Enhancing Readiness and Generating Combat Forces
September 23, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Hi. Hello everybody, it’s great to see you all. We were talking backstage and we weren’t quite sure who would come back after the coffee break, so it’s great to see everybody. Thanks. This panel, I actually think is one of the most important ones we could talk about of how do we improve the readiness of our forces today so that we can continue to deter and defeat our adversaries. So to start off, what I’d like to do is ask each of you, as you think about readiness and force generation today, what’s the biggest challenge we’re facing now in your mind? General Spain?
Gen. Adrian L. Spain:
Yeah, thanks, Kirk, and a couple things. One, thanks to AFA for the conference, as always. Great job, and to you all for moderating and being a part of this discussion. I do have to fess up that Kirk looks a lot younger than I do, but we both went to the same pilot training class back in 1995, and so it’s great. Neither one of us would have imagined being up here on this stage, I don’t think, back then at Reese Air Force Base. But it’s great to be here with you, and thanks for taking the time. First thing I want to say is we still have the world’s greatest Air Force, and we’re gonna talk about readiness challenges, but that is in the context of the world’s greatest Air Force and quite likely the most powerful and robust Air Force the world has ever seen, and it’s in that context that we’re gonna talk about readiness challenges. And so if there’s a fight, the Air Force is gonna be there, and we’re gonna win, and I need everybody to understand that that’s fact number one. Fact number two is we do have some readiness challenges along the way, and part of my job as the Air Combat Command Commander is when we go to fight, and when we’re called, and when we go, that I buy down as much risk as possible in training and in our readiness so that when we go, we win quickly and decisively so that as many of our men and women that are in harm’s way come back safely. And we still win it, but that’s the bottom line. I would say one of our major challenges has been an imbalance of resources, and what do I mean by that? We put investments into what we call foundational accounts. Those are called foundational for a reason. They’re the things that our readiness are based off of. Those are pretty, I’d say pretty obvious. Manpower, flying hours and training, weapon system sustainment, supply and support equipment, and infrastructure. But the imbalance word is an important one. When we take risk and it’s out of balance within those four portfolios, we get kinda skewed from the capability that’s left over. And so if I take risk and manpower, for example, but I don’t balance the rest of the portfolios equally based on that risk, then what is the result of that is a kinda out-of-whack capability on the backside and on the flight line. Same thing for infrastructure, same thing for supply. If any of those are taken, the risk is taken inordinately, then it’s left with an imbalance of the remaining resources, which is what we kinda find ourselves in today. Some of those choices were entirely appropriate in the previous strategic environment. In permissive, we live in a relative sanctuary. We weren’t as worried about a peer adversary in the last couple of decades. And so some of those choices were entirely appropriate. In this strategic environment, it’s not nearly as appropriate. And so one of the things that I know we’re working really hard on is rebalancing those foundational accounts. We’re continuing to commit to bolstering them over time, not continuing to look at them as risk bearers. And we have to then continue to modify our behavior to wait for those investments to pay off.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks. General Klein.
Maj. Gen. John M. Klein, Jr.:
Thanks, Kirk. And just another shout out to AFA. Thanks for giving us this opportunity to engage with industry, with each other, and just with the leadership here. So very similarly to what General Spain said, one of the big challenges is how we see the readiness challenges and the risk that’s out there. We can’t just do this in an incremental shift in terms of how we assess or evaluate or view risk. It really requires somewhat of a fundamental shift. And General Spain started this as the previous A3 at the Air Staff, but taking a holistic view, a broad view. And so in working with our partners in the A4, we kind of started to articulate the five levers of readiness. And so very similarly along the lines that General Spain talked about. But those five levers would be the critical skills availability, weapon system sustainment, our flying hour program, training resource availability, so think ranges, instrumentation. And then probably the most variable of them all, if you can believe it, is the ops tempo that is always creating challenges to our readiness. So all those things have to be balanced. And like General Spain mentioned, to infuse resources into any one of those could create a ripple effect or imbalances or jam up that readiness ecosystem just too much to where you’re not achieving the effect that you want those resources to have. So they have to be in balance. We’ve previously talked about this as a table and those legs have to all be kind of set so that they keep the table level. If those are imbalanced, readiness falls off the table. Another analogy, I like to think of it as real stats or maybe dials. For those of us who grew up in the ’80s and early ’90s, our prize possession was our boom box, right? And you had the little five band graphic equalizer on that thing, right? And if those knobs across the different frequency bands were off, you’d have some distorted music, right? And so all those knobs have to be set to get the nice, clean, crisp music you want so you can make the mixtapes for your girlfriend, right? But they have to be balanced. And I would say our previous architecture, current architecture has been very fragmented, reactive, and stove piped. And so we’ve put in place a lot of integrating type of efforts to get after a more holistic view of what our readiness looks like. And so we now have some of the data tools that we’re able to put in place to give us that more holistic view. But we’re switching from the binary question of are we ready to a more sophisticated and strategic one that says, what level of readiness do we need for this particular mission? And what risk are we willing to accept? And that allows us to kind of approach risk to mission, risk to force in a more nuanced way and in a different level. So our objective, again, set in motion by General Spain, was to institutionalize holistic readiness across the Air Force. So we don’t see that as just a concept, right? That’s a capability that makes us more ready, more agile, more resilient.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Awesome, thanks. General Healy, if you don’t mind, can you talk about this from the perspective of the reserves?
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Yeah, I don’t know why I can’t get the song “In Your Eyes” out of my head right now.
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
It’s getting weird.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
I know. Yeah, readiness. I tell you, I don’t know what it is also, but in the last month, it’s been way easy to work with the A3 and really kind of get things through and done from a readiness perspective. It’s this clean line of communication like I’ve never had before.
Gen. Adrian L. Spain:
I can hear you. I’m right here, I’m sitting right here.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
So I’ll echo what General Spain said right up front. Every quarter, we have a readiness meeting with our NAV commanders and our wing commanders. And the first thing I wanna hear out of my NAV commander’s mouth says, “Are we ready?” Yeah, we’re ready, okay. So that’s not in question. It’s the challenges associated with not only attaining, but retaining that readiness. Some of the challenges, well, first off, the aphrogen cycle. We were talking backstage about it. It is picture perfect for the Air Force Reserve Command. What it allows us to do, it allows us to focus all of our energies into a predictable and sustainable cycle of deployment and readiness, as opposed to the crowdsource, which we’ve been under for years. The crowdsource, for instance, 24, the data that we’ve always looked at, is from our assigned GIFMAP taskings, we met 354% of our taskings in 2024. So we were that onesie-twosie crowdsource for the Air Force. This makes it much more aligned to our units, and it makes it more predictable for us as well. The challenges with the timing associated with it. So to do some math in publics, and forgive me, it’s the two-year aphrogen cycle. For the active duty members, that readiness comes at 730 days from start to finish in that two-year cycle. Well, that in reserve speak is roughly 78 to 124 days equivalent. The math is, you know, 365 times two is 730 for the active component. For the reserves, we get ’em a week and a month, and two weeks of annual tour a year. So that’s 24 days plus 15, 39 times two. So the low end, the minimum that we’re gonna have those reservists to do that training, is gonna be, I’m sorry, 78 days. We look at more of a strategic reserve, so we get a little bit more out of them than the minimum. So that number that the data supports is roughly 62 days a year in order to get ’em to the same readiness standard that the active component has. So 62, that’s 124 days in a two-year aphrogen cycle to get those units ready. So the timing associated with that creates lead time challenges. A couple years ago, when we started the units of action, and we started looking at deployable combat wings in ’23, right away it was evident to us that we needed to make changes immediately after we identified who our first deployable combat wing would be, and that’s the 482nd down at Homestead. And immediately in the ’23 POM, we submitted an increase in manning of 900 people to ensure that all of those critical AFSCs were fully funded, and there in a timely manner to have two years, or 124 days worth of training prior to them actually going out the door. The next year, as the requirements were fined a little bit, we brought that number down a little bit, and it’s much more reasonable now in terms of additive. But that lead time was looked at by the chief and the vice chief, were like, what are you doing? But we need that lead time to ensure that we can recruit, and then train those people to the level we need utilizing that only 120 day mark. I’d say the other challenge is too, recruiting retention and keeping the talent with units that are deploying or in the AFRGEN cycle, yet are planned to divest with no recapitalization plan. It’s a challenge. We’ve got a unit right now that is deployed to AFSCEN, A10 unit out of Whiteman, and they are heroes to us because they deployed knowing that there is no follow-on assignment right now. So the fact that they got up on stage and they moved out in a timely fashion is fantastic for us.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks. General Pirak from the Guard.
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
I appreciate it. Also, thank you as well, Air Force Association. I appreciate the opportunity here. We certainly have been, in the International Guard, benefactors of all the great work going on in the A3 with this focus on readiness and leadership from General Spain. I would say some of my sentiment would certainly match my partner here, General Healy, in terms of AFRGEN as tailor-made, as a force presentation model for the Guard. I’ll tell you my number one challenge, though, is the mentality. Is the mentality. We got a fight coming. And we’ve had 25 years of doing something different. All worthwhile, all important, but it has sort of baked in this bureaucratic mythology where we have become used to part-task training. We deploy small elements to a large fixed-base operation. So we have aspects of our bases that have not been exercised in years. Now, it’s the Guard. There’s somebody out there who’s probably this old, but we don’t have a generation that was, even had the desert storm experience, right? There’s probably no generation in our Air Force that really understands what it takes to mobilize an entire wing, everything, go to a remote island, set up a base, defend the base, and generate air power. So readiness, sure, but ready for what? We have to have much higher expectations, much more complex, much more lethal, and certainly a contested environment. So the good news in the Guard is nobody’s sitting around waiting for me or my staff to tell them what right looks like. The field is organically generating scenarios I’m very proud of. They’re combining it with their inspection cycle and trying to be as efficient as possible and finding ways to put Airmen in situations where they have to make micro-risk decisions on the fly, the essence of being a multi-capable Airman, because truly, it’s about the mentality. We got a fight coming, we got to get ready for it.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Awesome. Let me pull the thread that you mentioned around deploying to an island and taking the whole base there. Maybe as the one responsible for generating those forces and presenting it to the COCOM, how are you shaping readiness and being ready to meet that challenge?
Gen. Adrian L. Spain:
It’s a great question in lots of ways, but specifically, I think this generation of readiness that used to be, I think, in our Air Force and what I grew up in, centered around the flying squadron and really morphing it to focus a lot on our combat support Airmen and how we’re gonna fight on the ground to generate air power under contact. We know that the permissive environment that our bases have enjoyed for three decades is not gonna exist in the next fight, and we have to prepare those forces who are gonna be on the ground to fight through contact, to live through the barrage of missiles that are gonna come their way, and to continue to generate air power under duress. And we’ve seen some small glimpses of this in AFCENT in recent years, and certainly we’re seeing it in different parts of the world right now. And so, as an evolution in the unit of action and the Air Task Force, those are ways that we’re training our combat support Airmen through the AFFORGEN cycle as we evolve to a DCWUTC, and we’re training more of those forces from singular locations. That will bring more of the team together towards a common goal and a common infrastructure. The other area that we’re working really hard on is revamping our IG processes, our inspection processes, our combat readiness inspection. We’ve revamped in order to ensure that we’re training against the highest threat, not that we can generate, but that we expect to face, and being really hard graders about how we’re performing so that we can identify those shortfalls now in training and then work to close them over time. We’re doubling down on the joint simulation environment, the JSC, so we can replicate the threat in a more realistic way for our forces, even in small doses as we try to proliferate that technology to be able to get spun up to what the threat is gonna bring. All of these are ways that we’re attempting to get after where we know the threat is, what environment we’re gonna operate in, and how we generate those ready forces to survive and thrive in that environment.
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
General, if I could, that really is the essence of the challenge that we’re talking about on the Guard. Years and years, our readiness expectations were for that small element tasking, not even a full UTC, probably a DRMD, to go downrange to a large fixed base operation. So we didn’t worry as much about the readiness of a logistics or any squadron in total, right? Because you knew you were only gonna send part of it downrange to help a large BOSI establishment. So when we increase our expectations and we expect the entire base to go, suddenly an 80% effective end strength is no good. I am not a fully ready warfighting formation if I cannot organically support that on my own. And so even that shift of recruiting and retention to make sure that we’re full effective end strength is a huge readiness imperative.
Gen. Adrian L. Spain:
Yeah, that’s right. And in addition, what are the venues in which we can do live training in this environment? So whether it’s Bamboo Eagle, whether it’s a department level exercise that we just completed, putting our forces in these stress environments in massive ways to identify those shortfalls that we may have and to close them. That’s the point. It’s to work really hard in training to identify gaps so we can close them before we go, as many of them as we can before we actually go fight.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
General Klein, so you’re over the whole Air Force as the A3. You add up all the aircraft and it’s equal to all the major airlines put together. So it’s a huge amount of complexity. As you think about managing that and improving readiness from the enterprise level, how are you doing that?
Maj. Gen. John M. Klein, Jr.:
Yeah, so we’ve touched on it a little bit with respect to the force generation model with F4Gen force presentation in terms of having a unit of action. But the readiness assessment piece is really challenging. And why is that difficult? It’s difficult because it’s hard to measure accurately and it’s difficult to communicate concisely. And so I think we struggled a long time with how we’re actually measuring readiness and does that match up with what we’re presenting. So as we all know, readiness is not a single metric. It’s the amalgam of many different factors and it’s mission dependent. So a unit might be ready for one task, but not another. And our reporting systems have to reflect that nuance in the system and that trade space. So historically, the way we’ve measured readiness is in a very static and almost checklist style format. And that leads us to believe that wings are measured by the sum of all their parts. And well, largely because of our Airmen and what they can do to integrate and innovate and just simply make things happen. We know that wings are actually more than the sum of all their parts. And so there’s a disconnect between how we understand our readiness and then how we source our forces. So just our new AFT4GEN model and our force presentation model of using units of action, it really kind of aligns some things. And so the structured cycle aligns the readiness reporting with the actual force availability. So in other words, what we measure aligns with what we deploy by unit. And so we’re heading that direction. And it also makes them very, it’s a predictable cycle, as General Healy mentioned earlier. So they train together, which makes them more ready on day zero. Just a few examples, October, I’m sorry, 13, April, when Iran launched 120 drones and I’m sorry, 170 drones, 120 theater ballistic missiles, and then roughly 30 cruise missiles in the direction of Israel. We were ready for that. The US support to that was kind of led by one of our units of action in that reaction. And that was practically their day one in theater after they transitioned in. And they were ready because they had trained together. They had done the forming and the storming and the norming ahead of time, and they were competent when they stepped boots on the ground. So there’s that aspect. Another example is the agility that it gives us. We recently had some mission change at a location in CENTCOM where we had one of our units of action aligned to go. Well, the operational mission there kind of went away, at least for the Air Force. And so we’re like, well, we don’t need that team to go there anymore. But there was an emergent need in the SOUTHCOM AOR. And so we were very rapidly able to swing them to that completely different AOR. And they were really, they were integrating with the service component staff and the combatant command staff within a week, and boots on the ground with an ADVON team, posturing for their team to go. So the agility that our force generation cycle gives us is absolutely tremendous. And then just on the force presentation side, we’ve always looked at our sister services that have these units of action that allow them to articulate risk and really force package in a way that we haven’t. So the Marines have a Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Army’s got their brigade combat teams. The Air Force, I’m sorry, the Navy has their carrier strike groups. And when it came time for the Air Force to put something forward, to build an air expeditionary wing downrange, we would end up having to source from upwards of 100 different bases. And it’s a pickup game downrange. If we were asked, hey, can you surge? We would go, well, how much? And this much, well, that’ll hurt. Well, how much is it gonna hurt? Well, we don’t know. So having these units of action allow us to articulate risk because we can now forecast years into the future of what that risk is gonna look like, allowing our senior leaders to make more risk-informed decisions about the readiness they may be consuming or trying to preserve for future operations.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks. If I take that and I apply it to the reserves, you think about the distinctive capabilities that the reserve brings, how does that manifest as you’re thinking about generating readiness?
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
So it’s a perfect opportunity to talk like we usually would about whether it’s a tanker unit, a Strat airlift unit, but I think what comes to mind the most is more than 30,000 in our reserves are Agile Combat Support, our ACS. We are stacked in capacity for Agile Combat Support. So when we look at the theater in terms of what we need to do there and how do we set it up, what comes to mind right away is yesterday we saw the secretary give a speech and he showed Tinian and North Island. Well, that was an expeditionary CE group that went out there that was largely reservists spending $1.1 billion knocking all those weeds down and making sure that we were set up correctly. Right now, 50% of the port dogs, so the two T2s in the United States Air Force reside within the Air Force Reserve Command. So when I look at how are we gonna be ready and mobilized to get into theater, whether it’s through a gateway on the West Coast, receiving in a mid-range big hub or out even further, we’re critical that we’re ready at all times to get out the door and make that happen. I look at aerovac, 60% of the capacity in the Air Force resides in the Reserve Command. Critical skill set and a critical mission so that if we do get to conflict, we’ve got the ability to make sure that we’re wounded or taken care of and evacuated in a healthy, timely manner as well. And that’s not to forget our deploy in place folks. So Intel, intricately tied to every single one of our mission sets and our units, associates and at the headquarters level, making sure pre-mission, post-mission that we’ve got quality analysis that provides continuity through active duty rotations. I look at our cyber forces that deploy in place, the 960th Cyber Wing, unique wing that under the umbrella of one set of authorities has offensive cyber, defensive cyber, doden support, C2, combat comms, all residing under one wing that employs in place. And then I would also put in there too, the RPAs. You know, we have persistent coverage 24/7 of RPAs worldwide through every co-com. So it’s the first and fourth thing I think of is like, well, our air crews, our equipment, our unit equipped, but it’s the depth of capacity that we can provide. That’s how we see ourselves best setting the theater and making sure that we’re ready if we go.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
How does the guard stack up?
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
We’re better. No, I just, this is gonna sound like a senior leader plug, I really mean it, but you know, the three stools here with the three pillars of the stool, the active component, the guard and reserve, all have value in their own right. All unique, all different opportunities to be accessed by different authorities and different folks to do different things. And so I don’t have it in me to do anything but compliment. And let me also say this from the Air National Guard. I’m gonna throw something out that everybody, every leader from the Air National Guard says that, you know, we’re about 8%, for 8% of the Air Force, TOA provide about a third of the Air Force. That’s not to say that we’re better. That’s to say we’re a very, very efficient model that is absolutely dependent on the largesse of a healthy, large and healthy United States Air Force. Right, that’s how our business model works is we have folks that decide to continue their service in the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve. So we’re in best position when we’re all in a position of strength, right? I would say, getting back though to that size, 108,090 wings in 163 different communities, a big part of the Air Force, under no circumstance with our most pressing, demanding scenarios, would you not see almost the entirety of the Air National Guard and likely Air Force Reserve mobilized for that fight? So again, that goes back to the mentality, right? And you know, an interesting aspect of readiness we talk about all the time is the readiness, even General Healy, you probably agree, of our mobilization systems. I mean, there are things that we’re gonna exercise for the big one that we have probably never had to exercise and we need to be thinking about that. Now, I can’t believe I’m bringing this up ’cause normally this is General Healy’s routine to talk about mobilization authorities. So I don’t know, yeah, I know you-
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Save it for the final comments.
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
I’m jumping the gun here. I’m just gonna get right in front of you. I’ll tell you this, that there’s something that we need to be more accustomed to as well, particularly when we’re talking about use of a unit of action for DCW certification and training, engagement overseas, campaigning, things of that nature, is 12-304-BRAVO. I can tell you that the Air National Guard likes to be voluntold. Involuntary mobilizations are a good thing. Volunteerism is good, that has its limits. It’s a better conversation at home with an employer when you’re involuntary mobilized for this fight. Now, I hear a counter-argument every once in a while that mobilization is indications and warning. It’s only indications and warning when you make it indications and warning. When you condition the globe and the country to these episodic, habitual mobilizations, okay, that won’t spike on Red’s radar, and I think we need to start to get after that a little bit more aggressively. I know you wanna say something, General Healy.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
You read my card. I’ll get to it.
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
I had time, I was looking at it.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with that. The normalization and routine use of mobilization authorities, like 12304, into the Pacific is something that’s gonna hopefully lull those observing in terms of how we’re using our forces. I think it’s critical that we get to that, and I’ll repeat it later if given the opportunity. You know, when we use involuntary mobilization, whether 302, 304, 304 Bravo, it’s assured access. It’s not assumed access, and I think that’s what the Air Force deserves, and that’s what I think we deserve to our members, their families, and their employers as well.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
All right, one last question. So General Spain, when you and I started flying together, we were practicing in wooden T-37 simulated cockpits with like little plastic dials. Let’s hope the future holds something a little bit different. So this last question, may I start over here and kind of go in reverse order? When you think about the future, and you think about the changes that are coming and how we generate readiness, what gets you most excited? You know, either a thing or a transformation that’s underway.
Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak:
Well, I am really excited about some of these companies that are leaning forward with synthetic training. If I think about the Air National Guard, you know, these 90 wings, let’s just take the CAF, for instance, you know, 24 different fighter wings out there, many of which are co-located to other assets where you can put up a lot of airplanes and large force employment. But if you can turn a 2V2 into an 8V24 through some form of synthetic training, embedded training in the cockpit, that’s a serious game changer. And better yet, if in that scenario, you’re actually virtually practicing in the environment which you’re gonna fight, that’s the way to go. So still need live fly, still need large force employment across the Nellis ranges, a national asset. But I think the advancements in synthetic training, I think is a real game changer in the future. That gets me excited.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Yeah, what I get excited about, it’s not as exciting as that, it’s the data geek in me. So we’ve been on a path for the last few years in the Air Force Reserve Command to really harness data. My readiness, my priorities from day one has been readiness now and transforming for the future. And that transformation has taken place in the form of data management and how we utilize data to be a data dominant MagiComp. So what we’re doing with this is, it’s exciting. We’ve got the ability to use tools, to track and analyze everything we do and make better decisions as a result of that. When I came into the job, we had three authorizations for data scientists in the Reserve Command. And about three months into the job, they came in front of me with a request to increase it to 21. And we didn’t even go through the brief. On the bottom line up front, I said, “Approved.” So it’s all about making sure that we have the tools available to the lowest level, so we can push that risk and understanding down to the lowest level as well. As a result, flying hours, for instance, we were talking about this just in the last few months. The ability when I was an AFT commander to track our flying hours was typically on the 13th of each month. We saw the REMUS data that was associated with the previous month’s execution. Absolutely nothing you can do about that month’s execution. It was history. So everything we were looking at from a data set was historical observations as opposed to actionable items. We’ve got a data tool now in our flying hour program that allows me to go and look yesterday to the airplane, how we executed, and we’re closing out the year. And we are on the razor’s edge to executing our flying hours this year with the assurances of every one of my wings, and I’m able to look into every one of my wings to see how they’re producing against their flying hour, their training plan. We’ve got a status of funds tool that allows us to see into our budgets. So the Air Force Reserve has a roughly $7 billion budget, about 3 billion in MILPERS and about 4 billion in O&M. I can see down to the Airman Healy level of when he does his drill weekends and how much he got paid when he obligated them. So we’re having a level of execution of our reserve personal appropriation, and our O&M that is historically unreached before in the previous, just because of the hard work down at our command in terms of utilizing these tools and a mindset change of utilization of data to make informed decisions going forward. It goes back to what I was saying right up front. The challenges associated with timing makes us have to make assumptions and decisions probably a little bit ahead of the active duty because we look at the time horizons to get those in place. These data sets allow us to do that. And it’s a comfortable feeling to have. My finance manager, by the way, is very uncomfortable right now. We’re getting so near zero. It’s wonderful. The other thing we do, and it’s exactly what Juice was saying before, is we’ve been on an information campaign or a jihad for the last three years about authorities. So as General Spain comes into Corona as a MAJCOM commander, he’s gonna hear what every MAJCOM commander has heard for the last three years in Corona, which is the opening salvo of the Reserve Command talking about understanding authorities and how to make sure you have assured access to the Reserve versus assumed access. We are always gonna be a volunteer force using 1231 Delta, and volunteerism is likely always gonna get you what you need. But if you wanna assure that, it’s what General Pirak said, 12304 Bravo, your combatant commanders, your MAGCOM commanders, you can program this out and you can be assured if for DLE 27, if you need three tanker crews, four 130 crews, you can program that into the budget right now and they’re going to be there. So again, it’s a little more geeky than synthetic training and all that stuff, but the use of data for informed decisions and making quality decisions really gets me excited going forward.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Okay. General Klein.
Maj. Gen. John M. Klein, Jr.:
What excites me about what’s coming is when you take a look at the significant amount of modernization that our Air Force is doing right now, and thinking about how we’re gonna integrate that with some of our legacy systems and platforms. So, you know, would we love to have all new kit? Absolutely. Could we absorb that? Probably not. So that has to be done at a pace commensurate with the ability to absorb some of that. And so, but what excites me is, how are we gonna, you know, we’ve modernized some of our legacy systems as well. We’re bringing on, you know, new platforms. You know, we’re gonna have innovative and creative ways of integrating the old with the new. And it’s gonna be absolutely exciting to see how our Airmen and how industry helps us to do that. I’m just super excited. We were thinking, we were just, you know, talking about CCAs the other day and how, yeah, we’ve got some platforms. Yeah, they’re flying about to fly. But we don’t yet know how we’re gonna integrate. And that’s okay, because our Airmen are gonna figure it out. And that, to me, that is extremely exciting. You know, the chief talks about having more Air Force. And some of that means more kit, more volume, more stuff to go do what our nation is asking us to do. But I believe that there’s more Air Force to be found internally as we find these new ways of integrating the old with the new.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks. General Spain, bring us home.
Gen. Adrian L. Spain:
Yeah, I agree with everything that’s been said. I think the thing that excites me as the new guy at ACC is the opportunity to ruthlessly prioritize our core business of flying and fixing airplanes inside the command. It is not the only thing that we do. There’s a lot that we do inside the MAJCOM. But it is the hardest thing that we do. And it’s the thing that we have to pay the most attention to or we’ll get it wrong. And so going back to General Pirak’s comment about mindset and culture, our opportunity in this is, well, let me back up a second. You know, going back to the imbalance of resources. If we got $100 billion today to spend on parts, those parts wouldn’t show up for two to three years, right? So what are we gonna do between now and then? Well, I’m not rolling over on my back and showing my belly. We’re gonna fight every day to get a little bit better and a little bit more ready. I can get a little bit more, I can get a little bit better today in the 24 hours I have to be a little bit more ready tomorrow. And if I keep doing that with the resources and the people that I have with me, then when those new resources come in, if they do, then we’ll be more appropriately equipped to take that on and to go faster. And that’s what we’ve gotta do. This idea of taking ownership and accountability to ourselves for the resources that we have and whether we like the amount that we have or the depth that we have, making the most of it every day within the span of our control, and then looking for the opportunity to get better faster when more help shows up is really exciting. The thing that I think we have to also focus on from an Air Combat Command perspective is really how we measure readiness, and how we measure our training value. For the last 30 years or so, we’ve kind of looked at it in about the same way. I get X number of events done per month, and if I do Y number of events, I’m ready. If I do X minus one number of events, I’m not ready. But what we all know is that our squadron commanders are looking around their formations and saying, “Hey, I know you only flew four times this month, “but you’re good. “You’re gonna be good to go, I trust you. “Hey, I know you flew 12 times this month, “you got some more work to do.” And they’re looking at how ready they are based on the reality and the proficiency and competency of the individual Airmen that make up the team. And that’s what we have to, we have to give them the tools to actually really pinpoint how we’re using these resources, because when everybody has the same demand signal, you aren’t actually prioritizing how you spend those limited resources. You’re just trying to peanut butter spread it across a formation. And so we have an opportunity coming forward to look at some things coming out of AETC, who’s got the lead on this, in terms of competency mapping, proficiency-based training, and not just event-based measurement of a spreadsheet. And so the combination of all of those things, I think, are gonna be really powerful, and I’m excited about all of it.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Outstanding. Thank you all very much for the time. Thanks.