Keynote Address—The State of the DAF
September 22, 2025
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Dr. Troy E. Meink:
Morning everybody. I think Bernie may have given my speech, so I think I may be maybe done here. But no, thank you very much. I appreciate it. So how are we all doing this fine Air Force morning? How are we all doing this fine Space Force morning? How did that happen? Air Force is supposed to outnumber the Space Force by 50 to 1, something like this. How are we doing a fine Joint Force morning? So 40, almost 40 years ago today, oh maybe 40 years ago in July, I got my first introduction to the Air Force when I was at Air Force ROTC, the six-week ROTC training camp we do in the summertime. And for some unknown reason, they had a Marine Drill Sergeant doing PT in the morning. So he opened every morning with “How you doing this fine Air Force morning?” I’m not convinced he was doing it with respect, but it was burned into my mind and I remember it. I still use it with my family. They don’t really care for it when I do it early in the morning, but I still use it across the board. So thank you very much.
Thanks, Bernie, for the introduction. Thank you everybody. I was a little afraid, you know, people weren’t gonna show up, but it doesn’t look like that’s a problem. So thanks everybody for coming. Thanks AFA. My wife and I have been around the Air Force for 40-odd years. She’s retired Air Force as well. Well, I was in the Air Force, not retired. She’s retired Air Force. And we’ve seen the great things that AFA does for the Airmen and Guardian for that entire 40 years. And I think they’re stepping up even more today than they ever have in their entire history. So not only thank you for the conference today, but thank you for all the great, all the great work, all the great work they do. And special thanks to General Allvin and Gina. Not only for the 39 years of service that I could talk for hours about, but although I’ve been around the department a long time, stepping into this job four or five months ago, General Allvin’ just been fantastic. It’s, it’s, there’s a lot going on. As you know, it’s a great big department, a lot of things going on, and I just can’t thank General Allvin enough for everything he’s done for me. General Saltzman, you helped a little bit too. But thank you, thank you General Allvin. I really, really appreciate all the help. I would say it’s now time to go off and relax, but knowing General Allvin, and it’s probably not gonna be all that terribly relaxing, but good luck on whatever you do after this. I’m hoping to have an opportunity to work with you again. And also thanks for all the Airmen and Guardian across the entire force.
When I came into the job, it’s like four and a half months ago, my thought was, you know, in the first month I would get out to all the major commands, all the, all the, both on the department, the Air Force and the Space Force, and try to hit all the co-coms. And I really wanted to do that in the first month. Yeah, that didn’t work out. That was a little, little aggressive on my goals there. But I have gotten out and had an opportunity to see pretty much all the commands, both the Air Force and Space Force. Hasn’t touched all the co-coms, but pretty much all the commands across. And I’ve had an opportunity to meet with Airmen and Guardians, and that is the funnest part of the job. There’s no question about it. I’ve really, really enjoyed it, and the selfless service that they give. And, you know, yeah, back in the States, or, and I’m gonna talk a number of times about some of the visits I had overseas to the Indo-Pacom Theater for REFORPAC, one of the largest exercises the department’s had. I don’t know, General Allvin in 20, 30 years, probably? 40 years? 40? Still getting the thumbs up higher. Yeah, but super impressive, and I’m gonna chat a lot about that as, as we go into it.
But there’s a couple of Airmen that I also want to thank. As probably, I’m sure everybody knows here, 78 years ago, last week, the Air Force was formed,1947. As part of the celebration, we had an air show out at Andrews, I think a week ago, last Friday, and I got a chance to meet a lot of Airmen, and I got to meet with two Airmen that have been around longer than the Air Force has been around. Dick Nelms and Alan Shapiro were there. Dick flew 35 B-17 missions over Europe. I think in the beginning of the war, that was statistically impossible to survive, 35 B-17 missions over Europe. And Alan flew C-47s across Europe, including over Normandy. So impressive, impressive Airmen. And one of the things that really got me thinking about with that, and, and, and the selfless service that you get there. As a matter of fact, one of my mentors when I was in my mid-20s, it was, I knew him for five, six years before I even realized he flew B-47s, towed gliders, over, over Normandy, during D-Day, not just over Normandy, but during D-Day. And that selfless service existed then, it still exists today, and I’ve been so, so impressed with that. But, saying that, one of the things I really took away and thought a lot about since then was, you know, what, what came out of World War II really formed the Air Force, and to some degree the Space Force today. Yeah, it was 19, it was a number of years later before the Air Force was officially stood up, but really the, the rise of air power and the importance of dominating the air domain became quite obvious during World War II. And to be honest, it was really the Space Force as well. I mean, we, Space Force wasn’t stood up until many, many, many, many years later, but the V-2 rockets, it was already starting to be understood, the importance of space. And yeah, it took many, many decades for the Space Force to be stood up, but you could also, you’re already looking back and see, and see the, the makings of what was to come. The interesting thing is, and the great thing and the great benefit of having the Air Force and its performance throughout the time, was we’ve really had air dominance since then. Pretty much uninterrupted air dominance then. And as mentioned, and I’m sure we’ve mentioned many, many times, that is coming under threat. And it’s not the first time. I mean, our air dominance, the ability for us to dominate the air domain has really come under threat a number of times. And we’ve had our cage rattled a bit, both on the air and the space side of the house. Started the Korean War. The air dominance was not what we would have liked to have seen. I think the air-to-air kill ratios were less than two, depending on the pilots we’re going against. Vietnam, same way. We did not have air dominance, but, or to the level that we would have liked. But we went after it. We focused, we took after it. Now, today, the U.S. has air dominance. I think they’re 15, 50 odd to one kill ratios. The best bombers, the best fighters in the world. But they are no question coming under threat. And we’re gonna have to do, just like we’ve done many times in the past, we’re gonna have to focus, we’re gonna have to make sure we maintain that dominance.
Same thing in the space side of the house. You know, coming out, you know, quick, soon after, soon after World War II, a lot of focus on the space environment as well, across the nation, not only the Air Force, but before the foundation of NASA. And then Sputnik happened, right? That rattled the entire country as well. And we had to focus, we had to respond to that, and we did so. Twelve years later, from Sputnik, we were landing on the moon. That is a level of focus that I think we need going forward. If we don’t have, matter of fact, by the way, this is from a space side of the house, this is, this is over 60 years ago, but this is still my favorite footage. Apollo/Saturn rocket taken off. Still amazes me today that we build such a thing. And I do this for a living, and it still amazes me we can build such a thing. But we responded, we responded, and, and you know, again, twelve years later, we were on the moon, and we’ve maintained space power, but ever since. Challenge, of course, is space power is being threatened the same, if not more than air power. And our job is to make sure we don’t lose it. I mean, it’s plain and simple. It seems pretty obvious to everybody. I hope it is pretty obvious to everybody. Our job is to maintain that dominance going forward, that advantage the U.S. has had. Now I’m gonna try to be positive, or I’m gonna try to be balanced. I’m gonna be a little bit positive, but, but not necessarily always positive. You know, what I’ve seen, the innovation, what we’re doing across the force is, is super impressive. I, we still, no question, we still have the best trained force in the world. The question though is, are we doing everything we need to do to maintain that power? And, and I’m going to talk about a number of details as I walk through the next 20 minutes, about things we need to do, maybe dive into a little bit more detail than some of the other things you’ve heard, and where I think the department, where I think the department needs, needs to focus.
The challenge we have is, in maintaining that power, the rest of the world pretty much knows how we operate. Desert Storm was, I think—we talked about rattling our cage with some of the challenges we’ve had to us. I think this rattled a lot of people’s cage, particularly China and others. They watched what we did, they watched how the U.S. essentially dismantled the fourth largest army in the world with, with, with very little, very, very light casualties compared to, compared to the, the size of the force that we took on. And they have been focused on this since then. They have been razor focused on this since then. And there’s a lot of talk about it, but it didn’t really hit my mind. It didn’t really come to clarity to me, probably until about 15 odd years ago. I was doing a study looking at, you know, really how quickly were the Chinese evolving? And it’s not this, the China threat we have to worry about, but they’re, but they’re, they’re the, they’re the most significant threat from a mass perspective. How quickly were they evolving? It was back when I was working at D&I. We did a fairly detailed study on that, and not only what, what and how fast they were evolving, but what was driving that, that evolution, that speed of what they’re developing. When the data first came to me, I thought it was wrong. Right? I didn’t think it was any, there was any way possible that they were evolving that much faster than we were. Their development times, our timelines were a fraction of ours. And I’m not going to go into, I could talk hours about why we think that was and why we thought that was not going to be sustainable and why we thought that would taper off with time. But that galvanized my mind, that focused my mind that, that, that the only way we’re going to maintain our advantage is we have to innovate and we have to innovate faster than our adversaries. And again, it’s a rate of change thing. No matter how far you are ahead, unless you’re innovating faster than they are, then you’re going to lose that advantage. You will lose that advantage. And it’s not just in technology. People always jump to, really since I spent a lot of my time doing tech development, people always jump to, you’re talking about technology, you’re talking about inserting technology, which is true. It’s critically important, but it’s not just technology, right? We have to be innovative in how we operate. We have to be innovative in how we maintain our systems. We have to be innovative in how we train. We really have to be innovative across the board. And if we’re not thinking that way from our level all the way down to the individual Airmen or Guardians at the very lowest ranks, that then we’re not going to be successful. What I always, people who work with me know that I’m always looking for a debate. If we’re doing something wrong, that’s not allowing that innovation to occur at pace. Somebody needs to raise their hand. And we need to be thinking about every day that we work. Otherwise, we have no chance of maintaining that advantage.
It’s not just against China either. The President’s priorities, defend the homeland, and, and maintain our dominance against all adversaries, particularly China. But that varies a lot, right? It’s not just the high-mass China. It’s that, it’s that low-high mix of capabilities that we’re coming against. You know, whether it’s the terrorist groups or whether it’s a full-up China. We have to defend. We have to be innovative against all of those activities. And not just compete. We got to win. We got to be able to win. We got to be able to deter, and we got to be able to win, period. And that’s what we all need to be focused at going forward. That’s what I’m going to be focused at for the next three and a half years, I think is about what I have in this job left. So that’s going to be my focus. That needs to be everybody’s focus. So what I’m talking about is a little bit more of the details on what I’m talking, what I think, where I think we need to be looking. And I’m going to touch on modernization, readiness, and people. Now, first thought is, okay, wait a minute. That, that’s, that’s everything we do. Modernization, readiness, people, that’s everything we do. Yes. But I’ll try to get a little bit more detailed than that. Devil’s in the details.
So the first thing I’m going to talk about is modernization. So good news, bad news here. We, the Air Force is probably under, not probably, probably is under the largest level of modernization in its history. And I’m talking about both the service, both the Air Force service and the Space Force service. Matter of fact, in some areas, it’s not just modernization. These are, these are missions that didn’t exist five years ago. And General Saltzman, and even on the Air Force side of the house, these are really almost missions that didn’t exist for sure 10 years ago, and maybe even five years ago, those missions didn’t exist. And, and the key here is, as we feel this capability, we, we have to execute. In some case, you know, execute, execute, execute, cost, schedule, and performance. Whether it’s the F-47, which—I love this picture. I know General Allvin, you were a big pusher of this program. You guys just love looking at this picture. I expect some of the Chinese Intel analysts are spending a lot of time looking at this picture. Good luck. I’m trying to dig something out of there. Pretty careful about that. But it represents one of the many levels of modernization. It’s not just air dominance. It’s not just the F-47. What we’re doing with the F-35, what we’re doing with the F-15Xs, what we’re doing, I’m going too fast, F-15Xs, which I think I get to fly in November. I’m looking forward to that. The B-2 radar engine development, the B-21, which again will be the most capable bomber in the world. Sentinel program, the 139 helicopters, KC-46s, the EA-37s, the T-7s, command and control systems, and the collaborative combat aircraft. Every single mission area that the Air Force and the Space Force have to do are in the progress, or in the midst of being modernized. And that is a heavy, heavy lift. It is, it’s never been done before, and we have to execute. Whether it’s space control, and I’d love to talk a lot more about the, the, the combat, the CCAs. You know, although that is a mission area we’ve been doing, air-to-air combat, this is a entirely different way of doing it. That really starts to go after that high, mid, low mix of capabilities that we have to be able to field. And there’s no one-size-fits-all. I get this all the time about everything needs to be low-end, everything needs to be high-end. There is no one-size-fits-all. We have to balance that investment across all those programs.
Space control. Unfortunately, 10, 15 years ago, some of our adversaries started to weaponize space, and weaponize space aggressively. We stood on the sideline probably too long. We didn’t want to go down that path, but now we, we’re pushing hard. We didn’t start the, the, the race to weaponize space, but we have to make sure we can continue to operate in that domain going forward. We can’t lose that high ground.
Launch. I think a lot, there’s an immense amount of activity going on in launch. We’re launching probably an order of magnitude more than, than we did when I first started in acquisition. Matter of fact, I think this is one of the areas where the U.S. has a distinct advantage, whether it’s, whether it’s small, medium, heavy, super heavy lift vehicles. I think the U.S. has a huge advantage of that, and I think we need to take, we need to take, we need to take full advantage of that advantage we have.
Ammunitions. We built some of the best munitions on the planet, no question about it. The challenge we have with munitions is scaling them up. You know, we are really good across the board at building things. The challenge we’re having right now is how do we scale those costs, cost and schedule wise to deliver the mass that’s needed, both from just the pure numbers and then as we start to go into some of the higher, the higher end munitions, that’s gonna be a good challenge, a big, big challenge. The challenge is on some of these programs we’ve been doing really well. Some of these programs we’ve not been doing well at all. Number curity on Sentinel program, the B-25 radar and engine upgrade program, on the space war side, OCX, some of these programs are just not executing well. We have to improve our execution. I’ve done this a long time in my career, and my focus has always been making sure you have authority, resources, and talent lined up. On the, on the authority side of the house, I think the Hill, this administration, this, this Pentagon leadership is going to do a lot to better align the authorities.
Resources, same thing, I think we’re gonna get more help with resources. The key here is to make sure we have the right talent to utilize those authorities and resources that are gonna be handed to us. There is no replacement for experience and technical skills and acquisition. We need to make sure we have those people there. All right, moving on, readiness. This is actually an area that surprised me a bit. You know, we again have some of the best, the best aircraft, even though they’re being, coming under challenge, under threat from some of our adversaries, F-22, F-35, B-2, best programs, best, best aircraft flying right now. Again, coming under challenge, but they are, they are still very dominant, very dominant weapon systems. And I knew there was a readiness challenge. I didn’t appreciate how significant that readiness challenge was. You know, it’s a phenomenal platform, but when I go out to Langley and there’s a number of aircraft, non-operational, sitting around the ramp that aren’t even being worked on because we simply don’t have the parts to do that, that’s a problem, right? We have to fix that. And there’s a series of things I think we’re gonna have to do.
First thing is efficiency. Yeah, when you don’t have unlimited resources, which we don’t have, we need to make sure we are applying the resources we have for weapons system sustainment and readiness to the right and highest priority systems. What does this mean? If a system is not capable of operating in a contested environment, then we need to be second-guessing and/or thinking about how much money we’re dumping into readiness on those platforms. The Ukrainians like to put out videos. This is a souped-up quadcopter, probably in the thousands of dollars, shooting down a multi-million dollar drone, right? If it can’t operate in a contested environment, probably the only place you have a non-contested environment is over the U.S. because of the proliferation of these systems. So we need to make sure we’re investing our money in the systems that are capable of operating in an environment that we expect them to operate in to be effective.
Maintainability. You know, we need to improve, we need to work with the contractors. When we’re getting a part that’s supposed to last 400 hours and it lasts 100 hours, that’s unacceptable. We need to work with the contractors, the government, the contractors, and make the right investments to improve the serviceability and reliability of our weapons systems and the parts we’re putting in those weapons systems because that ends up driving it. This has actually been a surprise to me to the level of challenges we’re having. That has to be addressed.
Data. I always get this term wrong, but aircraft. Aircraft readiness machine. Did I get that right, General? I got that right. This is the start of looking at data in a much more holistic, using advanced techniques to try to better understand the state of the fleet, but also what we can do to improve the reliability and maintainability of the weapons systems. How do you fly them to make it more survivable? Same thing in the Space Force side of the house. It’s a little bit different, but it’s similar. There’s a lot going on in the Space Force, you know, the 2,000-mile screwdriver to work on the satellite. There actually is such a thing. It’s called software. There’s a lot going on from a facilities and other perspective that we have to do to increase readiness across the Space Force. I think there’s a lot of good activities, SPAFORGEN and other activities, to try to increase readiness. I think one of the things that I have seen a lot of innovation in is, you know, our facilities are part of our weapons systems in many cases. We fight from our facilities, both on the Air Force and Space Force side of the house. I think the challenges we’ve had with building on infrastructure, the high cost you pay in the long schedules from a military construction perspective, has been a huge challenge, but I’m seeing a lot of innovation. I got an opportunity to go out to the, basically fly, which was super fun, fly in the back of a C-130 out of Guam across Tinian to Saipan at a couple hundred feet, hanging out the back. It was a little uncomfortable at first, but then it got fun after you knew that strap was gonna hold you in, you weren’t gonna fall off the back, but it was great. But it was interesting about it is flying over Tinian. This is an airfield, right, that’s basically been left for the jungle to grow over since World War II. The CEs have cleared this place, are building hangars, rolling tarmac, and a fraction of the time it would traditionally allow it, we would need to do to do construction. General Schneider–that was a fantastic visit out there. But the innovation that they’re using and how they go about building that construction, the authorities that I think we can give them to do it better. Matter of fact, when I came out of there, I wanted to just hire another 50,000 civil engineers in the Air Force and have them do all of our construction, but that’s probably impractical. But it was something that was, again, innovation and everything, not just acquisition technology, but innovation, how we do maintenance, innovation, how we do construction, that’s what we need to be focused on.
All right, last thing. I’m burning through my time pretty fast here. Last thing: People. Again, the most important thing we have, the most critical thing, and I actually think the thing we’re best positioned in. We have the best trained, best morale workforce in any military and probably in the history of the Air Force, and I’ve been super, super impressed. But we are asking them to maintain and work on some of the most technical and complex systems, fly, operate, maintain, and we need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to support that workforce. We’re also asking them to work on airplanes, as was mentioned in the introduction, that are older than any time in the history of the Air Force. So it’s the only picture of myself in this video, I hope. I had to bring it up because the picture on the left is 36 years ago, I think it’s in Riyadh or Dhafra, I’m not sure where, in front of a KC-135. I never flew a KC-135 younger than I was. The picture on the right is the same aircraft, not the same kind of aircraft, the same aircraft a month ago on Guam. Right, we will be maintaining aircraft probably that are a hundred years old on the path we’re on, right, because it’s just so hard to replace these things. Now, it’s a phenomenal aircraft. I mean, I thought the crew chief was gonna make us put on booties when we walked up into the airplane. I mean, that thing was perceived as better than when I was in the airplane. The guard takes really good care of aircraft. But that is the challenge we have, and also when I was over there, it’s not just maintaining that wide breadth of systems, but it’s also the fact that you’re maintaining and operating these things in extremely harsh conditions, which is why there’s a big push across from that culture of fitness. Not only are your, you know, high-G fighters or bombers where you’re flying 37-hour missions, but maintaining and operating loading, fueling aircraft in those environments is unbelievably harsh. And I’ve been, I was super impressed with the innovation just going on there, not just in construction, but how they’re doing the agile combat employment, a lot of great work being done. But we have to support them. We have to support the workforce. So, a number of things have happened over the last five, 10 years. Quality of life, I think there’s been great progress there. The, you know, putting more money into dorms, putting more money into childcare, child daycare centers, increasing salaries, all those things are good. We need to continue to focus on that. I also think we need to do quality service. There’s a lot of things going on with respect to, you know, trying to make sure that we are allowing, again, we have some of the most highly technical, highly skilled workforce that we’ve ever had. How do we make sure that there’s job satisfaction? How do we make sure that they are continuing to do the things they were trained to do as long as they want within their career? How do we let pilots fly? How do we let engineers do engineering work? How do we let cyber operators do cyber? And a lot of technical tracks, we’re doing part-time stuff in the Space Force. There, the warrant officers for the cyber folks. I think all those things are good and we really need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to support them from a quality of life, but also support them from quality of service. The Air Force doesn’t have a recruiting problem. We met our recruiting goals three months earlier this year. The challenge, of course, we have is how do we make sure that we maintain and take advantage of the investment we place into them?
All right, so I’m gonna wrap up because I’m running out of time. I’m gonna wrap up and just say a few things. I have zero concern about the ability of the department to employ combat power. I think the chief is gonna talk about a number of those in a little bit more detail, but I have zero concern about our ability to employ combat power. We have the best trained, most talented workforce I think the Air Force, Department of Air Force has ever had—Space Force, Air Force have ever had. The challenge I see is how do we make sure they have the tools at the mass and scale that we need to be successful in maintaining our advantage in deterring all aggressors. It’s not just having the tools, it’s having it at the scale and the mass that’s required to do that. And again, I will say it again, innovation, innovation, innovation. When you watch what our adversaries are doing, unless you’re moving faster than they are, no matter how far you are ahead, they will overtake you. No question about it. We’ve seen it in some areas. Now we’re doing great and it’s not just innovation and technology. I’m gonna hit on this again and again, it’s innovation across the board. And if we, as the leadership, are not doing everything we can to support you moving fast and being innovative, you need to tell us that because we will not be successful without that. So thank you very much, I appreciate the time this morning. Fly, fight, win. Semper Supra. Thanks everybody.