Reinforcing Warfighting and Personnel Readiness

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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

First, I’d like to thank the Air & Space Forces Association for inviting me to moderate this panel. It’s a treat to be here. I’m honored 100% to share a stage with some titans in the Air Force, and then not only that, I hope this leads to another panel in the near future where I get to host about contested maneuver and contested logistics. That would be awesome. But today we’re here to talk about personnel and warfighter readiness, which is absolutely great. I spent three years, lonely at times, working this very issue during my tenure at Air Mobility Command. I’m really fascinated with problem statements, and I think as I get out of uniform, I really think about the problem we’re trying to solve is delivering winning capabilities to the warfighter faster than China. That’s it. We either can or can’t do that. If we can deliver winning capabilities to the warfighter faster than China, we not only deter, but we also decisively defeat if it gets to that. So I’m happy that we’re on a stage today talking this at the highest levels. It’s really good. So I will introduce our panelists here in sequence with their opening remarks. But for the Undersecretary of the Air Force, Honorable Matt Lohmeier, please to you, sir, for your opening remarks.

Matthew Lohmeier:

Thank you very much. That was an exciting introduction. I might slow down just a minute, let you reenergize us in just a moment. I wanna say thank you first off to our Air & Space Forces Association for all the work that they’ve put into preparing a conference like this. These events don’t come together easily. There’s frankly probably planning all year round to get these conferences done right. So I sure appreciate your work and I think you guys deserve another round of applause. Thank you very much. I’ll be brief, but I just want to open by saying as I anticipated the topic of conversation, it’s important to emphasize for all of our Airmen and Guardians that everything we are doing that we do do in the Department of the Air Force must be viewed through the lens of warfighting readiness and lethality. Everything we’re doing. That theme was apparent yesterday when Secretary Meink took the stage. It was apparent when we heard from our two service chiefs yesterday. However it is that they wanted to approach what it was that they were talking about, the theme was abundantly clear that warfighting readiness and lethality matter to the Department of War, to the administration, and to all of our Department of the Air Force leadership team right now. So I’ll say that up front. When I first came into the seat about a half a year ago, the last AFA took place out in the National Capital region. Heard Secretary Meink lay out his priorities, perhaps for the first time publicly back then, it was his priorities were modernization, readiness, and people. Those are the same priorities that he reiterated yesterday when he was on the stage with one addition. Had a unique opportunity at the last AFA to join Secretary Meink in sitting down with, I think probably five or six former secretaries of the Air Force to listen to them discuss the challenges that they faced at a different time, similar contexts, and the problems that they teed up in that conversation were the balancing act between modernization and readiness. Secretary Meink has reframed that somewhat to say that modernization and readiness are essentially attacking the same problem against different time horizons. We’re trying to have a ready force to fight tonight, trying to have a ready force for tomorrow, and the next week, and the next month, and the next year, and the next decade. So as we talk through whatever the topics are that we get into today, I think we’ve got an awesome opportunity as leaders to let you know how it is that we’re trying to optimally align resources to get after that problem, and thank you very much for hosting our dialogue today.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. Space Force S3, Doug Schiess, go ahead.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Hey sir, first off, thanks. It’s great to see the beard looks really good, and so do the socks. And I hope I’m not telling anybody anything, but they said that you actually have to have a certain level of meeting where you actually dress up from the top. So I’m glad that everything is good today.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

You’re seeing me at my best right now, yes.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

But sir, thank you for your service, and thanks for moderating today. It’s great to be on this panel. I wanna echo the Undersecretary’s thanks to the Air & Space Forces Association. It’s great to get everybody together. It’s great to see so many Airmen and Guardians out there. Last night I got the pleasure, I don’t know, maybe they didn’t think it was a pleasure, but I walked up to five lieutenants that are just about ready to finish the officer training course. And it was hard to see myself in them almost 34 years ago, but they are excited. They are looking forward to the challenges that they have, and they are just all about being a part of something big. So thanks for allowing that they could come here and see this and get to listen to great folks. Undersecretary, thanks for allowing me to be on the stage with you, and it’s always great to be with my OPSTEP E-Ring 10 Corridor teammate, Baskett Cunningham, and some of the fights that we get to do. But the Air Force and the Space Force are always one team. Hey, I’ll just, real quickly on my remarks, as we get to talk about readiness and personnel, I just wanna kinda set the stage. The Space Force was born to ensure that we had space superiority. And when you talk about those words, and some of us that were Airmen for a long time, we know what air superiority is, but I’m not sure we clearly knew what space superiority is, but we do now. And space superiority is the idea that we have to be able to do anything we want to in our domain, on our timeframe, whenever our nation calls us to do that. And then we need to be able to deny our potential adversaries to be able to do what they wanna do. And so that is everything that we are about right now and getting onto readiness. That means we have some, I’ve heard some senior leaders say moral implications to get this right. And some of that is, we have to continue to do what we’ve been doing for a long time, which is enabling our other joint force. We are a part of the joint force, but we have to ensure that that blue kill chain is ready. So when the folks are out there, gonna have to get out into harm’s way and be able to do the things that they need to do to win our nation’s war, we have to make sure that that blue kill chain is ready for them, that they’ve got the GPS, they’ve got the missile warning. And then we have to be able to deny, degrade, disrupt, and maybe even destroy the reds kill chain so that they cannot target our forces and they cannot use space to be able to have their advantage. And then lastly, we just have to continue to defend our assets, not only for our nation to be able to win its wars, but also to be able to continue the way of life that the United States and the world, quite frankly, deserves from what we bring from space. And so that’s what we’ll talk about, space superiority. The reason that we get space superiority is kit, but the most important thing is the Guardians and how do we train them? How do we train them different than we train Lieutenant Schiess to make sure that each and every day they go into their op centers, they go into their deployed locations, and it’s a day where our adversaries said, “Hey, not today because the Guardians are on watch.”

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks, Doug. All right, Air Force A3, a long time Pacific warrior with me, Basket Cunningham, go ahead.

Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham:

Thanks, General Minihan. Well, good morning, everybody, and what a privilege it is to be on the stage this morning with one of my heroes from service, General Minihan, a legendary leader for our Air Force. The Undersecretary of the Air Force and the S3, I like to keep things fun because I think service is about fun, too. I feel like I’m finally in the big kid chair sitting on the stage with these folks, and in the big kid room, too. The Aurora Ballroom is a big deal. But in seriousness, sitting in this chair comes with a great deal of responsibility, which I feel to all of you who are Airmen in the back rows or in the front rows, wherever you may be sitting today. I have the privilege of serving on what I would call the dream team. It’s my first time in the Pentagon, but I’m pretty sure that I’m not out of sorts by calling it the dream team, in addition to the secretary, the under, and then, as you saw, the chief yesterday, the vice chief who, unfortunately, had to get back home for some Capitol Hill events, which is why I have the opportunity to be on stage today, and of course, our awesome Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force, who you’re gonna get to hear from on Wednesday afternoon. So it’s a great opportunity to be a part of a great team there in my first time in the Pentagon. Just three framers–

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

He said that three times for the record, right? His first time.

Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham:

I know, I know. So three framers to build on both what Doug said and the undersecretary said. The first is readiness is Airmen, by definition. That’s what you saw yesterday when you saw the chiefs talk, and you saw Airmen after Airmen after Airmen go on the screen and get highlighted in the audience. I know everybody understands that there’s a reason for that. The second is readiness is inextricably linked to resources. So for us sitting up here, it is about advocating for the resources, articulating the risk that comes with a lack of resources, and then down at the unit level, that comes with making the most you can with the resources that you have. That’s all we can ask from you, is being as ready as you can with the resources that you do have today. And the last piece on readiness I’ll hit that’ll build into the conversation today is the inevitable question of ready for what. And I think that our senior leaders, both in this administration and in the Department of Air Force have made that clear, defending the homeland, deterring China, and being globally responsive. So that is a guiding light for all of us as we think about the readiness question. So thanks again, General Minihan.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. All right, Mr. Secretary, you talked about lethality, modernization, readiness in people, and yet we find ourselves continually, especially in the military, where the now is so expensive you can’t afford the future. So what are we gonna do differently with this, I think, very unique opportunity that lays before us to really do things differently and be able to not only afford the now, but to get after that future force?

Matthew Lohmeier:

Great question. It is a unique opportunity, probably. I think the way Secretary Meink put it yesterday, once in a generation opportunity, once in a lifetime opportunity. We’ve got in the Department of the Air Force some unique and non-substitutable capabilities that we provide to the joint force. Those unique and non-substitutable capabilities, however, do nobody any good if they’re not healthy and we’re not ready to fight. And so, in fact, I’ve really been impressed by, and I’ll add this in before I directly answer the question, General Wilsbach’s continuing emphasis on flying and fixing airplanes. Very simple message, really important to the entire force for us to realize very clearly what it is that we are all about, and analogously, across the air and space forces, we have many capabilities that we, quote unquote, fly and fix. And so what is it that the department and the leadership are trying to do, perhaps, differently than we have in the past? I’ll answer that in two different ways. I’ll talk about the budget, and I’ll talk about the acquisition reform just briefly. But as far as budgeting goes, the FY27 POM effort that the department was involved in, I’d say, is the year of restoring our foundational readiness accounts. What do I mean by that? Our foundational readiness accounts, so-called, include things like our weapons system sustainment, our flying hour program, as far as the Air Force side goes. By that, I mean our structural readiness and our operational readiness. Our FSRM dollars, our enterprise IT and our maintenance. We tend, historically, to have a habit, it’s all too tempting, to pilfer those accounts to pay other bills. And in the FY27 POM, at least, we’ve really tried, and we’re aligned as leadership in making sure that we budget appropriately and increase our funding to those accounts. In fact, I think, I know, over half of the increases in funding in the FY27 POM were directed at those foundational readiness accounts, I think in terms of billions of dollars, not millions of dollars. And if we can get that right, we’re able to field the right capabilities tonight for the fight, not just for the future. So I think our leadership team is actually very aligned in ways that probably we’ve been all too tempted in the past to overlook or to pilfer from those accounts. Acquisition reform, on the other hand, Secretary Meink emphasized greatly, probably the majority of his remarks yesterday were focused on acquisition reform. He mentioned briefly collaborative combat aircraft. I’ll just specifically mention this as an example of something I saw in the last few weeks that I think is an example of how we’re getting this right and influencing the incentive structure of the industrial base. We’re encouraging industry teaming. We’ve got a General Atomics flight that was successful recently, the YFQ-42 Alpha, and they had partnered with RTX to provide mission autonomy software for that flight. And we’ve, for the first time ever, as far as I’m aware, successfully decoupled our mission autonomy software from our airframe autonomy. And that allows us to make iterative upgrades and updates to our mission autonomy at a faster speed and not revisit the full airworthiness process. I think we’re incentivizing competition in ways we haven’t before in the past. We’re bringing more vendors to bear on solving these problems. We’ve got the right leaders with the right talent involved in the acquisition process. And Secretary Meink talked about that as well. And all of that is really encouraging to me. I think those are things we’re getting right now in ways that perhaps we hadn’t in the past.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I like it, thank you, thank you. Doug, you talked about space superiority. Is the Space Force right size to achieve that vision? Go ahead.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Thanks for the setup there, sir. So the Air Force that previously did space operations for decades, we were really good at what we did. And if you were in the classified session yesterday, we talked about how even in Desert Storm, when we were first bringing on the global positioning system and we were first doing missile warning from a tactical level. And so we’ve been operating under the Air Force for years. And when we became the Space Force, we still had to do all of those missions and we have to do them better, quite frankly, to be able to enable that blue kill chain. But to do space superiority, we are bringing on missions every day. And as the Undersecretary talked about in the FY27 Palm, you will see increases in what I call kit. You know, my last job, I was working for the combatant commander and we were providing options to him and onto the Secretary of War and the President. And quite frankly, we didn’t have all the things that we needed to do our mission if called upon. We would have figured it out and Guardians would have done it, but there was many more things that we need to do. And because of that, and thankful to the administration and the Secretary Meink and Undersecretary Lohmeier and Congress, we have really increased the Space Force budget over the last year or so. The thing that we haven’t done that we are going to do is this requires us to grow our force. We have new missions, we have new things. We have started the last two years, our Space Force generation. And in the past, we kind of did our job. You got initially qualified, you trained, your crew might do some training. There’s maybe some things that we called advanced training, but we weren’t training for the future fight. We weren’t training for what was gonna happen if we were in a conflict with Russia or China. And so now we have done a model where we can take the crews that are doing the mission, they’re force presented to a component and a combatant commander, and then the other crews are doing that advanced training. You heard, if you were in here earlier, you heard about some young folks talking about space flag and the things that we’re doing there, the exercises that Space Training Readiness Command are getting us ready for, the things that Combat Forces Command are doing, all of that takes people. And so we’re gonna have to grow our force, but to grow our force, we also have to make sure we grow the accessions pipeline, we grow the training pipeline, we may need more infrastructure. And that’s also right now, that’s a pull on my Air Force brothers and sisters as well, because they support us in every thing. So it’s an incredible time to be a part of the Space Force. We’re gonna continue to grow, we’re gonna continue to do those things that we have to do for our nation. But it’s not gonna be easy. And I’ve seen the Guardians out here in the audience and they’re gonna take it on.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I believe you, I know it. Basket, you talked about some lines of effort. And can you talk about some big impact programs that pull those together? And then could you describe what Airmen are gonna feel and see on the line as they execute the mission?

Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham:

Yeah, thanks, sir. First, in the big impact program world, just to tie on to what Doug said, and I know folks are seeing this, but the Department of the Air Force is really one team. And how we work together. Clearly we have some mission sets that are unique, and how we come together is one of the most powerful things. So I just wanted to build on that just a little bit. With respect to the NDS and the lines of effort and defending the homeland and deterring China, I think in echoing the Undersecretary’s comments here, the being ready to fight tonight is at the key for all of us as Airmen. We have AFORGEN, which is a readiness cycle for how we are ready for rotational deployments. And I think we all know about that readiness cycle. I think we also know and also see in the real world that we’re not always able to stick to that readiness cycle based off of the demands of the real world and being globally responsive. So the requirement for all of us to be as ready as we can be with the resources that we have tonight, I think will continue to be a drumbeat that we’ll hear through these lines of effort. The second thing is some of the modernization pieces and working closely, the Secretary announced yesterday about 5/7 next, right now with the ICC provisional. Within the building, a conversation that we’re having almost every day is about deliberately tying today’s force with the force that we’re building for tomorrow and accelerating the things that we can to get them to today’s war fighters sooner. So there are a number of examples there. Of course, we’ve got our big capabilities that you hear about in the news. CCA is an excellent one that the Undersecretary described well, F-47, B-21, these are all incredibly important programs and also there are things like connectivity for the mobility force, that is pull forward capability that’s gonna be incredibly important for that fight. There’s the DAF battle network that is a pull forward into today’s force. So that’s a deliberate effort every single day in the building of how we accelerate those changes to get them to Airmen and war fighters sooner. So those are just a few examples there to hit, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Great. Secretary Lohmeier, sir, you came in and we’re working war ethos as a priority. You had an opinion coming in. Can you describe how that may have changed with the position within the Air Force and then your current thought and then how we move that forward?

Matthew Lohmeier:

You talking to me? I didn’t get a chance to watch everybody’s confirmation hearings. I did watch Secretary Hegseth’s when he, you know, he’s one of the first out the gates and I think it was there in that confirmation hearing that I heard this emphasis on warrior ethos for the first time come up. It’s never gone away. It’s been a focus of the administration and of the Sec War. Very recently, I had a opportunity to carve out some time to have phone calls with commanders who were preparing to go downrange and I got to ask some questions about their morale, their readiness, their state of mind, their mentality, their families, their perception of the readiness of their units that they were leading and in every case, I was really pleased to hear roughly the same answers. We’ve trained well. We are ready for any mission tasking that comes to us. Our people are in good spirits and have good morale despite sometimes being tired. Some of them had recently come back from deployments and are heading downrange at a cycle and just like the feeling I had when I first got in the seat six months ago when I was debriefed on Operation Midnight Hammer and heard the great work that our men and women did in that operation, I thought to exclaim, God bless these men as they head out the door. All the people I talked to were men on the phone. That’s why I say it that way. We’ve got outstanding men and women in uniform. Now we’ve got a mantra of warrior ethos. It’s a phrase that we repeat. We repeat it often, you hear it all the time and that’s good. A mantra in and of itself is insufficient to change a culture. You go beyond the mantra and you match word and deed and you get the right leaders in the right places, the right time and that’s the single most important thing we do as a department to motivate cultural change, to eliminate distraction and to get entire units of people completely focused on accomplishing the mission. And we’ve got outstanding leaders. I just got back from the Pacific, spent two weeks out there with both air and Space Force leadership and was so impressed with the leaders that we’ve got, where we’ve got them. They are mission focused in every particular. If they weren’t, they’d be gone. Not interested in having leaders that aren’t focused on the mission. We’ve got outstanding men and women who are leading our troops and I sensed that morale was high as I went through the Pacific. As Secretary Meink said, when he went last summer, he came back reflecting on the morale of those folks. He said, you can’t fake good morale. And the sense was that we’ve got folks that are in good spirits. And so despite the challenges that we’ve got, this focus on warrior ethos really matters and getting the right leaders in the right seats matters too because they’re what drive that cultural change.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I agree, I agree, thanks. Doug, you mentioned working for a combatant command. I mean, I’ve got a lot of time working for combatant commands. I know the one real role of a combatant command is to consume service readiness insatiably. So with that as your background and then now in your current role, how does that shape the way you view readiness, how you view deterrence and how you view space superiority?

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Yeah, thanks sir, appreciate that. As Basket talked about, one of our main jobs is to be in the op steps, meaning be the plus one for the service chiefs in the tanks. And that’s to advocate for the right mix, the right budgets, the right things to be able to do that. But also when we are looking at, hey, we’re gonna have a mission, what’s the lay down and how do we do that? And I know for my last job, there was times where we just didn’t have all the kit that we needed and maybe even didn’t have all the people ready to do that mission. But we would then go to the Guardians, we would go to them and we would be able to flex to be able to get that done. And I think you’ve seen that in Operation Midnight Hammer that the undersecretary talked about, the ability for those forces to provide that position navigation and timing to our bomber forces and to our fighter forces, provide that satellite communications to them. And then maybe most importantly, provide missile warning to them while they were in the box. But then when the response from Iran to be able to provide that missile warning, to be able to protect our forces there, get that data right to the missile defenders to be able to do that. And then the same again with last December, January, with Operation Absolute Resolve and our ability there to do electronic attack and electronic monitoring to make sure that we could provide to the Joint Task Force what they needed. And so it’s a continual battle to be able to do that. I think right now we are, and I know that 27 POM hasn’t become the president’s budget yet, but as we see that come out and the things there, and as we advocate with Congress to be able to get the kit that we need, it’s gonna be a much better calculation for the commanders and for the components to be able to do that. But it’s gonna take time, and we’re gonna have to build those forces, build that kit to do those things. But it’s a continual tension there to make sure that we have the ready forces, that they’ve had the time to be able to train, they’ve been able to upgrade, but then also to be able to get out the door and be able to take this to the Joint Force together to do our mission.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Love it, love it. All right, Basket, you and I worked very hard, me supporting you for things like Bamboo Eagle, which is very realistic training, overlay it with Secretary Lohmeier’s warrior obligations, the operational things that Doug just talked, and let’s hypothetically say there’s an Air Force unit right now that’s not heavily engaged. I mean, what normal things in a training scenario might the average Airman feel that’s different about how we work up now?

Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham:

Yeah, thanks, sir. I’ll build directly off of the Bamboo Eagle example, because it’s an awesome opportunity to talk about amazing Airmen. Sir, you and I had a front row seat to it when I was at the Warfare Center and you were at AMC, and it was Airmen recognizing that the kind of training that they were getting was not exactly the kind of training that they felt like they needed in order to be successful in high-end conflict. So literally, captains and majors, staff sergeants and tech sergeants were the genesis of what came to be Bamboo Eagle, which is, with all intents and purposes, supposed to feel like the first-hand combat missions would feel beyond the red flag model of just the airborne piece of the force, but for the entire integrated joint and allied warfighting force for high-end conflict. And so at the core of that is, to the direct answer to the question, is it takes all of us to do this. And each opportunity that you have to refine the piece of your kit, the piece of your capability, the piece of your skills in order to do the thing that the team is gonna count on you to do when you get into high-end conflict is part of that. And then the next part is to get to environments like Bamboo Eagle or other forums where you can bring it all together and exercise it. So our Airmen get this, which is the amazing part about it. They get that it’s joint, they get that it’s the entire Air Force team, the total force team, and they get that it takes allies and partners to be successful. So thanks for an opportunity for a blast to the past there, sir. I appreciate it.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I would love to go back and do another, just saying. All right. Sir, you’ve served at both the Air Force and the Space Force. You have a very unique perspective coming into the role that you’re in now. What lessons did you bring from each and then combined as you execute your duties now?

Matthew Lohmeier:

I’m gonna answer that question. I’m gonna circle back to the previous. I’ve been thinking and listening. I’ve been listening to. I’ve been thinking about what I said. And I ran into someone that I went to the Air Force Academy with. I ran into a few people that I went to the Air Force Academy with, I haven’t seen for the last 20 years. But I don’t know if Stuby is here. Stuby, you out there somewhere? You can shout. Okay, he’s standing up. I see him. It’s hard to see all of you. And I’m gonna make an example of him real quick. If you weren’t here, I was gonna embarrass you ’cause I saw you yesterday. But one of the trips that my team took was to Columbus Air Force Base. And it’s one of our pilot training bases.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I hear it’s not only one of them. I heard it’s the best one, just saying.

Matthew Lohmeier:

I mean–

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Anyone? Thank you, there’s one.

Matthew Lohmeier:

I’m not allowed to say that, but I’ll tell you, while I was there, I wanna just revisit this warrior ethos question real quick and then I’ll answer this question. It looks like we’ve got, hopefully, we’ve got the time to do that. I mentioned getting the right leaders in the right places. And I was a T-38 FAPE at Vance. And thank you, thank you. Dave Deptula. I can see the second row. The experience of our student pilots, at Columbus at least, and I haven’t visited all of our UPT bases, but the experience those student pilots are having compared to the one I had over a decade ago is other world, it’s totally different. They’re treating these young student pilots like professional athletes in a sense. I think they’ve got what’s called the TAP program, the Tactical Athlete Program. We went and worked out with these young student pilots. They’re like shaming them into eating healthy foods instead of their frozen Hot Pockets that I was eating when I went through. If you showed up with celery and carrots when I went through UPT, you’d be teased out of the room. And now if you show up with your Hot Pocket, you’re teased out of the room. Where’s your celery, where’s your carrots? And they’re treating the whole human as if they need to be fit in every sense, physically and emotionally, mentally, spiritually. And they’re trying to visit all of those in the programs they’ve got going there. Every base is different, every context is different, but what I heard from the leadership team there, Stuby included, I was really encouraged by, and my entire team left our visit to Columbus Air Force Base and thought, man, they’re doing a lot right here. Despite some of the difficulties we face with changes to the syllabus, where there may potentially be increased risk that we try and mitigate in various ways. But I just wanted to give a shout out to you guys. I see it everywhere I go. I see impressive leaders, I see impressive work being done, but there was a tangible, noticeable impact to culture that you guys are making there that ideally, I won’t just say I want to exist at all pilot training bases, ideally it exists across the entire DAF. At every installation, we’ve got leadership teams that are doing their best to take care of their people in all the right ways. So thank you for your work out there at Columbus. My unique background in coming into the, I do have a unique background. I won’t belabor the point, but I didn’t know there was an Air Force Academy when I was in high school until I was recruited by Coach Reggie Minton, the head coach at the time to come play basketball for the Air Force Academy. God gave me good basketball skills so I could be in the Air Force someday and not play in the NBA like I’d envisioned. I went to the Air Force Academy, got a backseat riding a T-38, fell in love with the idea of flying, abandoned the biology major, and decided I’d take the major that would have the least credits, which was social science, so that I could just focus on the future, which was flying airplanes. Went to Vance, became a T-38 fape, wanted to fly the A-10. I’d been casual in an A-10 squadron at Davis-Monthan. I put A-10s as my top choice. I’m going somewhere with this too, by the way.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I’m in.

Matthew Lohmeier:

I put F-15Cs as my bottom fighter choice, and I got F-15Cs, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I made a 9G turn out of the fighter community for Air Force Space Command at the time, which I didn’t know existed while I was a young fighter pilot, and as a senior captain going on major, I came into the world of space and did space-based missile warning. I did that at Buckley, spent time as an aide for Jay Raymond, went to school for a couple of years, went to SAS, which was the best formal education I’d ever been put through, just to come back out and command at Buckley in our space-based missile warning enterprise, and I felt passionately enough at the time about things that were going on in the country and the military that I made a 9G turn to civilian life, and I spent a few years there, and now I’m back here in this seat, and I reflect on the arc of my career path. It’s odd, unexpected. Many of you have been on career paths that took unexpected turns. You’ve had either a typical career arc or you’ve had an atypical one. You’ve had disappointment. At times, I’ve had disappointment, but no matter where you serve, whether you’re in the Air Force or the Space Force, no matter what unexpected turns you’ve taken, our core values that I think have only been in place since the ’90s, maybe, but ’90s.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

General Fogelman.

Matthew Lohmeier:

Our core values of integrity first, service before self, excellence in all that you do, are guiding principles that will really, they are what enable the warfighting culture. They are what enable the warfighting spirit in each of you. They are what enable us to have a lethal force. They’re what enable our leaders to make positive cultural impact. And they will serve you well, not only when you’re in uniform, but when you transition out of uniform someday, and all of you will, whether at an expected timeline or an unexpected timeline, out into your civilian life. And so I wanna emphasize that because I’ve experienced that, and it will serve you well to live those core values, but because as the Undersecretary and getting to travel around and meet all of you and eat meals with you, after I leave here, I can’t wait to go down to Shrever in a few minutes and eat lunch with some Guardians. That’s where I’m going next. And what I’m gonna see is that those who do their best to embody those core values, and I think you’ve got four Cs in the Space Force, tied right in to integrity, service, and excellence, character and commitment, courage, and connection. Those that embody these principles and these values have the highest morale, are doing the best honorable service to one another and to their country. And so I get to see that firsthand. So I commend all of those things to all of you.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

That’s awesome. And of course we have the author of those core values sitting right there. General Fogelman. All right, well, good luck, Basket, ’cause I’m gonna ask for final comments now. We’re gonna go reverse order. So final comments to you?

Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham:

I appreciate the luck to follow the Undersecretary of the Air Force there. Well, I’ll just emphasize one thing that the Chief talks about in his emphasis on a commander-focused Air Force. And having only been in this current role for a little bit of time, but I haven’t spent the last eight to 10 years in command, General Wilsbach’s emphasis on a commander-centric Air Force is a big deal. And I saw it in action when I was in PACAF and the things that commanders were able to do in order to be as ready as they could be to fight tonight. And that commander-focused Air Force is also enabled and empowered by our incredible NCO Corps and all that they do. So thank you for that. That’s worth a big round of applause. And then just fix and fly to deter. And if deterrence fails, fight and win. – Thank you.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Yup, Doug.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Hey, sir, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about readiness from the perspective of our awesome Acquisition Corps. As you will see this 27 budget come in, we are getting the things that we need to do and that Acquisition Corps, with the folks at Space Systems Command and our PEOs and eventually our PAEs, they’re gonna get after it. And what’s great to see is General Garand is all in. Like when we need people to deploy to maybe a position that doesn’t have to have a certain indicator, he’s all in to get his acquisition folks out to do that. And as we build our Guardians, they’re just doing an incredible job. And I know they’ve got a lot of work ahead of them. And if you just look at our launch bases, you know, when Captain Schaest was in the second space launch squadron, we were pretty excited when we launched seven rockets in one year in 1997. There are hundreds of launches now, and we need that to be able to get our force ready to be able to fight and win. And so thanks again for everybody on the panel. It’s great to be here, Semper Supra.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Honorable Lohmeier. Can we give him a good round of applause too? Come on.

Matthew Lohmeier:

We’ll all close where I began. We’ve got exciting changes occurring right now, once in a generation or lifetime opportunities to accelerate our progress. And everything we’re doing in the Department of the Air Force has to be viewed through the lens of warfighting readiness and lethality. And we’ve got an increasingly complex threat that we’re facing. We’ve got promising progress with our allies and partners. I just attended a breakfast this morning and got to visit with some of our air attachés from around the globe. I’m encouraged by so much of what I see, and yet the challenges remain. We’ve got perennial problems that are related to readiness and how we optimally align our resources. And I can assure you that the DAF leadership team, both those who are politically appointed and our uniform wearers are in lockstep in trying to get our war fighters what they need on a timely basis and give you the right tools and training so that you can be successful in pursuing our national security aims. So thank you for all the work that you do and thanks for letting me join you here today. And thank you for moderating.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome, sir. All right. I know this. There is nothing more powerful on this planet than an American team that believes in itself. And that belief starts with warfighter readiness. So a round of applause for our panelists. Have a great day. Thank you.