General Jumper: Air Force will uphold standards

  • Published
  • By Louis A. Arana-Barradas
  • Air Force Print News
ORLANDO, Fla. --  The Air Force will uphold its standards, and people who break the service’s core values “will pay the price,” the Air Force chief of staff said.

Gen. John P. Jumper also told the more than 1,000 attendees at the Air Force Association’s annual Air Warfare Symposium here Feb. 17 the service will not hide from media scrutiny.

“We will maintain the standards of our U.S. Air Force. Those standards are high,” he said. “And we’re not going to back away from the glare of reporting that puts things in another light.”

The general’s impassioned remarks came during his more than 35-minute speech to the association where he outlined the Air Force’s course for the future.

The Air Force will tackle its problems “head on,” General Jumper said. “That’s not going to change.” He said the thousands of Airmen at home and deployed worldwide, facing hardships and risking their lives, deserve no less.

“These Airmen live our core values, especially the one that says ‘service before self,’” he said. The Air Force, he said, will ask those who do not live the core values to leave the service.

General Jumper said Airmen also must consider other important issues that are now part of the everyday reality of being in an Air Force where every Airman is part of a deployable, expeditionary force.

For example, the general said there are Airmen who are content to stay in one place, who are not willing to move. When asked to relocate for the good of the Air Force, they resist. He said that attitude is not part of the service’s core values.

“We’re asking people to be fit,” he said. “The fitness program is taking root throughout the Air Force, and things are getting tougher, not easier.”

The general said the Air Force will soon start to include fitness evaluations in performance reports. And he said the service will also hold squadron commanders accountable for the fitness of their unit. The Air Force is developing the tools to ensure that happens.

“And the payoff will be huge” because the Air Force will be a fitter, more capable force, he said.

General Jumper said the Air Force will continue developing Airmen who demonstrate the service’s core values, day in and day out. But, along the way, he said, “Sometimes we have deviations.

“In the press, you will find people who are talking about the Air Force Academy or this problem or that problem within our Air Force,” he said. “(Problems such as) the issue of sexual assault (or) the issue of religious tolerance at the Air Force Academy.”

Why such issues are in the press is apparent, the general said.

“The reason they are writing about it is because we are visibly out there attacking (the problem) -- not hiding it,” he said.