travel opportunities but because he wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself. Check it out.
[Video] Tech. Sgt. Nikolis Hyatt:
It takes a lot of initiative to be a good crew chief ’cause no one’s gonna look over your shoulder and tell you everything that you have to do. It’s on the crew chief to go through their forms every day and take out little write-ups that aren’t really grounding, but a good crew chief’s gonna spend his extra time, get his jet and make it the prettiest on the flight line. Our core mission is for a global strike. We can strike from anywhere. We prove it with our VTS, deploying to different locations from anywhere from a month to two months. My mission is to provide our maintainers with the best plan of action to fix any pilot-reported discrepancies and get that aircraft ready to go and strike anywhere and be ready.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
Tech Sergeant Hyatt thrives on turning broken jets into fully mission-capable aircraft. He loves the opportunity to mentor his Airmen so they are more than ready to accomplish the mission. Teams like his are driving readiness wins across Global Strike Command. At Global Strike Headquarters, the maintenance and logistics experts are working just as hard. They established the Fleet Maintenance Action Group to prioritize resources. The group draws on commercial aviation and industrial practices and has delivered striking returns. The command has seen a 43% increase in mission-capable B-52s. The concerted effort from the HQ down to the flight line is producing real results. Readiness stays at the forefront and always will. However, we need to do better as military leaders and industry to alleviate the challenge of generating and maintaining an aging fleet. Our long-term modernization decisions and acquisition strategies in the past have contributed to our readiness challenges today. That brings us to my next priority, modernization. We are making deliberate long-term decisions that secure our dominance. These decisions must be fully resourced to prevent us from passing today’s readiness challenges to tomorrow’s Airmen. Our modernization efforts are two-pronged. First, we will have fight tonight capability. We must guarantee that the joint force has air superiority. Delayed or drawn-out timeliness could limit our ability to do that, so getting platforms from concept to employment as quickly as possible is our focus. But we also need to be able to fight tomorrow, next month, next year, and next decade. As Secretary Meink said earlier, acquisition transform will unlock our workforce’s ability to deliver modernization and sustainment more effectively. Second, we are building agility and adaptability into these programs so they can stay relevant for a future fight. By taking a warfighter-centric approach and investing in things like government-owned, referenced architecture, we are better at communicating requirements. This gives programs the ability to evolve rapidly and to stay ahead of adversaries’ capabilities. Our major acquisition programs, like the one you see on the screen now, are reaping the benefits of this approach. The F-47, the world’s first sixth-generation fighter, remains on track to fly soon. The B-21 was delivered on schedule and will be on the ramp at Ellsworth in 2027. Additionally, we are embedding our operators and intel officers together to work directly with acquirers and testers and industry. This core team is shaping tactics and training now, so we hit the ground running. As Secretary Meink stated, Sentinel is now moving in the right direction with a pad launch planned next year. Collaborative combat aircraft development is progressing rapidly. From concept to prototype in 16 months to recently integrating inert weapons, the development team are moving much faster than the traditional program. Finally, the T-7 is not just replacing an aging aircraft, it’s modernizing pilot training, closing the digital gap, and producing aviators ready to fly the next-generation aircraft, like the F-15EX, which has undergone significant upgrades to increase payload interoperability and survivability. Getting our aviators into these platforms at the earliest opportunity is vital to maintaining our combat edge. While our major long-term acquisitions are clearly important, modernization and innovation on a smaller, more localized scale is just as critical. Our Airmen consistently and creatively work to solve real and immediate problems behind the scenes. These micro-innovators allow our force to react at the time of need. Let me highlight one of our total force micro-innovators from the Virginian Air National Guard Tech Sergeant John Willman V. John also takes pride in his current role in the Office of the Department of Air Force Chief Information Officer, where he likes to, in his own words, “take smart risks, fail forward, “and continually raise the bar “while driving my team to do the same.” As a career engineer, John spends his days understanding complex problems, then quickly devising solutions. Rapid prototyping is a daily task for him, and the F-22 community recently asked for his expertise with communications. Let’s hear it straight from John.
[Video] Tech. Sgt. John Willman:
The key behind it was to make it pilot-friendly, keep it simple, enable the multi-capable Airmen concept that we all talk about. We can take Airmen from other AFSCs and enable them to stand up a communication package. And so their gap there on capabilities was like at the form factor comm kit. The larger comm kits are fine for like air lift, but for the fighter community, their gap was not having to rely on combat comm or another unit being there, ’cause that may not always be the case, right? The feedback we got from them was, “Oh, this enabled us really well. “You know, we land, we got out, “we pulled down our mission data. “They gotta burn it to a disk, “and then they load it onto the computer, “and then they go.” When they came and said, “We wanna be able to do this on our own “and pull it down,” and it comes back to that multi-capable Airmen, allow the pilots to do what they need, pull the data, and just get up and go again, that was solving that gap there. But what I do day to day is, I just go out and find problems, and then take that problem and articulate it, and then figure out how we rapidly field a solution to solve the problem.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
A tech sergeant with a master’s degree in information technology and project management saw a communications gap, built a deployable tactical comms node, and delivered a capability in weeks. But he also did the hardest part. He made it pilot-friendly. That was no small feat. Well, when engineers and pilots work together, you know we’re onto something. Tech Sergeant Willman is in the audience today. Tech Sergeant Willman, can you please stand up? Some of the best modernization often comes from Airmen who understand the mission. And that’s how we build an Air Force ready to fight and win. I challenge all of us to operate more like Tech Sergeant Willman. But readiness is more than platforms and programs. It’s people, it’s families. It requires the same focus we apply to modernization. If we fail to take care of our Airmen and families, then everything else becomes fragile. We know our people are the most important part of the Air Force, and we must never lose sight of that. Looking out for your people is not the flashiest aspect of running a successful organization, but it is certainly the most critical. Without distinct focus on developing and caring for Airmen, our other priorities won’t fly. Our medical teams maintain a constant focus on the health of our Airmen. Most clinics have personnel that work tirelessly to ensure our medical needs and that of our families are taken care of. Overseas, the burden is even greater as there are frequently little to no options off base. Fortunately, we have Airmen like Captain Jessica Yett and Staff Sergeant Dewey Dang out of Kadena, leading the laboratory team. Captain Yett spent 16 years as an enlisted Airman before commissioning. She’s motivated by the team she leads and strives to help them and the Kadena populace. Staff Sergeant Dang grew up in Vietnam, then immigrated here and immediately began serving his new country. They have a combined 37 years of service taking care of Airmen and use that experience to resolve issues before they become big problems. Let’s watch.
[Video] Capt. Jessica Yett:
Back in September, we noticed our specimen packages were being held at multiple FedEx ports. And we reached out to other overseas labs and found out that their packages were stuck too. And it was causing an enormous backlog of international shipments at US FedEx ports nationwide.
[Video] Staff Sgt. Duy Dang:
Every single sample that we collect has to be delivered in a certain amount of time because of stability. Outside of that stability window, you will get inaccurate results. Then that means all of our specimens will be rejected. But the solution was just to put a tag on them, like a label that say Department of War Shipment, so that when US Customs or FedEx workers see those boxes, they recognize it right away and get them through. It’s a big issue, but the simple solution gets us there.
[Video] Capt. Jessica Yett:
Once we started having success with our packages clearing customs with the label Sergeant Dane created, other overseas labs across the Air Force and DHA implemented the labels as well, that our joint service members and their families get the quality healthcare they deserve while minimizing the impact to readiness for Indo-Pacom forces.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
This small medical group took the initiative, put the work in and found a solution. It has resulted in the processing and protection of 450 specimens weekly. Since they started this in September of 2025, that’s over 11,000 lab results that have been delivered on time. And that’s just at Kadena. The entire Pacific is now benefiting. That’s what taking care of Airmen and families looks like, solving problems and building conditions for sustained readiness. But let’s be clear, let’s be clear on something that taking care of Airmen and people is not just about improving quality of life, it’s about eliminating distractions so our Airmen can fully focus on the mission. Real care means preparing our teams for the rigors of combat. It means demanding realistic training that stretches them and builds confidence in controlled environments. Doing hard things together before we ever face the enemy is what forges the toughness and competence our Airmen will rely on when it matters most. The 23rd Special Tactics Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Blake Jones spends his days putting in maximum effort to prepare his special operations forces for conflict. He and his squadron understands there’s no easy path to becoming a proficient special operator. Check it out.
[Video] Lt. Col. Blake Jones:
I joined special tactics because I was seeking to be challenged and I was attracted to the mission and special operations within the Air Force. It’s a wide geographic range, it’s a wide mission set range, and that’s one of the things that is both challenging and also pretty rewarding about being in special tactics. It’s a community of doers and problem solvers that will continue to look at that as an, okay, let’s find a way. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, doesn’t mean you’re smiling and enjoying every time you’re working through the hard problems, but it’s a community that is constantly asked to do things like that because they continue to produce results year after year. Competence is king, so if you are competent in your job, you earn trust and confidence, not just the command team, but from the joint force. Pressure is a privilege, and what that means inside our community is, if it’s hard, if it’s challenging, if it’s stressful, if it’s just extremely taxing, it probably means you’re in a position that matters. That’s why we’re here. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, it’s hard, but that’s why we’re here and that’s why we stay and why we attract the people that we do.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:
Blake knows that the most demanding jobs are frequently the most rewarding, and that is why being a squadron commander has been his favorite job so far. It requires oftentimes pushing your people to accomplish things they don’t think were possible. It means building teams strong enough to uphold standards, hold each other accountable, and do hard things together. So let me close by tying these priorities together. We fly and fix to deter, and if necessary, fight and win. It is the reality for Airmen like Lieutenant Colonel Skate Parks and the missile crews standing watch and providing deterrence every day. Modernization and readiness should not just be metrics on a PowerPoint slide. It’s like Tech Sergeant Wilman bringing capability into the fight while being faster, smarter, and more resilient. Taking care of Airmen and families is a warfighting requirement enabled by professionals like Captain Yett and Staff Sergeant Dang, and by leaders who build climates where people can sustain the mission. That’s how we deter, modernize, stay ready, and take care of our teammates. This is our mission, our responsibility, and how we will deliver for our nation. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our great nation this year, it’s important that we honor and understand the heritage of our service. For more than 100 years, Airmen have stepped forward in moments of uncertainty, took risk, and changed the course of history. Medal of Honor recipients, visionary leaders, relentless innovators, quiet professionals who simply showed up every day and did difficult things. They didn’t start extraordinary, they became extraordinary through discipline, grit, and commitment. When you look at these photos behind me, I want you to ask yourself something. Do you see yourself? I see you up there. I see it in this room. I see it in the Airmen we highlighted today. I see it in the way you carry yourselves and the standards you uphold, and in the way you refuse to quit. I see it when you get missions done. Some of you may be thinking, “Maybe this isn’t me.” But I will tell you, I bet they didn’t think that either. Greatness isn’t obvious in the moment. It’s forged over time. The legacies they are left are meant to challenge us. I expect our Airmen to meet that standard because we are warriors. Toughness, grit, and character matter. And when history looks back on this generation, I am confident it will say the same thing about you as we say about those who came before us. Thank you for serving. Tell your families, thank you for serving alongside a few. Fight’s on.