Academy town hall meeting reaches worldwide audience

  • Published
  • By Butch Wehry
  • U.S. Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFPN) --  The Air Force’s three top leaders opened a town hall meeting here Sept. 27 by speaking about the service’s force size and its future in space.

Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper explained the current force management is “not a cut” but designed to reshape the force.

“It is getting us down to where we’re supposed to be,” he said. “We want to do this without breaking faith with our Airmen. We’re going to use the tools that we have available to us. We want to make sure that we have Airmen going into the right skills.”

The Air Force currently has more Airmen than is authorized by Congress. Speaking to a worldwide broadcast audience, the general said the overage is a result of personnel actions of the 1990s.

“One of the things we’re going to do is a one-year severe cut in recruiting,” he said. “We expect the overages of the previous years to fill that quickly. We’ve never done this before, but it is a way to make sure we don’t have to go into a force reduction.”

Joining the general on stage were Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche and Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray. Several hundred cadets provided an onstage audience, and more than 1,000 other people filled the theater.

Chief Murray said force-shaping efforts are currently under way.

“There have been over 4,000 positions moved into where our needs are, and [we are] moving our Airmen into them,” the chief said. “We have no intention of losing one quality Airman; there is a job for every Airman who is doing his or her job to the best of (his or her) ability.”

Chief Murray also spoke about the effect of deployments on Airmen.

“There is no question whatsoever that the tempo of our Air Force today -- the deployments that we have and face today -- is causing stress not only on our Airmen but on our families,” the chief said. “I recently found a tech sergeant with 13 years in the Air Force who had 13 deployments. We’re trying every way we can to make sure we’re looking after our Airmen and families.”

Active-duty Airmen are not the only ones to feel the effect of the current operations tempo. But, it is too early to evaluate how mobilized Air National Guardsmen and reservists have affected the overall recruiting and retention rates, Secretary Roche said.

“We don’t see any monumental shift of people wanting to leave,” he said. “We have, as of this week, over 5,000 volunteers, and these are members of the Guard who willingly give of their time. We have about 7,000 mobilized (reserve Airmen).”

All three leaders were optimistic about the Air Force’s future where operations are integrated with space technology.

“We got the space community into the fight. It’s not so much about building a satellite and watching it go up into orbit and a signal comes down [anymore],” General Jumper said. “You take the F/A-22 (Raptor) in our operational testing. The F/A-22 has magnificent sensors; you sit up there in a cockpit, and you have the whole battle scene mapped out for you. Guys who flew airplanes before marvel at it. Then you say, ‘What if everybody else has that capability,’ and now it’s becoming an intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance force. What you have is this marvelous picture (from) this airplane with the sensors on board that have the ability to scan the whole battle station.

“What if you put that in the network?” he said. “If you have trouble extending the network, why don’t you put some equipment on the tankers who are up there all the time? And how do you work this directly with space so you can take advantage of the high ground of space? And what about this notion of near-space? You all need to be thinking about this. It is the integration that is our great leverage for the rest of this decade.”

New uniforms continue to be a high-interest item. When answering a question from the audience, General Jumper said, “We are gathering data from the test, and we’re going to act on it. We’re in the middle of that process now.”

General Jumper told the television audience that a couple thousand of Airmen in Iraq are now supporting convoys, and every effort is being made to come up with safer ways to conduct convoys. Convoys might be more suited to the security forces, he said.

Other highlights of the broadcast included:

-- The roles and accountability of civilian contractors and civilian employees in combat zones will receive further study.

-- Voting during the upcoming elections is vital.

-- Character development and integrity will continue to be stressed.

The meeting was broadcast live on The Pentagon Channel and American Forces Radio and Television Service stations worldwide. It was also streamed live on The Pentagon Channel’s Web site.