Maj. Gabbe Kearney moderated a discussion on “Secret Weapons: Guard & Reserve” with Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, Air National Guard; Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, Air Force Reserve; and Maj. Gen. Daryl L. Bohac, Nebraska National Guard, Sept. 19, 2022, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible by the sponsorship of JobsOhio.
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Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
All right. Welcome everybody. This is Secret Weapons for Guard and Reserves, so if you were looking for the unmanned vs. manned, I’m just letting you know you are in the wrong room. But, we’re going to have a great session today. And today we’re talking all things guard and reserve. I’m Gabbe Kearney. I’m with the 142nd out in Portland, Oregon. I’m with the maintenance group there. I do live locally, traditional guardsman, and I’m very excited to be here. This may be my first and only year moderating, as I believe I might have been supposed to bring snacks and afternoon drinks, so I’ve already failed that.
But with us today, we have three wonderful gentlemen, Lt. Gen. John Healy, Chief of the Air Force Reserve, Lt. Gen., Mike Loh, Director of the International Guard and Maj. Gen. Daryl Bohac, President of AGAUS. And we’re going to dive right into our questions. Again, a great session, lot of really meaty, filled questions. And everyone voted, since Gen. Healy is the newest guy in his position, you get to go first. Applause, there you go, yep. And you brought your fan squad out there. As the new commander of the Air Force Reserve Command, how are you settling into your position and what’s going to be your focus for this next 90 day, three months that you’re going into?
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Well, first of all, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with such an austere panel as well. I am by no means the jokester and the comedian that my predecessor was, so I’ll try my best to be a little bit amusing at times, but mostly factual.
On behalf of the 70,000 plus reserve citizen Airmen, I really am honored to be here as the Chief of the Air Force Reserve, Commander of Air Force Reserve Command. It’s going to be a daunting challenge. I’ve been in the job now for seven weeks, I’ve got 201 to go. My wife told me that. But I’m excited about it. It is going to be a challenge. If you were at the opening comments this morning, there’s going to be some issues going forward and we’re going to have to make some tough decisions going forward. We’ve got a very challenging fiscal environment right now as we try to recover from COVID still. And that cost, in order to bail out the economy, is going to come from somewhere and it’s likely going to hit us hard. We know it is. We’ve got a challenging hiring environment right now. Employment is making it very difficult to meet our end strength and to get the recruits that we truly need in order to be a strong and complete air force reserve.
But also we’ve got a strategic competition that’s going on. It’s no joke, with Russia and their incursions to Ukraine and with China as the pacing threat right now, we’ve got our work cut out for us. And in order to become the Air Force the nation needs the Reserve Command, the Reserve, as the entire ARC are going to have to make some challenging choices going forward to make sure that we fit into that role going forward.
With regard to how I’m going to do what I’m going to do over the 90 days? I’ve got a rather poor track record of lasting 90 days essentially. When I went into EUCOM, my goal again was to last 90 days, take a look at things. Two months, in that case, I lasted before I started making some changes. When I went into 22nd Air Force, I think I lasted two weeks. With the move into the Chief of the Air Force Reserve and the Commander of Air Force Reserve Command, it was 90 minutes, literally.
The change of command, Gen. Brown was down there, promotion change of command, I changed uniforms and we had all the commanders present for a commander’s call. And we issued a task org right out of the bat. First thing we did was ensure that everybody knew from start to finish, it was seven pages, it was great work, it was a team effort in putting together the expectations of what every reserve Airman is expected to do. So left and right boundaries, limits on, from every Airman to every three star, expectations of what I need every single one of them to do every single day. It gets into basic things like basic blocking and tackling of every Airman is responsible to maintain their medical proficiency, maintain mental proficiency, ensure that their family’s ready, physical fitness, and most of all make sure that their AFSC training is where it needs to be, both in garrison and deployable. Every Airman’s got that responsibility.
But then we laid it out a little bit more in terms of different groupings to ensure that everybody had some degree of accountability, whether it’s a unit commander and making sure that their tasks, basically we started laying out, this is the current environment that we’re in. We issued individual tasks to each one in order to be successful in a desired end state. Carried that up to the group wing, NAF commander responsibilities, all the way up to most importantly, in some cases, the headquarters, to ensure that they’re doing the things that are actually helping the units down at the unit level, ensuring that they’re getting everything they need to be adequately resourced and trained. There’s a percentage of the force as well, mobilization assistance, reserve advisors, IMAs. It makes up almost 10% of our force, so we were careful to ensure that they understood their role and their expectations.
Since then, last week was our first requirement placed on everybody, which was 100% acknowledgement throughout the entire command. And we hit that mark, I think we were 99.96% with a couple stragglers in the IMAs out there, which is unfortunately typical for the case. So we hit that mark. The next thing we’re going to be doing is each and every one of those units need to report how they’re going to execute the tasks associated with that task org. We’re going to get on that and we’re going to be moving out constantly trying to measure where we were, where we’re going, where we want to be, and adjusting as necessary to ensure that we’re meeting the requirements in order, like I said, the best tools and practices to ensure that they’re adequately resourced and trained. My priorities were simple, I laid them out first and foremost, which is ready now, and transforming for the future, carrying on the work so that we are ready to be part of the Air Force the nation needs going into the future fight.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
What’s great about events like this is, being so new in your position, is you have reservists in the audience who get to hear directly from you what your priorities are and what your focus is going forward so that they can go and take that message back to their unit and start moving out on that.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Well, I tell you what was really interesting, about a week and a half ago, we went out to March Air Reserve Base and I had the opportunity to have an officer’s call. And I don’t think they were used to my style, so to speak, as they asked questions, and I would pose questions right back to them. But what I loved about the visit is that seven page task org, they had in a pocket size, highlighted based on if you were a wing, if you were a group or a squadron commander and individuals and what your responsibilities were. I was blown away by that.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
That’s fantastic. Shifting a little bit to somebody a little bit more seasoned in their role. I put him in the middle. He seems like the jokester, so we’re trying to keep him in line. Gen. Loh, you’ve been in your position for a little over two years now. How have you had to make change and adapt at the strategic level with the influence and setting those priorities for the Guard?
Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:
Yeah. Hey Gabbe, great question. First off, in the International Guard, when you look across the 50 states, three territories, District of Columbia, 108,000 Guard Airmen organized underneath 90 wings across all mission sets of the United States Air Force.
Let me start with our enduring priorities and then talk about as we shift the new national defense strategy. The enduring priorities for the Guard are ready forces, partnership, people, policy and force structure. Those will be enduring throughout. Two years ago when I took over, we were right in the midst of a COVID pandemic. I had to have mission assurance for our 24/7/365 homeland defense missions. We had the longest and largest mobilization of guard personnel since World War II. And we were sourcing for the overseas fight primarily in CENTCOM, Afghanistan, but also AFRICOM and every other COCOM. So I started with this, ready today. We had to be ready today to do our nation’s work, both at home and abroad. Then I also thought about what we were looking at as everything was going on and we’re in all these legacy missions. We had a National Defense Strategy that talked about one thing, and we heard it, China, China, China. And I said, “We must be stronger tomorrow.” I started out with Ready Today, stronger tomorrow. And that is still carrying through the organization.
But now a new secretary comes in, we’re out of Afghanistan, Russia invade Ukraine, COVID largely over. And so now where do we take the institution of the National Guard and how do we modify it for the future? And so that’s where we’re at right now, about two years in. As you look to the next two years, I said, “How do we operationalize the National Defense Strategy?” And working with our adjutant generals, we’ll hear it from them here in a second, and looking at everything that we do both at home and abroad, I said, “Okay, here are the priorities of National Defense Strategy. Defend the homeland, deter strategic attack against the United States, its allies and partners with the pacing threat of China. We must make that shift. Deter regional aggression. And if all the deterrence fails, we must dominate in conflict. We have to build a strong force. And then we must build a resilient joint force and defense ecosystem.” When you look at that, defend, deter, dominate, and build. Those are the national defense priorities.
And if we’re going to operationalize those, I said, “I need every Air National Guard Airmen to see themselves in those national defense priorities. No matter where you are, no matter if you’re a drill status guardsman, or if you’re a full-time member, when you come to work in the National Guard or when you’re part of that defense ecosystem outside that in your civilian job, you must get out there and do these things.”
The three priorities that we’ve come up with and that we’ll be working through and working together on are one, recapitalization. How do I recapitalize out of old legacy equipment and old missions that our United States Air Force will no longer do, into new? Recapitalization number one. Innovate, innovation at the heart of everything we do. How do I unleash that innovative power across the National Guard, 80% part-time workforce out at the unit level? We need to harness all of that together. Recapitalize, innovate, and then the last thing is engage. We need to engage everybody to make sure they understand what it takes to build a strong resilient joint force, more importantly, for a United States Air Force to build a strong Air Force that can do all the things the nation needs it to do.
Okay, ready today, Stronger tomorrow has turned into realistically think global. Every Air National Guard Airman needs to think global. What’s their relationship into that global enterprise? But we also must act local. So think global and act local is where we’re going to go, and that’s how we’re going to get after the National Defense Strategy and operationalize it to make a stronger, more resilient joint force and an International Guard that can compete and win in the future. Thank you.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Yes sir. And I think every unit can take that back and really start to focus and set their mission priorities to help carry that out. Maj, Gen. Bohac, this is a great tee up for you as an adjutant general, can you discuss how that national level strategy and those priorities are driving those changes at that local level?
Maj. Gen. Daryl L. Bohac:
Sure. Thanks Gabbe. I actually just showed up because I was hoping to find out what those secret weapons were. It’s really good to be here with Gen. Healy, Gen. Loh. And in terms of local, so think locally, act locally and what we have to do with our Airmen, think about this, we’ve come out of 20 plus years of operating environments where we delivered uncontested air superiority. That’s not going to be the case when it comes to China. And so it’s really a mental shift in our Airmen and really our families and our communities that we need to engage with and to get them to see themselves in that light rather than what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. Rotations for Nebraska, where I’m from, we have tankers in our International Guard unit and so they’ve been rotating throughout EDEED doing other global mission sets, but that’s going to be different. We’re not going to be able to fight the same way.
And so it might be the same kind of exercise activities with a mental mindset of going into contested environments where we’re going to experience attrition, not only of airplanes, but of people. That warrior spirit, that idea is what we have to permeate through our formations to be ready to do the things that our nation would ask us to do in support of the National Defense Strategy.
And then the second part of being local too though, is being longstanding members of the same communities, and being seen as, in some cases, the only representation of our United States Air Force of the total Air Force in those communities. You take the state of Minnesota, the state of Iowa, can name others where there is no active duty base, no presence that’s brought into the communities. It’s up to us as reserve component Airmen to bring that message to our community. Whether it’s a Rotary Club or PTA or whatever it might be, whatever venue we’re asked to come into, we have to be ready to carry the threat of China into those discussions, and obviously in an unclassified way to tell that story. Because that’s what will connect the will of the American people to us who wear the cloth of this nation to carry the fight forward when we have to and to do the things that Gen. Low and Gen. Healy talked about, and in particular for us to defend the homeland.
And that’s not just here in the continental United States. Gen. VanHerck was here from NORTHCOM, he would talk about defending forward, defending the homeland forward and what that means and projecting power and how do we do that. I think locally that’s the shift we’re having to engage our Airmen on and get them to think about and not to be put off by it, but to be prepared for it. To me that’s really the key to our success in being a total Air Force partner is that we are ready, ready to do the nation’s work. And the slogan of the Air National Guard is Always Ready, Always There. But I would add the Air Force saying that Gen. Brown says, Anytime, Anywhere to that phrase. And our ability to project power across the globe and deliver it decisively, it will make the difference. Now, the other thing we have to think about locally I think too, is making sure we’re working as a total force to get the resources we need to be funded appropriately to deliver the effects that this nation requires. Thanks Gabbe.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Yes sir. It’s that continued advocation, yep. Shifting again to the strategic discussion, this is for Gen. Healy in Gen. Loh, given the current NDS, what do you think the role of the ARC is going to be? What secret weapons does the Guard and Reserve possess to tackle the strategic competition?
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Well, I’ll start with, we provide capacity, capability, we provide accessibility and all of this at speed with experience. That’s how we fit into the grand scheme of things. When it gets to the, and everyone, make sure the doors are shut, the secret weapon up is everybody here? I mean, it as simple as that. We were commenting about a week ago when we were talking about this, we’re like, “Secret weapon of the Air Force? Who came up with this?” But anyway, the programs were already written so we couldn’t change it. The secret weapon of the Air Force is the members of the Air Force Reserve and of the Guard of the people right here sitting in this room and everyone out in every one of the units.
The way we see us providing to that though is through, as I said, capacity. It’s a curse sometimes to have this capacity because unfortunately for the Reserve Command, and this were difficult decisions come in, our capacity lies largely within legacy weapon systems, which is where the challenges of future decisions come from. We have the capacity though, we’re continually showing what we can do with our special mission sets. The capacity to do air evac, 61% of the air evac missions. We’ve got 25% of the KC-46 weapons systems out there right now. Over 50% of the crews are Air Force Reserve. So we’ve got the capacity to offer.
We need to be more driven in capacity in the bomber and the CAF fleet as well though, actively trying to make sure that that occurs. We’ve got accessibility. We constantly, I think between the two of us, constantly are striving to get the message out there of accessibility. And it’s met with skepticism on active component parts sometimes, but the proof is in the pudding, it’s a year old, the data, but it’s unmistakable, 1700 plus participants from the Reserve side of the house, even more so from the Guard in terms of response for OAR or OAW. Within the first 24 hours, we had 30 crews ready. Within the first 72 hours we had 30 tails and 80 crews ready out the door. C-17, C-5, 135s, KC-10s, everything pitching into the fight to ensure we have the proper things done.
In terms of value, we always talk about the value proposition. Again, a point of discussion, I’ll put it politely, in terms of how valued we are. Because the value proposition is as simple as this, I’m not too strong on math, but I can do the math in public of we are 20% of the total force and we are 4% of the cost. It’s as simple as that. Everything else, we’re constantly working and trying to find a cooperative agreement with the active component or what the life cycle cost of a reservist is relative to an active duty member. So we can come to agreement in terms of how to best use that capacity that we provide at value.
And the last thing I like to mention as well, we are steeped in experienced personnel, due to the increase in the operational use of all of our air crew over the last few years. I mean the average pilot in the Air Force Reserve is 3,600 hours, much, much ahead of the active component. All of those things I think is the way we get that capacity and that capability out the door in a timely manner. The key is how we transition that into the capacity and the capabilities we need moving forward.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Thank you, General.
Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:
Hey, hopefully Gabbe, the secret’s out. Okay?
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
It’s out.
Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:
Hopefully it is out there. But when you look at it, okay, the National Guard, unit equipped to fight and win our nation’s wars while simultaneously defending the homeland. That is our charge. But as I thought about this at 75 years, 75 years Air Force, I went back in history and I said, “Where was a time where maybe we were a secret?” And I had to go back to the Korean War. As we came out of World War II and you looked at the Korean War, it was going to be short. Underestimated that one. And you know what? We’re going to do it active duty only. And in the Guard and Reserve we had propeller driven airplanes when everybody else was flying fighters with jet engines and MiGs. And yet we mobilized 80% of the Air National Guard for the Korean War. And we sent these propeller aircraft over there. We hadn’t trained together, we weren’t interoperable. It was a mess. Despite that, the International Guard Airmen, with their experience, overcame a lot of things, flew over 39,000 sorties in Korea and had 39 MiG kills.
Now, fast forward of what our forefathers did in the Air Force to 1991 Desert Storm where we were a fully integrated force, same training standards, same aircraft. We had concurrently recapitalized the National Guard with the active duty. You look at all of the stuff that we’re still flying today, by the way. And now we’re right there on the leading edge and you look at the success that we’ve had since ’91 to today. Over 30 years of continuous mobilizations. In the National Guard, when you talk Army and International Guard combined, over a million mobilized soldiers and Airmen in the National Guard, that is a testament to all of you. So the secret’s no secret, is we have to be fully interoperable, on par with our active duty counterparts and we have to make sure that we get that recapitalization and we are there concurrently with them. That doesn’t always happen and it’s still not happening today. We see it. Okay? And it’s that fight for the dollar.
What do we bring? And I’m going to talk about everything that my buddy here John Healy just did, because it is about the same. Capability at a cost point that’s affordable for America. It’s about capability and cost. The deep experience level that we have compared to our active duty counterparts, we can’t do it without them, nor do we want to. But when we own the weapon systems, when we’re out there in the units, it becomes a family affair and we build a much stronger joint force. We take care of that equipment and we’re deep in the knowledge of it and we’re going to continue to fight for that. And so when you look at that capability, that cost and that deep experience of our officer corps and our enlisted corps, that is really the secret of the Reserve components. And now we need to continue that on from here and into the future. Thanks.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Yes sir. The secret’s out, right? All three of you have mentioned something very consistent in your answers and that is money and resources. What is the Guard and Reserve doing to prepare for those future fiscally constrained environments? Gen. Bohac, we’ll start with you.
Maj. Gen. Daryl L. Bohac:
Well, I think the way we prepare is to tell the story about the value proposition and to create an understanding of what we can do, both in the Guard and Reserve, which is in fiscally constrained times. And if you look at personnel costs alone in the total budget, it’s the greatest consumer of the dollar we’re given by the Congress and the taxpayers of United States. And yes, we need to invest in our people, into our Airmen, into our families to do that. But our ability in the Reserve components in the Guard and Reserve to take on active duty talent and retain it in the service of the total force and to have it available for this nation when it’s needed as a surge component of the total force is something that I think probably consistently gets undervalued, quite frankly and not well understood.
And sometimes the arguments are, “Well, you’re difficult to get to you. We can’t access you.” I could not point to a time in my history in serving in this uniform that we didn’t respond to the mission when we were asked to do it. So I think that argument doesn’t sustain itself very well. I think our ability, it’s a talent management proposition as much as recapitalization of equipment. When you look at things like rebalancing the CAF, for example, across the Reserve components to maybe a 50/50 balance. We’ve done some number crunching, that can save the United States Air Force around $2.5 billion across the fight up. That’s real money even in Congress. And so money that can be used for other things like recapitalization programs, modernization programs that all the components need in order to be an effective force and to be effective globally.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Gen. Healy?
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
I’ll get back to what I started with. First of all, as we’re going through these fiscally conservative times ahead, everybody if you recall back to sequestration, starts protecting their own. They get very parochial in terms of what they’re looking at. And it’s a challenge from a leadership perspective to think from an enterprise solution. What we did in issuing the task org was we identified three foundational activities that we need to improve on how we manage. And they’re all tied to money. Everything’s tied to money.
The first thing we looked at is our human capital management. So how are we going to manage our people going forward? It was interesting when I was at March, one of the first questions I got from the audience was a major from a flying unit who said, “Hey, your task org’s saying that we need to be sharp, we need to be more ready than we were before. We’re doing more with less. We’re maxed out. How are you going to help us with that?” And again, it was different than I think they’d expected when I said, “Well, I’m sorry to say but you’re 106% manned, what do you want me to do?” Then I folLohd it up with, “Unfortunately, you’re only 88% effectively manned.” Which is one of the problems we have to manage with human capital. Basically we’ve got the wrong people in the wrong spaces or not enough of the right people in the right spaces. So we’re truly getting after that to make sure our manning documentation is correct, to make sure our UTCs are properly aligned.
And in that we’re going to be doing a soup to nuts to ensure that every unit is built at the way they should be built. One of the things that came out of March as well as a senior Airman, and this was just music to my ear, a senior Airman who said, I said, “Hey, so you just got qualified as a boom operator in the 135. Are you familiar with the task org?” He said, “Yes, sir.” He says, “My job is to be physically fit, mentally fit, medically fit and AFSC trained. And that is my responsibility in mine alone. And my goal moving forward is to attain higher levels of certification at every opportunity.” And immediately I called to Chief White, “Chief, you got to meet this guy.” that’s what we need to do is to ensure that people are moving out to get the training they need to be in the proper position so the manning works itself out.
Second thing we did is FM. We’ve had the luxury, one can call it, of not having a specified FM execution strategy as we could have in the past because we weren’t in potentially austere times. What we’re having to do now is to ensure that we have all the tools in place to make sure that we are the best stewards of managing that money and execution. And this is where the inner geek in me truly comes out because we’ve really developed some powerful tools using some systems, some business analytics that allows us to see what our dollar amounts are down to the wing level on a daily basis. It used to drive me nuts as an NAF commander where I’d call one of my wings and I’d call headquarters finance and I’d said, “Okay, where are we on obligation and execution”? And we’d get three different numbers. Now it is a tool that manages $1.25 billion portfolio on a day to day basis that provides us the same level of information so we can execute at speed and make decisions and understand the ramifications of those. We need that kind of detail in order to be better stewards of the money.
And then lastly, POM is the third foundational activity. We need the collaborative efforts between the MAJCOMs and our MAJCOMs to ensure that what we’re doing solves an enterprise problem going forward as opposed to protecting what was ours because that’s what we’ve always done. We’re taking a proactive approach to ensuring that we are set up to be part of the Air Force the nation needs as opposed to continuing what we’ve done in the past.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
I think it’s fair to say money is always going to be an issue. It’s being creative and working as a team to solve those problems going forward together.
Gen. Loh, you touched on this a little bit earlier. Your two years in your position, you’ve seen a lot of changes through COVID and the challenges that we have going on today. The total force of the past is not going to be the total force that we need with coming challenges in the future. How do you see that total force evolving to meet those coming challenges?
Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:
Hey Gabbe, great question. Because we’ve had a lot of discussion on the total force and what the total force means. Okay? Active Guard and Reserve three components come together to deliver air power anytime, anywhere. That’s what our total force does today and it’s what our total force needs to continue in the future.
With that, how do we leverage the best of each of the components? And I think that that is probably the secret sauce of how we make this work. Some of the things are like cross component command. That’s very specific, but it’s things like that, that we can leverage to get out there to make us a much stronger Air Force. So when I look at this, and I’ve heard these two talk about how we’re going to get more money, nice. And then also what we need to do to get after the recapitalization piece in the future, let’s think about both the capability and the capacity of our United States Air Force and how we can leverage the total force to build the largest and strongest total Air Force.
A couple things, okay? In the MAF enterprise, Mobility Air Force’s enterprise, we look at about a 50/50 active component to reserve component mix. Right now there’s huge pressure on the fight or fleet and we’re at a capability and a capacity issue. How do we get after that? Level the fleet. Let’s look at leveling the fleet. Next thing, let’s look at how we can recapitalize. We’ve heard our Air Force, 72 new fighters a year, that’s F-35 and F-15EX. We’re not there yet. And how do we field those faster to the reserve components, both Guard and Reserve. In the International Guard, we are 27% of the fighter force structure, yet the newest equipment, less than 7% of the F-35s, less than 11% of the F-22s. So we’re sitting on A-10s, F-15Cs, pre-LOC F-16s, both of us. We need a strong, healthy recapitalization plan.
What does that mean? Get fighter production up. One out of every two or one out of every three new fighters off the line ought to become to the Guard and Reserve. That gets us on par and gets us fleet leveled and also gets us into that next thing. That will operationalize the NDS and that’ll scare China more than anything else. And now let’s optimize it across a total force in order to get after what really is the heart of the entire problem, how do we defend the homeland? How do we project power overseas? How does tomorrow’s deterrence work so that adversaries don’t start the next conflict? That’s how we can get after that across the total force enterprise. Thank you.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
I just jumped in too, and it’s what I was talking in the opening comments about there’s fully burdened lifecycle cost. Without that, it was requested by DSD six, eight years ago. It still hasn’t been produced in terms of a fully burdened lifecycle cost. So we know exactly how much every single Airman, whether Guard, Reserve, active duty costs from the day they join until the day they exit, based on permeability, moving in and out within. Until we get a fully burden lifecycle cost, they’ll continue to be non data backed decisions regarding capacity, capability, and force mix. It seems logical to me, it seems logical to Mike, that we’re cheaper. 25% full-time, 75% part-time, we have to be cheaper. The argument is not compelling and it’s not making a difference right now. So that’s where we need to work as well to understand and get the active duty component and the programming to get down that road too
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
As a maintenance officer from one of those F-15C units, that recapitalization really hits home. And I think those were some great points and efforts that we hope to see moving forward. We are out of time for the overarching deep questions and I think your execs would be very proud of you guys for staying on track. I will offer to all three of you to share some closing thoughts or parting words to the audience. We’ll start with you, Gen. Healy.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
Like I said, I’ll finish like I started, I’m excited for the next four years. I truly am excited at where Gen. Scobee left the Air Force Reserve Command, some remarkable steps forward in reforming the organization. And we’re going to continue those on to make sure that we’re the best stewards providing the tools and resources to get the proper training that every Airman needs. I’m truly looking forward to getting a ready now force and transforming for the future. Thanks.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Yes sir. Gen. Loh.
Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:
Hey Gabbe, thanks for your service, especially in the International Guard. I know that. Commuting all the way across the country to make that happen. Thank you very much. So that’s first. Also, thank for your service here. As far as AFA goes, thanks for your advocacy. All of you are here because you want to see the latest and greatest in our United States Air Force. So thanks. With that advocacy, we will maintain our readiness today, we’ll be stronger tomorrow. And for all of you, how do we think globally, but act locally to make us a stronger United States Air Force? Thank you.
Maj. Gen. Daryl L. Bohac:
Yep, thank you. I would offer this to you, the challenge is to you, it’s the same one we all face as leaders up here, but is to go tell our story. Because sometimes we are the best kept secret in our community. I mean, how many times have you shared a story and someone would say to you, “I didn’t know you did that?” Well, we need to tell our story to those communities out there and the people we serve, the citizens of this nation. And I believe if we do that, we can carry the message about our value proposition. But maybe most importantly, well for me, is to carry the message out there that we’re a force that’s prepared to train your son and daughter, your blood and treasure, to the fullest extent possible to be prepared for that day when this nation might need them. Thanks, Gabbe.
Maj. Gabbe Kearney:
Yes sir. Thank you again, gentlemen, for your time and you’re very thoughtful and deep answers to these questions. And for everyone, I hope you are taking something back to your unit that you can help carry these priorities and mission sets forward. Enjoy the rest of conference. I believe they’ll hang out for a little bit if you have any other things to discuss up front. But have a great day and safe travels.
