Keynote Address: Fit and Ready Force

Watch the Video

---

Read the Transcript

---

CMSAF David Wolfe:

A few weeks ago, Washington transformed. The Freedom 250 Grand Prix unleashed some of the world’s best drivers and racing professionals onto an unfamiliar course. For one epic weekend, these avenues, long guarded by the solemn monuments of our great nation, became the stage for an occasion without precedent. Every team arrived prepared by the leadership of their crew chief, analytics from the performance and data engineers, expertise of the mechanics, and the unquestionable drive to finish first. No expert could say with certainty what would unfold as the unknown landscape changed the nature of preparation. Once the field came together, the pressure mounted and the circuit began to move. You can study, you can practice, you can rehearse the fundamentals until they become instinct. Regardless of how you prepared, the green flag drops and the person in the driver’s seat has to process what is happening, make a decision and act.

Preparing for unknowns and adapting to new expectations is something we understand in the Air Force, but we can’t predict every situation our Airmen will encounter. Our responsibility is to build Airmen who can conquer the unpredictable. Kyle Kirkwood may have been the face in front of the cameras after finishing first at the Freedom 250, but the real winners were those enabling his success. Behind every visible achievement stands a disciplined team of professionals, each accountable for a vital task and trusting the others to perform without fail. Maintenance crews diagnosing the warning code, logistics planners calculating fuel requirements, technical teams mitigating communications and radio disruption. On the track, as on the flight line, excellence is never the work of one. The greatest glory doesn’t belong to the individual, but to the team.

That brings us to the road ahead. On the track, the driver never touches the ground, neither does the car except four small patches of rubber where its wheels meet the pavement. Every ounce of speed, every turn, every decision and every chance at victory rests upon those four points of contact. For Airmen, those four wheels take shape in our fundamentals and values, development, innovation, and our ability to connect. They must turn together. If one fails, the mission suffers. If all four are strong, disciplined, and aligned, there is no challenge we cannot overcome. We have no grandiose ambition to reinvent the wheel. Our commitment is to evolve it, strengthen it, refine it, and prepare it for the unknown challenges you will face in the years ahead. That is why we have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

For 79 years, we have evolved basic military training to give us today’s Air Force, which remains unquestionably the best in the world, but we must get better. In seven and a half weeks, we teach civilians military discipline, standards, teamwork, physical readiness, and the fundamentals of service. Yet the work of making an Airman cannot idle at the starting line. As Secretary Mink mentioned this morning, transformation is underway at basic military training. We are giving Airmen operational context earlier. In BMT Next, we are moving training from the drill pad to the airfield. Airmen will continue to be evaluated against the traditional standards of military culture and discipline, but through the lens of what it means to be an Airman, focused on the two most important things we do in the Air Force; fly and fix airplanes.

Like the Indy teams leading up to the Freedom 250, our Airmen might be asked to go to an airfield they haven’t fully surveyed and operate in an environment we weren’t able to fully prepare them for. In this case, the fundamentals matter even more. An Airman will leave BMT understanding something very simple; no matter your specialty, you are an Airman first and you have a role in defending, operating, generating and sustaining air power. Our chief of staff has set an aggressive timeline to ensure this transformation happens at the speed of relevance.

Like Indy teams, we must continue developing our people so each Airman has the opportunity to become the best version of themselves. Individual growth is not the end state, it’s the foundation of team success. We develop each Airman to strengthen the formation, to ensure that when the mission demands more, our teams are ready to deliver more. That kind of readiness has to be built deliberately. The changes we’re making to the Enlisted Development Continuum are designed to do exactly that, build stronger leaders, sharper teammates, and more capable professionals at every stage of service.

An Airman leaves BMT, attends tech training and arrives at their very first duty station ready to learn. They orient to their base, begin on the job training and earn their five level. This is the foundation of initial Airmen training. From there, they attend Foundations 300, a prerequisite for Airman Leadership School.

Now, pause here with me for a moment. Right now, this course is delivered in a five-day block. That’s a week away from the mission. With EPME modernization, an Airman will have the option to attend Foundations 300 either in person or through a facilitated globally-connected virtual platform delivered at the pace the mission allows. This approach not only provides flexibility for the mission, but also increases the speed at which we can deliver emerging educational requirements to the entire Air Force when necessary.

To make this work at scale, we must be clear about who leads these efforts at the installation level. Professional development and professional military education will be directly shaped by the installation command chief. This new alignment places accountability and responsibility with the person on the installation who owns the job of developing our enlisted force. In the coming months, we will develop an adjunct faculty program that will modernize how we deliver foundations courses throughout the force. Not every Airman is assigned to a squadron on a main operating base. Not every Airman can pause for a week to attend an in-residence foundations course. The adjunct faculty program will enable seasoned senior NCOs and NCOs to teach the subjects they know best, reaching Airmen anywhere in the world who need that instruction to meet their foundation’s requirement.

Chief Bickley, I know you and the team at AETC have a lot of work ahead, and I am committed to ensuring you have the resources and policy changes you need to execute this vision. Think about the advantages a system like this can produce. Right now, one of the fastest growing knowledge gaps in our force is artificial intelligence. We know we owe you training. With the current system, the only way we can provide that training is by building another CBT requirement, and you would all hate me for that.

EPME modernization gives us a delivery method to build and deploy curriculum at speed. Acceleration moves the driver from the starting line to the field. It plays a part throughout the race, but other challenges are present. Information comes from everywhere and the conditions change each lap. As we look beyond the wheel, we must also look beyond the limits of what we can presently imagine. Artificial intelligence will not replace the judgment, discipline or ingenuity of Airmen, but it can help us see farther down the track, anticipate problems sooner and make better decisions at the speed the future will demand. In a race, the information never stops and the team must ensure the driver has decision quality information. AI gives us power over information and the opportunity to imagine solutions that were previously unavailable because of human limitations.

There are two common fears about AI, and I understand why some people are skeptical. The first fear is that sometimes AI is wrong. To that statement, my response is, “Well, sometimes so are you.” Let me ask you, have you ever gone to a subject matter expert for an answer, return to your desk and found yourself thinking, “I’m not sure that person knew what they were talking about.” We must overcome this fear if we’re going to fully realize the power of AI. For the last several decades, we have been constantly disrupted by new technology.

As an example, when General Wilsbach and I both joined the Air Force, back in the late 1900s, we came into an Air Force with no email. When I was given my first email address, honestly, I was skeptical. Where does this go when I hit send? How do I know it got to the right person? How do I know this is safe? The questions felt pretty reasonable at the time. I also thought my leadership was crazy when they told me every desk would soon have a computer on it, but I was wrong. Technology kept moving. We had to learn it, understand it, and figure out how to use it responsibly. The people who refused to adapt eventually found themselves being lapped and out of the race.

AI is a different technology, but I think we are standing in a familiar kind of moment. There are real questions about how we use it, where we trust it, how we protect information, and how human judgment still has to lead. Skepticism should make us smarter about how we use AI. Skepticism of AI is not an excuse to ignore it.

The second fear I often hear is that people believe AI might replace them. While it might not replace you, if you choose not to use AI, you are going to end up in everyone’s rearview mirror.

That is one of the reasons we created an AI Action Team in my office. The team initially started with 40 members, and today we sit at over 200. We brought Airmen together from across the Air Force and asked them to take real problems they understood and see where AI could help. This team was also charged with synchronizing and integrating the many efforts happening all over the Air Force. The team was completely rank agnostic and consisted of E-2s all the way to O-6s. On the AI Action Team, your rank was not considered as important as your impact. Some of the best contributions came from our most junior members.

At Hurlburt Field, Staff Sergeant Hunter Meherin and his team recognized that AFSOC communicators needed a faster way to configure and troubleshoot tactical networks without internet access. They built an AI system to automate network setup and search technical manuals entirely offline. The impact is straightforward; faster troubleshooting, less manual work, and mission-critical knowledge in the hands of Airmen, even in disconnected, contested environments. Sergeant Meherin and his team did not wait for somebody from the Pentagon to hand them a solution, but if they had, two of the people who got this all started would’ve been there ready to help.

Senior Master Sergeant Austin Harrison has been the technical expert behind the AI Action Team, building agents to solve complex readiness problems and helping us imagine how to deploy our forces in ways never before possible. Additionally, Austin has built an agent that will soon revolutionize the way we connect commanders, senior enlisted leaders, first sergeants, supervisors, and our military family members to resources across all of our communities.

Staff Sergeant Sonny Haqauni has been the master connector between all of the different efforts from the Department of War to the Air Force and our sister services. His tenacity and ability to make complex things look easy has been absolutely critical to the progress we have made building this emerging capability. Sonny came to my office as a senior Airman and the most junior member on the team. He proved what I’ve always known; innovation is rank agnostic. Rank is your role, not your value. The best idea almost always comes from the Airman who is closest to the problem. The AI Action Team gave us a place to find those ideas, test them, and learn what worked. What started in my office as a grassroots connective tissue for the AI initiatives across the force is now morphing into a comprehensive, department-level team focused on AI integration. Technology will keep moving, just like it did when computers and email started showing up on our desks. Our choice is whether we learn fast enough to move with it.

We’ve already established even the best drivers on the track do not navigate that race alone. There’s a suite of technology behind the car and driver analyzing what is happening and anticipating needed adjustments, solving complex problems and ensuring the driver stays ready for what comes next. Our Airmen need strong systems around them too. Sometimes it’s technology and sometimes it’s human, like family or community.

The family and community systems are essential to Airman readiness, but can often be stressed during transitional moments throughout a military career. The unknown circuit of a PCS or deployment can do that overnight. Think about the day an Airman receives orders. For some, that means packing up an apartment and heading to a new assignment on their own. For others, it involves moving a family, finding a new school or childcare, helping a spouse plan for what comes next, and learning a new installation all at the same time. The details look different for every Airman, but every PCS brings a new place to settle into, new routines to establish and a new community to engage with. For a military spouse who wants to continue a career, one of those unknowns may be where to find new employment. The degree, experience, or talent they bring with them are still there. What they’re building again is the network around them.

I’d like to share with you a brand new Air Force program called Global Military Spouse Connection. It is designed to help smooth the bumps in the road. I’m excited to announce, thanks to some great professionals at the Air Force Personnel Center, this initiative went from idea to first action in only 60 days. It gives qualified active duty Department of the Air Force spouses a better way to connect with federal career resources, hiring managers, and opportunities across the department.

The pilot started at Travis Air Force Base, Patrick Space Force Base, and Ramstein Air Base. It continues to expand across CONUS and OCONUS installations, including locations in the United Kingdom, Kadena Air Base, and even our tiny outpost in Stavanger, Norway. Employment is just one part of the PCS experience, a good race team prepares for change. As a priority, the Air Force puts the right information, the right tools, and the right support around the driver, often in the form of Airmen, but spouses and families are also part of the crew and we want to equip them before the next turn arrives. The tracking conditions may change, the next course may look nothing like the last, but the work we do before they get there can make all the difference.

Now, back to the race. When the checkered flag waved at the Freedom 250, everyone had their eyes on the driver, the person who made the visible decisions, but that driver did not arrive at that moment alone. Somebody taught them the fundamentals, studied the data and made the adjustments. The team was ready to leave the pit and lap after lap, they kept learning. The conditions and information changed as the course demanded something different. Our Airmen will have moments like this, entire circuits that test their training, decisions, and adaptability. Their moment may come when communications are limited, when a turn appears faster than expected, or when the plan no longer fits the course ahead. The decisions will belong to that Airman. Everything we do before that moment helps determine what they bring to the track. We teach the fundamentals. We keep developing them as the course changes. We give them better tools to understand what’s happening around them. We put a strong team together so that they can keep moving when life and the mission changes. That is how we build a fit and ready force.

We will never know every course our Airmen will face. We will never predict every turn. When the green flag drops, the driver trusts the team, the unseen work in the garage, the race shop, and the support bay, and takes each turn with full confidence that everyone behind the scenes has done their part to ensure success. Not all of you will have your hands on the wheel, but the ones making the biggest difference in impact are supporting the vehicle being driven. All of the Airmen in the back shops, support squadrons across the flight line and defending our bases are the wheels in our race. You, the Airmen, are why we have the greatest air force on the planet and the reason why every action we’re taking is designed to make you more lethal and ready for the track ahead. You are the powerhouse that gets the car to the finish line.

Our drivers are the finest in the world, unmatched by any adversary, but even the greatest drivers cannot win without the team that prepares, sustains, and propels them forward. When the plan runs out and uncertainty takes hold, the American Airman is our decisive advantage.

Thank you.

Emcee:

There is a Q&A session now. There are microphones in the center horizontal aisle. There’s one on each side. Please line up. Chief Wolfe will join us again momentarily.

Ladies and gentlemen, Chief Wolfe.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

All right. All right. Thanks. Thanks, everyone.

Before we get started with the first question, as General Wilsbach and I are traveling around, for a number of years, the boss has been reiterating to all his commanders that he wants them to take risk because if we don’t take risk, we’re not going to move fast enough and we’re going to get passed up. He also cautions them that if they’re going to take some risk, they should probably tell their boss that they’re going to take some risk.

So, Boss, I’m about getting ready to do some Q&A live at AFA. I’m taking some risk here, so wish me luck.

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach:

You’re on your own.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

All right. All right. Okay. Let’s see. Where are we at? There we go. I see a person right there getting hit with a giant spotlight. Wow.

Audience:

Hey, CMSAF. Chief Tyler Alexander, Hill Air Force Base. Thank you and Doniel for coming out to here. I appreciate it. You recently have talked about suicide awareness across your social media, so it’s really fantastic to see you, as a CMSAF, bring that up and kind of raise public awareness, but what would you say to those Airmen who are fearful of maybe that stigma if they go to see help and they’re worried about something like that?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Yeah. Thanks, Tyler. Great to see you. Wow, this is a tough one, right folks? I mean, when our people are struggling, we want to help them. There’s no question about it. We want them to let us know what’s going on, and we want to try to give them all of the resources that we can to help them. I think the fear that there’s going to be some kind of negative repercussions on your career, I think that’s fair for people to kind of feel that at their level, because we may need you during a time period as you’re getting help for whatever it is that you’re carrying with you, we may need you to take a knee. At that moment, the most important thing is not actually the mission, because we kind of have agreed together, I guess, that you need to step aside for a moment and deal with what you’ve got to deal with.

I can tell you that the facts of this matter play out. Things like losing your security clearance or being out processed from the Air Force or the Space Force because of a mental health condition are pretty rare. All right? I mean, almost everyone comes back into full service, which is what we want. We want you to take a knee, step aside, get the help that you need, and then we want you to get back in the fight, no matter what you’re going through, and this happens across the force. I can promise you this, at our level at the Pentagon, there is no looking at mental health struggles as a way to sideline people or get them out of the Air Force at all. We want you to have that help and get it.

Now, where the perception of the stigma happens at some level or from the individual, I understand that, but I can promise you that you step forward to get some help and we’re going to get you back and try to get you back in the fight.

Thanks for that question.

Audience:

Hello, CMSAF Wolfe. Master Sergeant Dimick. I’m a development advisor over at Dover Air Force Base. I have a three-part question.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Oh, boy, three parts. All right.

Audience:

Yes. So cut me off if I’m taking too long.

As a development advisor, I just want to understand or maybe help clarify, for the rest of the room … I’m sorry. Can we move the spotlight just a little bit? Thank you.

We’re moving toward a centralized and synchronized virtual learning capability. What is the intended role for a DA once we go into that kind of synchronous learning? Because I do believe the intent was not to take away from in-person, but how will the enterprise then resource and execute the virtual facilitation? We had some conversations this morning about funding, so is that something that we are ready to execute in a shorter timeline or is that a long-term goal? With that, if we want to preserve facilitated discussion, is there going to be a virtual hub that’s going to be required to be implemented throughout the units or at a centralized base location like the PME center?

Finally, how do we maintain meaningful development experiences through that virtual synchronous learning?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Yeah. I think that was four questions.

Audience:

Sorry.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

All right.

Audience:

Did the spotlight count as one?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

That’s okay though. I’ll answer as many as you got. That’s great. Let me give you what I think is probably the briefest way I could explain the whole thing.

So first of all, the DA role, when we made development advisors, we used to call them career assistance advisors, we had a problem with information being available to our Airmen on opportunities that were out there in the Air Force for retraining and how those processes all worked. Well, over the last 20 years, we’ve modernized the way we can deliver information. Quite honestly, folks, if you want to know how to retrain, there’s a AFPC website that’s available for you to go out and figure out all that stuff. What we’re thinking is development advisors probably can do a lot less of that kind of detailed career counseling. Maybe we still need them to understand for those kind of nuanced cases where they’re complicated and, “Hey, I had a break in service and I came back in. When am I eligible for a retrain,” stuff like that, that maybe the technology that we’ve got out there can’t tell us.

What we do want to do though is build an AI agent that knows all of these policies and train it to answer those questions, and that’ll be available to every Airman. We’re going to kind of repurpose what the role of the development advisor is on our bases, and then you’re going to be involved in the entire process of making sure that Foundations gets delivered on a virtual platform or in-person, depending on what’s going on at your base. You’ll have to figure that out. You’re Dover, right?

Audience:

Yes, sir.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Yep. So your command chief at Dover’s going to have to figure that out with his boss, the people that are going to lead this effort, as to what’s best for your installation.

We made a little bit of a mistake in the messaging on this to begin with. Foundations was not meant to be another in-residence PME course. Now, on the other side of that, there’s no intention to reduce any of the in-residence days on the formal courses that we do have. We have no plans to do that. This is meant to be additive and to fill in those gaps. But here’s what’s happening, folks, because it’s only available in a five-day block, it’s become week zero of Airman Leadership School, the NCO Academy, and the Senior NC Academy as people get picked to go and they’re like, “Oh, I haven’t done Foundations yet.” That’s mainly because the only option is for them to go to the five days in-residence at the base.

Oh, by the way, some of them aren’t at a base, they have to travel, go TDY to go to Foundations. This is going to clean up a lot of that.

I hope that answers all of your questions. If not, I’d be happy to talk to you offline about this as well.

Audience:

Yes, Chief. Thank you.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Okay. Okay.

Audience:

Sir, my name is Cadet [inaudible] from Detachment 195 Chicago, Space Force Cadet. I’m also the cadet wing commander this fall. One question I have is, as we think about our force being made up not only of human Airmen and Guardians, but also of unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, how does leadership change when officers, commanders, Airmen, Guardians are leading, not only people, but machines?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Yeah. That’s a great question. Congratulations on being selected to be a cadet wing commander. That’s not a small achievement, so good on you. That’s a great question. A way smarter question than I would’ve asked at your age, that’s for sure.

I don’t know that it’s that much different and I don’t know that we’re not already doing it. We already have machines that are making decisions. We’re programming them, tell them what to do, and then they’re going to go do the mission. There’s probably a couple decisions they make based on sensing the environment. This is just going to be an acceleration of that. I’m not sure leadership changes that much. It might be that you’ve got to understand the technical side of it a little bit more than we had to in the past, because a decision that you make might result in a downline effect that you don’t quite understand. We’ve got to be able to understand the technology, the way it’s being employed, but I’m super confident that we can do this as these models mature and they start to learn how we make decisions, that’s really what the future is.

I mean, folks, that’s what full self-drive is doing right now. It’s instantaneously making the best decision that a human would make. The car isn’t making a decision based on a pre-programmed thing that says, “If you see this, then do that.” It’s doing a mathematical formula calculation of a bell curve and picking the thing that most humans would do safely in this situation. We’re in an age where that kind of learning is going to be taking place and the machines are going to be able to make the decisions, sometimes at a higher success rate than we will. And it’s coming, the secretary was talking about this this morning, so it’s already there. I’m not sure leadership’s going to change much. These capabilities are going to be additive at this point.

Now, do I see a future where we say, “Okay, we’ve automated these things over here. We’ve got a chunk of manpower here that we can now repurpose to do something else that only humans can do.” Yeah, absolutely. Why wouldn’t we do that? It would be irresponsible to be like, “Well, we’ve got a machine that could do it, let’s keep all the people too.” That would be irresponsible of us. So we’re going to have to make decisions like that sometime in the future, but I think it’ll be additive as we go on. Think of AI as an increase to the manpower in your units, folks. If you can hire somebody to automate one thing that you don’t have to think about anymore, you would do that. You can do it right now. Absolutely. If you don’t know how, get ahold of the folks in the AI Action Team and the Office of Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force and we will show you how to do that. We’ve got folks that know how to do these things.

Audience:

Thank you very much.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Thanks. All right. Over here.

Audience:

Good afternoon, Chief. My name is Senior Master Sergeant Jessica Bohac. I am the senior enlisted leader for the Force Support Squadron at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts.

My question is; as we continually evolve the Total Force Initiative, many guard units are training hard to prepare for deployment, but we can experience limitations tasked with areas outside of the normal scope of responsibilities and using active duty systems. Are there any considerations moving forward for considering an implementation of Air National Guard members being able to utilize Title X programs such as IMA, where we can supplement active duty bases and be able to plan for that productively as we prepare for our AEF deployment cycles?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Yeah. That’s a great question. Hey, folks, the contributions of the Guard and Reserve into the operations in 2026, and really before that, have been accentuated here. Folks, make some noise for our Guard and Reserve partners, right? This is amazing. Amazing.

Specifically to your question you asked about Guard using IMA, you’re going to start talking about things that I’m going to get real out of my depth real fast on the exact title. General Fast is right down here, he can help with that. I don’t see our Guard folks. They’re here somewhere. I’m sure they are. Yep. Okay. There are some Guard folks over here that can help with that.

What we really need is duty status reform really badly so that we can get this ridiculous amount of titles down to something. I would love a system where, based on the mission, obviously it’s got to be based on the mission, and based on the capabilities of the unit, and then the needs of the individual, wouldn’t it be nice if all those things could come together in a nice package where we could say, “Hey. I think you’re probably …” You’re interested and we’re interested in you going from a part-time status to a full-time status and we can just, over the weekend, go into the computer and General Fast can approve it and bam, you’re on active duty for six months. All the systems behind that are the same and we don’t have to worry about all the risk being on the Airmen of whether or not they’re going to get paid, whether or not their family’s going to get medical based on the status that they’re in.

Folks, this is crazy, the system that we’re in. It really is. If you really look at the spaghetti chart, we would never build it this way if we could redo it. I know that in the National Guard Bureau, in the reserves, in other services that have reserve elements too, everybody’s on this bus for duty status reform and that’s really the answer to your question. We’ve got to get that and we’ve got to get it in a meaningful way. It’s going to take the help of Congress to make it happen.

Audience:

Copy. Thank you, Chief.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

All right.

All right.

Audience:

Good afternoon, CMSAF. Your AI Action Teams, I have the good fortune of being the beneficiary of some wildly brilliant Airmen. I’m wondering if they are also working in the classified workspace. I’m Master Sergeant Frymuth from the 27th Intelligence Squadron.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Are they working in the classified space on my AI Action Team? Is that your question?

Audience:

Yes, sir.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Oh, absolutely they are. In fact, where is Austin Harrison? I know you’re in the room somewhere. There’s Austin right over there. He’s the brilliant mind I talked about in my speech. I want you to go talk to Austin afterwards and let’s link up. I want to know more about your wildly brilliant Airmen. I totally believe you have them. And if there’s something we can do to help accelerate what they’re doing, that’s what the action team is for. Pull out the ideas that maybe folks have … If they have it, it works, they know it works, but they don’t know where to go to get somebody to kind of sponsor their program, our team will look at it, they will figure out where it fits in, link them up with someone who might be working on something similar and get everybody together and solve these problems faster. We can’t wait on this, so please get with Austin.

Audience:

Yes, sir. Done. Thank you.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

All right.

Audience:

Testing one, two. Hello, CMSAF. How are you doing, Sir?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Hello. I’m great.

Audience:

Lieutenant Colonel Ortega, Devo, 43rd Floor Support Squadron Commander. “Always Hope” Pope Air Force Base.

Sir, we continue to hear about Airmen under historical nonstop alarm reds returning from operational environments where they share they did not always receive the relevant training, tools or preparation needed before deploying. What are we doing as an Air Force to rapidly identify and close those readiness and mental health recovery gaps? Has our adversaries continue to adapt? And lastly, is there an appetite to restore combat skills training more robust than RAT or implement a more robust equivalent to ensure lessons learned from returning Airmen are translated into better preparation for the current fight?

CMSAF David Wolfe:

Yes to everything you just said. Absolutely. We’re well aware of this. I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to replicate … In my keynote, I don’t think we can replicate what it will be like to have a ballistic missile explode within 50 feet of where you are, nor do I think we want to try to do that to people. But we can do a lot of things to replicate that kind of pressure. Folks, a big Air Force program that’s going to do this is going to be really hard to implement. For the leaders in the room, turning up the intensity of the training and the frequency of that training for our folks in our base-level exercises is something we own right now that we can do today. Our wing commanders out there, they own this process, they can choose …

It’s not that it’s easy. It’s a hard thing to do. If you’re going to get everybody together and have a real, meaningful exercise on your base, probably going to make some retirees mad. We’re going to have to close some gates and shut some things down and people are going to have to have some inconveniences in their day-to-day life. But if we’re going to get people ready for these kind of things, we absolutely have to. Our expeditionary center at 21st Air Force working on lots of things in the combat training range space, getting funding and the resources out there so that we can, not necessarily go back to the way things were 10 or 15 years ago where we had a constant flow going into a certain location, so we had knowledge about exactly what we had to do ahead of time, but certainly getting people more ready for that specific environment is something we absolutely have to do a better job of. So yes, to all.

Audience:

I appreciate that, CMSAF. We’ve got to continue to advocate. We appreciate your support.

CMSAF David Wolfe:

You got it. You got it. Okay. I am at 16 seconds. Thank you very much for everybody for coming out, to the AFA leadership for putting on another great conference. Such an amazing time to get together, family reunion. Really appreciate everybody’s time. Right now though, we are going to do something really important so stay in your seats. General Wilsbach’s going to come up and we’re going to recognize 12 of the most amazing Airmen you have ever had a chance to meet, or see, our 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year.

Thanks, folks.