General Jumper discusses transformation

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Deanna McClay
  • Air Mobility Command Public Affairs
DALLAS (AFPN) --  Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper addressed thousands of troops as the final keynote speaker at the Airlift/Tanker Association Symposium here Oct. 30.

The general spoke on how far the Air Force has evolved in recent years and what he sees for the future.

“We, as Airmen, face what can only be described as a distinctly different future from anything that we’ve experienced before,” he said. “Some call this transformation, but what we are doing is changing ourselves in response to what we see as ‘facts of life.’”

Many of these changes have “been happening for some time,” he said.

“I remember back in 1995 … I briefed a thing called the air expeditionary force,” he said. “It is a way we figured we might be able to respond … more agilely to the rapidly changing events of the world.”

With the AEF system came a change in mindset and the way the Air Force does business.

“We didn’t invent (the AEF) as a result of some specific threat. … We invented it because we were learning about this new world we are a part of,” he said. “Today we array ourselves by the sort of functions we think we’re going to have to supply against: an uncertain future and an uncertain threat.”

To better align the Air Force with the current threat, service officials increased the operations tempo and changed the way they deploy troops.

“During the late 80s, we had about 80,000 people in our Air Force out of about 600,000 active-duty [Airmen designated to deploy as needed],” General Jumper said. “Today we have 275,000 members of our active-duty force … in buckets to deploy in an AEF,” which is about 75 percent of the active-duty Air Force.

“Almost everyone in the Guard and Reserve is tapped in one way or the other,” he said. “We have 5,000 volunteers deployed today in our Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, plus countless others that routinely, in the air mobility business, fill the schedules on a volunteer basis.”

In the future, General Jumper said, the greatest changes will be in the mobility world.

“We’re going to have to get airlift aircraft into … contested airspace, and do it reliably,” he said.

He also said technology will continue to help Airmen fight smarter and from a safer distance.

“We have 2,500 Airmen driving [convoys] with the United States Army today,” he said. “We’re happy to do it, but I’m not sure there’s not a better way.

“In the future … we’ll see a more aggressive look at tactical airlift … to get stuff to those folks on the ground … in places we normally consider inaccessible,” he said.

General Jumper said the Air Force is going to get into the business of precision airdrops so it can drop large quantities of supplies with the precision used to drop Global Positioning System-guided bombs.

Among the other changes the general said he sees in the future are more landings without airfields, practicing more tactics in peacetime and a concept he calls “near-space.”

“We’re going to go into a world where the things we only did as special operations [will] become normal operations,” he said, “and we’re going to practice it more in peacetime.”

General Jumper spoke of a device that would hover over a target area and be ready to react at a moment’s notice, keeping Airmen out of harm’s way.

“The objective of (near-space) is to deliver persistence,” he said. “Something that … will be able to float for months. If you can imagine [looking at a target] from thousands of miles in space, imagine how good it will be to look at it from 200,000 feet.”

While the future holds many changes for the Air Force, the ever-changing war on terrorism dictates that this change is necessary to maintain the upper hand.

“The stakes have never been higher,” General Jumper said, “and it didn’t start with 9-11. If you look around the world … the traditional business hasn’t gone away.”

In closing, the general said servicemembers should be proud of their service and the job they do everyday.

“When you look in the mirror, be proud of what you see,” he said. “You’re wearing the uniform of your nation. Nothing you are doing can be more important to you, your family or the nation than what you’re doing today.” (Courtesy of Air Mobility Command News Service)