Building Better Leaders: The Enlisted Edge
March 5, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
What a pleasure it is to be moderating this panel on “Building Better Leaders: The Enlisted Edge.” As a person who benefited every day of his 31-year Air Force career from the wise and honest counsel and exceptional efforts of the Enlisted Corps, and having spoken with over 1,700 Airmen and Guardians over the last 18 months regarding their leadership challenges, I can’t think of two people I’d rather be engaging in this particular conversation at this moment in our nation’s history. Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, John F. Bentivegna, serves at the highest enlisted level of leadership and provides direction for the enlisted force, representing their interest to the American public and to those in all levels of government. He acts as the personal advisor to the Chief of Space Operations and the Secretary of the Air Force on all issues regarding the welfare, readiness, morale, proper utilization, and development of the U.S. Space Force. Chief Bentivegna is the second Chief Master Sergeant appointed to the highest non-commissioned officer position in the U.S. Space Force. Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, David A. Flosi, represents the highest enlisted level of leadership and as such provides direction for the enlisted force and represents their interest, as appropriate, to the American public and to those in all levels of government. He serves as the senior enlisted leader and primary advisor to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force on all matters regarding the readiness, training, professional development, and effective utilization of more than 665,000 total force Airmen. Chief Flosi is the 20th Chief Master Sergeant appointed to the highest non-commissioned officer position in the United States Air Force. Now, in an effort to get through as many questions as possible in the relatively short time that we have together, I’ll alternate questions to each of our panelists and then give time at the end for each to give some closing comments. So now let’s get started. Chief Bentivegna, how can the U.S. Space Force best evolve beyond legacy systems and processes to effectively address the evolving demands of the 21st century strategic environment and ensure combat readiness in the space domain?
CMSSF John Bentivegna:
Hey, Dr. Donley, thanks so much for hosting us today. And a shout out to AFA for allowing–I always like to share a stage with Chief Flosi because that’s awesome. But I also want to give a shout out not to all of you in the room, but to I think the hundreds of individuals who are virtually watching us and participating. So thank you very much. I know you’re back in your offices and op centers doing amazing things, but thanks for spending some time with us. How do we get after it? Well, we need a budget first, right? I think the difference between what was enacted in 2024 and what we requested in 2025 from the Space Force alone is over a half a billion dollars difference. So we need a budget, right, to be able to get after the infrastructure and research and development we need to get after the space control, space superiority mission that General Saltzman talked to us about earlier this week. The other thing we’re going to do when we talk about we’re still moving forward and we’d like to stand up a Space Futures Command if we go down that path because that will help us design the objective force that we put in place, and General Saltzman will continue to advocate for the resources that we need. Now, beyond that, this is all high-level stuff that the senior leaders of the service will take care of, but where are the Guardians at the tactical level, right? When they’re doing their flashpoint exercises and the space flags and the concepts summits and the tech dev summits and they’re bringing innovative ideas and they’re doing what General Saltzman has charged all of us to do is question the assumptions. What we did yesterday is not going to succeed today, and we need those innovative Guardians thinking outside the box to help us evolve the service, to create the processes, create the procedures, to help us think about the TTPs we need to get after the threat. General Gagnon and the S2 community do a phenomenal job in telling the story and are capturing and articulating the threat that we face and giving that information to the operators, the cyber operators, the intelligence operators, the space operators, and really empowering them and inspiring them to get after it. So how do we face getting after the threat of the future? How do we evolve? You know, those high-level things that we’ll do from the Pentagon side, but really the foundation of this is going to be done by the Guardians at the tactical level, the combat squadrons, the combat detachments, the men and women who are doing the tests and evaluations, STARCOM, the work is on your shoulders, and I have immense faith that I know you’re going to be able to do it. Thank you.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
Chief Flosi, the Secretary of Defense has laid out his priorities for the Department of Defense. Revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence by defending our homeland. For many of the leaders in this room, warrior ethos is the area where they can most quickly generate some impact. What can leaders do to develop warrior ethos within themselves and their subordinates?
CMSAF David Flosi:
Thanks, Doc, for the question, and I’m happy to be here to join B9 here on stage today, so I appreciate the opportunity, and thanks to AFA as well. So warrior ethos, really, let’s just take a quick step back and talk a little bit about what this ethos is or these characters are. Over the history of the profession of arms, it has evolved, but back in the beginning, really, the Spartans were really clearly established a warrior ethos, and in that culture, it was necessary for their survival and for the propagation of their society, right? And so building a culture where you had warriors that said, you know, the question wasn’t how many are the enemy, but where are they? And in order to build a culture that demonstrates that type of ethos, that warrior ethos, it started from birth. You know, there’s many, many examples over that Spartan history that talked about this warrior ethos being raised and bred into that community from your mom at home before you went off to join the legions and go to battle. You know, as a young adult, you’d be issued your shield, and your mom would tell you, hey, come back with it or come back on it, right? And that type of ethos is really what established a profession of arms and a warrior culture. So that’s evolved over time. So how do we align to that today? It’s really an open book test, right? We have core values. We’ve defined what we align to and what we espouse as an Airman in the profession of arms for its integrity, right? That’s courage. That’s honesty. That’s a commitment. Service, right? Loyalty. Loyalty to something beyond yourself. Serving others instead of yourself. Being part of a winning team. And, of course, excellence in all we do. So whether it’s our core values or, you know, our Guardian partners with their four Cs, you know, courage, commitment, character, and connectedness or connection, connection, we use a little bit different terminology, but it aligns to that same set of values and that ethos that make us a disciplined, professional, lethal, and ready warfighting community. So that’s kind of what our warrior ethos is. It has existed over the history of our department and well before we were a flying force as a fighting community as Americans. And it persists to this day. It’s foundational to what we do. And we bring in people from all over the world. We bring them into this service on all volunteer and professional force, the most disciplined and lethal flying force in the world. And it’s because we bring them in and from day one we align to something bigger than ourselves. We believe in freedom, liberty, democracy. We believe in those basic human needs, and we are willing to sacrifice ourselves to something bigger to go do that. So that’s kind of the warrior ethos. How does that align to us through our core values? Okay, then what can our leaders do to go get after that in their organizations and to make sure they’re not only establishing and encouraging it but sharpening our sword on a daily basis? We do it in a lot of ways every single day. And this isn’t a go there and do it thing. We do it every day with strategic deterrence. We see the warrior ethos embodied in our global strike Airmen that are holding the alert for the last six decades on alert to STRATCOM every single day, presenting the President options, a strategic deterrent option, and they do whatever it takes. Those Airmen are focused on the mission of their organization, and they’re executing it with precision, despite all the challenges we have with continuing resolution, budget challenges, modernization challenges, the acquisition process, those things need to be worked, and the service owes our Airmen that. But we’re focused on the things we can control, and that’s a loyalty to each other. That’s understanding that we do important work on behalf of our nation, and we’re presenting and preserving options for the President. So we do that through strategic deterrence. We also–this is an everyday thing across the globe. We are putting kinetic effects on people that wish ill to our way of life and our allies around the world. So bad guys are going away every single day, whether it’s in AFRICOM, CENTCOM, or other places around the world where terrorist organizations are disrupting world order, and we’re holding at bay our pacing challengers with a credible strategic and kinetic deterrent. We’re doing it through not only holding the alert, we’re doing it through this idea of generating combat outpower, but then we’re also ready when the nation calls on us for crisis. So the President’s declared a national emergency on the southwest border that wasn’t in our program. We weren’t planning to go do that thing, but we’re executing with precision. We have picked up, you know, as a joint maneuver force, we have moved out supporting TRANSCOM and others around the country to make sure we’re implementing the guidance from the executive office, and that’s what our Air Force is doing. We’re going to continue to do that, and our leaders can just simply stay focused on that main thing. What does it mean to be an Airman in the professional arms? What are we doing this for, right? We stay true to those core values, and then our leadership owes them the tools, training, education, and development when they need to go execute their missions. So that’s our job, right? Set conditions for our Airmen to be successful.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
Excellent. Thank you. Chief Bentivegna, the U.S. Space Force is overhauling its career paths to prioritize warfighting experience. How will this redesign Guardians to develop the skills and experience needed to lead in a rapidly evolving domain even at lower ranks?
CMSSF John Bentivegna:
Yeah, you know, really the basis of it, you know, we talk about warfighting ethos and operational experience that we need within the service and putting emphasis on that. A lot of it talks about the culture that Chief Flosi talked about, right? The warfighting ethos, everything he laid out, that the Guardians understand as part of the profession of arms what it means to wear this uniform and what it means to take the mission that our nation has given us seriously, right, and thinking about it, a space-minded warfighter, right, as General Salk talked about, right, and a Guardian spirit, and understanding how critical a role they play in national security. And a lot of this basis on this journey as we’re evaluating or reshaping the enlisted development path, you know, one of the founding documents that allowed us to start this journey was when the service output its officer enlisted civilian roles and responsibilities document. And in it, it refers to the enlisted cadre as the warfighters of the service. And also talked about, right, the critical role that our civilians play with subject matter expertise and continuity and then, you know, on the role that the officers play, right, as mission planners and integrators, you know, in the combatant commands, in the service components, on the joint staff. So, you know, we started this journey where we started the officer training course, right, and reshaping how officers are being developed and trained. And then we looked on the enlisted side, okay, as teammates, right, as command teams, as crew partners, right, we present a force together. So looking at how we were shaping the officer corps, we went back and said, okay, we have the officer enlisted civilian roles and responsibilities. We know what our enlisted Guardians need to get after. We know how we’re training and developing the officer cadre. And we said, we’ve got to start shaping this journey for enlisted Guardians starting from day one. So at BMT, I was down at BMT just last week, and it’s amazing, right, starting that discussion, starting that warfighter ethos, what it means to be part of the profession of arms, understanding about a role that Guardians play in national security. And they’re carrying that through to tech schools where we’re reshaping the tech schools and making sure that, one, it’s difficult, right. These are hard skills, cyber, intel, and space, and preparing them for the hard work they’re going to have to do, all in the context of what it means to be a Guardian in a warfighting domain of space and the role that we play within the joint organization. And then we talk about the criticality of play, how do you build that, you know, the warfighter. Think about SPAFORGEN, right, and I talked earlier, combat squadrons, combat detachments, the roles that are junior enlisted and our NCOs are going to play in executing that mission set, being responsible for the readiness and the training of those organizations. So it’s a constant discussion and dialogue where we’re setting up, right, the right stressors, the right training, and then empowering them to kind of embrace that. And when you talk about our most junior Guardians, you’ve heard me speak about how we want to modernize the current fully qualified promotion system that the department that we have as a service, right, and how do we look at, especially the E1 through E4, that progression, and do we maybe more tightly align progression from E1 to E2 to E4 through specific gates where you make it through tech school, a hard tech school, and you’ve proven that you have your skill craft. Maybe there’s a promotion with that. When you get to your first operational unit and you do your mission qualification training, you do your crew validation, right, and then you’re presented to the combatant command through SPAFORGEN, you’re in a commit phase, you’re executing the warfighting mission. That’s a lot of responsibility. That probably equates to maybe you should be in E4 to do that. So it’s aligning the culture, the identity, understanding the role that they play, and the ecosystem of enlisted development tying it to warfighter skills, readiness, and capability that matter to national security. And all of this together–you’ve heard me talk about the Guardian experience– is developing the warfighting ethos and develop the warfighting culture that the Secretary has laid out and we’ve been talking about for months, and that’s how we’re trying to cement that, build that foundation in the enlisted cadre specifically.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
Excellent. Thank you. Chief Flosi, in the leadership model we teach at the Doolittle Leadership Center, we use the term “align” to describe the process of bringing individual subordinates together so that they work as a cohesive team to accomplish the mission. Clarifying standards and enforcing those standards seems to me to fall very much into the align category. How do we create a culture of accountability where every Airman feels empowered to hold him or herself and their peers accountable to Air Force standards in an effort to create the necessary alignment?
CMSAF David Flosi:
Thanks for the question. Timely topic. So first we have to agree on a couple things. For our organization, we’ve talked a little bit already about warrior ethos. We’ve talked about our core values and alignment to that. We do that early on and often throughout the life cycle of an Airman. And then you mentioned standards. Well, we’ve got to be clear about what those standards are. And so what makes a good standard, right? We’ve had to reflect a little bit. The Chief of Staff and I traveled around the Air Force, around the world over the last year, and feedback from our leadership was that in some, not all, cases we’ve provided them a standard that’s not really easy to enforce. That leads to some difficulties. So we said, all right, let’s slow down. Let’s be clear-eyed about what a good standard is. And so because we do believe if you’ve got a standard, you need to be able to enforce it. And that’s what–it’s a cornerstone of a lethal and ready warfighting force. So for a good standard to be applied, first of all, it needs to be aligned to the principles of the organization. So we believe that our standards need to espouse teams over individuals, missions over functions. Those are core to our ability to execute missions, particularly as we transform the department towards agile combat employment and those hub-and-spoke operations. It also should be clear. It should be easy to understand and consistently enforce. So we put that lens on with the leadership around the Air Force, and we’ve taken a look at some of our standards and said, you know what? We haven’t set up our supervisors for success in all cases. So we’re taking a re-look. The Chief of Staff’s rolled out a couple messages with the support of the leadership team around the major commands and the command teams, the command chiefs around the Air Force, informing and update the standards to enable our leaders to hold each other and themselves accountable. And that means some of our standards weren’t clear, easy to understand, and easy to enforce in some cases, or it didn’t espouse those principles that we decided are important and critical. So what’s an example of that? You know, we got a lot of feedback on duty identifier patches. Well, if you think about that, it doesn’t align to a couple of those principles. Number one, it’s espousing functions over missions, and we really need our Airmen to be focused on the assigned mission of their organization and how we contribute to that mission success, and that is a detractor from that. But it also wasn’t clear, easy to understand, and easy to enforce. With over 130 approved duty identifier patches, I couldn’t expect an NCO, senior NCO, a CGO, to visually kind of take a look at one of their subordinates or peers and say, “Yep, that checks.” It was not easy to understand and enforce. There was a lot. And what does that lead to? It leads to not enforcing a standard. So we needed to clean that up. So the efforts that are underway with relation to standards across the Air Force are to simply clear those barriers to the accountability and enforcement of standards that we need to be a disciplined and lethal fighting force. So, “Hey, Chief, wearing a duty identifier patch doesn’t make me any more or less lethal.” Roger, check. Nobody said that, right? But what we do know for sure is that a lethal and ready fighting force must have a culture of standards enforcement, and that is a lethal force. With a culture that has a selective enforcement of standards, that leads to a less lethal and, frankly, a more dangerous force. We know that little things lead to big things. And so in the profession of arms, in this business, in this profession, this calling that we serve in to wear the cloth of our nation and to go create death and destruction on behalf of our nation when our nation calls upon us, we must be disciplined and we must have clear and enforceable standards. We can’t expect to pick and choose. So we saw in a 12-month period from 2023 to 2024, we lost 47 Airmen and $1.4 billion in warfighting materiel to preventable accidents. So we did the safety investigations, we did the studies, and what we found was the training was adequate, the equipment, the tech data, the resources were there and available, but we had allowed a culture to persist that selectively enforced standards. And so had we applied a rigorous, disciplined approach and adhered to all the standards that were available, we would have 47 more Airmen in the fight today and $1.4 billion in warfighting materiel available to us. That’s not okay, and it’s going to get more dangerous, right? We’re fighting in an incredibly complex, global, strategic environment. So we owe this to our supervisors and our leaders, and that’s how we can help them. And then how do they take that and apply it on a regular basis? That’s the last part of the question. And that’s quite simply what you walk past is what you get, right? You accept what you inspect. You accept what you walk past and you enforce what you find to be important. So if a standard is a standard and you’re willing to walk past it, you’re encouraging an organization with selective enforcement of standards. If there’s a problem with a standard, identify it, bring that to your leadership’s attention, and make sure we’re properly addressing it. We want clear and consistent standards that are enforceable at echelon without fear or favor. That’s the effort that we’re undertaking so that our Airmen can stay focused on the main thing, which is generating combat air power to do our nation’s bidding.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
I’m just going to comment on that really quickly. I think what you just described is a great example for all leaders, because I think our tendency when we see something wrong is to instantly go and say, “They have a problem.” What it sounds like you did is that you went back and said, “Do we have a role in this issue? Is there something that we can do to make them more effective in being able to carry out this? Have we given them clear guidance? Is it easy to understand?” I think too many times leaders fail to take that step and look and say, “What role do I play in this?” Fix that, and then see what happens. See how quickly people are going to follow and get in line.
CMSAF David Flosi:
I think the Air Force owns a big part of this. This is not an indictment on the leadership across the Air Force. I’ve spent the vast majority of my career just simply executing, not trying to figure out who wrote what policy. I’m just going to go execute. I expect that there’s somebody else that’s focused on providing me good guidance, good standards, and the proper tools and training that we need so that I can go properly execute the mission that’s being asked of me and my Airmen. That’s what we owe. We owe the Force clear and consistent standards, and then, absolutely, we’re going to hold each other accountable.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
That’s great. Thank you. Chief Bentivegna, the U.S. Space Force is at the forefront of a rapidly evolving domain. How can young leaders in the Space Force effectively lead and inspire their teams amidst constant change and uncertainty? What specific advice do you have for navigating these challenges?
CMSSF John Bentivegna:
Yeah, we need individuals–we have to start to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. We have to start to get comfortable with change. General Salzman earlier this week used an analogy, said, “The Space Force is like a shark in the water. If it stops moving, it’s going to die.” With the rapidly evolving domain and a growing service, the change is going to be constant. But the change, what that really means is we’re getting closer to the vision that we’re laying out. It’s just another step forward. It’s not about change for change’s sake. It’s change to make us better. It’s change because we’re doing the hot washes, right? We’re doing the after-action reports. We’re listening to the feedback that the Guardians in the field are providing. So it’s a little bit about changing how you look at it and not necessarily see it as change for change’s sake, which it is not, but it’s about us to continue to evolve and get better and get more lethal and grow the force. We should be excited about these steps, incremental things that we do, and with our comfort level that if we’re going down a path and we see a better way to get us to our overall objective, we’re nimble enough to pivot. Those are the strengths, I think, of any organization to be able to do that. And with our small size and how young we are, we’re really trying to take advantage of that because I think that is something that we need to be very comfortable with and take full advantage of, especially at this juncture where we are as a service in the evolution of it. But through all that, you get comfortable with the change, you understand how important it is, and really it’s an advantage for us to be this nimble and dynamic. But there are touchstones and keystones, right? One of the reasons General Salsman put out the six space truths, right, that through the change, what is it that we’re focused on? What’s the stability? Where is the reassurance? All the things we do go back to the Space Force truths, which he talked to us about the other day. And then you can use that as you’re leading your Guardians through this journey. This is all because we’re getting better. Because of the truths, how do we get after that? What are the core functions we’re trying to evolve to? So going back to the basic things as a service, whether it be the doctrine, whether it be the policies, or just listening to the C-notes and the things that General Salsman has laid out for us as a service, those will be the constant in the storm. Because if you’re uncomfortable with the change and you’re trying to reevaluate, where are we going, why is this happening, how do I reassure my Guardians? Let’s keep going back to the basics. And through all of this, too, right, things, certain things never change. Anything we do in this process, getting to the vision, implementing the Space Force truths, the vision that we’re going, right, our values are enduring. Our values don’t change. And at the end of the day, the oath that we all took to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, does not change. That is why we are members of the profession of arms. That is why we are warfighters. So there are things through all the evolution and the dynamic, right, that are constants for us, that will give us guidance. But in the end, we have to embrace this opportunity to be as dynamic as we can be. And that change is good because it’s getting us closer to our end state, and it’s making us better, making us more nimble, more lethal. And I really need, right, that constant conversation. So for, you know, in the audience and online, for our NCOs and our CGOs, our captains and majors and senior NCOs, this is the conversation I need you to have with your teammates. This is a culture we need to build. And I’ve been doing this for 31 years. Believe me, I struggle with it, right, because consistency, right, is something that I came to grow up in through my journey. So I get a little uncomfortable sometimes. The team’s got to kind of loosen me up. But it’s for the betterment of the service. So I’m not saying it’s easy, but we just got to have the right conversations, look at it the right way. And when you’re looking for reassurance, let’s go back to the core documents, the core messages, or the core themes that the CSO has laid out to us, go back to the oath that we took and our values, and that will get us through anything that we face.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
That’s great, Chief. It seems to me that if you live in a dynamic environment, there has to be a reciprocal dynamism or else you’re off target. So it’s not actually change, what it really is is continual improvement.
CMSSF John Bentivegna:
Yeah. Yeah. You know… there’s no such thing as change fatigue, right, because it’s just allowing us to get better and we’re growing. But change fatigue really, right, for us should not be a thing because it’s just something that we embrace. We know where we’re going. We know the vision. We know what we have to do. It’s just a different philosophy to have. Yeah, that’s good. Thank you.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
Chief Flosi, as military readiness is in focus and we prepare for a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, what can leaders do to prepare their Airmen for the fight?
CMSAF David Flosi:
Thanks for the question. I’m going to expand it a little bit. First, what are we doing in garrison, right? This is not a go there and do this thing. And you’ve heard this talk, but it’s important to reiterate that the way that we used to pick up and go in a largely uncontested environment will not work in the Indo-Pacific theater. We also have to acknowledge that we’re contested right here at home. So we’re facing a global competitor, and that means we’re contested across domains and we’re contested in garrison as well as downrange, and particularly in the Indo-Pacific theater. It gets incredibly complicated. So that means we’ve got to do things in garrison right now. That is underpinning the transformation that we’re working on. So what are we doing? We are ensuring that we’re starting to train, qualify, exercise, and certify together in home station. We’re looking at the way we’re organized so that our design and our force presentation model fits the requirements of this contested environment. We’re exercising at scale now in a way that we haven’t done for many, many decades. And while we’ve already seen great progress with certification events like Bamboo Eagle, Nexus Forge, and others, we’re looking forward to an even larger bringing entire units of action together for a theater-level campaign exercise with REFORPAC this summer. The chief talked about that earlier in his comments this week. We’re doing many things like that. We have XABs downrange right now in the CENTCOM theater, and we’ve been doing that for a couple years. And to your point about it’s a dynamic environment, how we establish that isn’t how we’re executing it right now. Every iteration of that XAB model, we’re learning and we’re applying it to future iterations. We’re bringing them in, we’re doing a great debrief, and we’re making adjustments because we don’t have time to try to build this perfect plan. But that XAB model is in execution. We have ATFs stood up. So we’ve got our air task forces right now that are aligned around the mission of their organization, and they exist right now to train and qualify together. They’re moving into the exercise phase. They will certify before we put them into the theater to do primarily ace-type operations. We’ll ensure they’re ready for the Indo-Pacific theater and that O plan, and if we employ them in other theaters, we can use those concepts. And we’ve even captured a couple lessons with recent activity that we’ve heard throughout the week in the CENTCOM theater that we needed to be better prepared, like point defense, counter small UAS, things like that that are absolutely applicable no matter where we employ our forces. So that’s kind of what we’re doing. But the question is, you know, what can I do at the squadron astronaut in command today? You do not have to wait for some theater-level exercise to start employing this methodology. And part of it’s a mindset shift. A mission-ready Airman doesn’t mean that we’re no longer focused on our technical expertise. Actually, quite the opposite. We need your technical expertise in that core baseline, but we don’t want to constrain our Airmen to that. We want to start exercising aligning around an assigned mission and taking a small team that’s multi-capable, maybe expertise at the one or two each, but then with a common understanding of what everybody brings to the fight, where our strengths and weaknesses are, and how we can adjust quickly to go execute that assigned mission. You can do that in garrison right now. You do not have to wait for an Air Force-level exercise to do it. So building those mission-ready Airmen. And ensuring the readiness of your organization is something we’ve kind of talked about, and we’ve got some metrics to follow that. But I think now more than ever, bringing people into your organization, whether they’ve been there for a while or they’re a new entrance into your organization, and ensuring you’ve got that alignment right away. Here’s our assigned mission. This is our operational capability. Here’s the doc statement that we’ve got. Here’s the O-plans we support. Here’s what we’re aligned against. That applies whether you’re mission support or mission execution. So I’m not just talking deployable combat wings, but air base wings as well. Your power projection platform has to be aligned around that mission so you understand why it’s important to go do these things at 3 a.m. on a Saturday or a Sunday morning. Sometimes that’s just what the nation needs you to go do. So get that alignment. Ensure your teams understand why they exist. And then you can go out and start doing those exercises. That’s what you can do at the organizational level to make sure you’re aligned around the mission. And then, of course, at the individual level. We’ve asked our Airmen to focus on readiness. We’re asking our first sergeants to ensure that they’re aligned and the squadron command teams are aligned around the readiness of the unit. That means you have to look at the individual. And we can’t do that at the 600-whatever-number thousand people, but you certainly can ask your first-line, second-line supervisors and flight and squadron-level leadership to go out and look your Airmen in the eye, right, make sure that’s at a squadron commander’s call, a standards and readiness review, a pre-step brief, right, a commander’s update brief, you name it. And you can start to really assess for not just your operational competence and qualifications to ensure you can go execute, but those pillars too, spiritual, mental, physical, social, and we’ve added financial readiness to that as well to make sure those conditions are all being taken care of right now because we can’t wait for the crisis to start to focus on those things. So there’s plenty we can do. We can actually–and I applaud our leaders around the Air Force. When we go travel, typically we’re surprised at how focused they are and aligned around their mission. I think we have work to do more in garrison. As you get closer and closer to combatant commander’s theater, you see better alignment there. We have to bring it back home. That’s where a lot of the work is being done right now.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
That’s great. I hate to say it, but we only have three minutes left. And so this might be the most difficult task of the day. I’m going to ask if either of you have any short closing comments that you’d like to leave with the audience.
CMSSF John Bentivegna:
Yeah, again, thanks to AFA, and thanks to everyone who’s here and everyone who’s online for joining us today. Hey, I think our service chiefs laid it out this week. We have a lot of important work to do. It’s going to be challenging. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be rewarding. And we need–especially in a space where, as CSO said, we need the Guardians in the field engaged and have ownership of this, and together we’ll continue to build a foundation for the service for generations to come, and I appreciate you.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
Chief Flosi.
CMSAF David Flosi:
Yeah, thanks. Well said, B9. Look, there’s a lot of noise out there right now. There’s a lot of activity. What we’ve talked about today is really hopefully to help center the force a little bit. We still have this main thing. We’re still wingmen. We’re still leaders. We’re still warriors. We’re in the professional arms. You really only get one chance to be an Airman, and so you’ve got to stay focused on the task at hand. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be worked out, and we’re working on it. So it’s kind of a two-way street. You execute, and we owe you our very best as well. We each need to bring 100% to the fight every day. There’s way more mission than there are Airmen to do it. So we don’t have time to waste. It’s a dangerous environment, and we certainly can’t get trapped being distracted by all that noise out there. We have to find the signal, and that’s the lethality and readiness of our force to preserve options for our nation. I’m confident in our ability to do it, and we’ll continue to work hard to make sure our conditions are set for our Airmen and Guardians to be successful. So thanks for your time. I appreciate it.
Col. Patrick Donley, USAF (Ret.), PhD.:
Great words from you both. Thank you so much. As the clock ticks down, let me just thank our panelists, and also to our audience. I think you’ll agree that this conversation has been incredibly worthwhile. We sincerely hope that you’ll consider how you can apply these thoughts to your own lives and to those you’re responsible for leading. We’d also appreciate it if you’d share these thoughts with those in your organizations who were unable to attend. Clearly, there’s work to do, and our nation needs your help. Thank you so much for attending this session. We hope to have a similar session at all subsequent AFA conferences, so tell your friends to watch for it in September at the Air, Space, & Cyber Conference in Maryland. Now, please give a round of applause for our esteemed panelists and for their sustained service and excellence. Thank you very much.