Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, Commander, Pacific Air Forces; Gen. James B. Hecker, U.S. Air Forces in Europe Commander; and Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno, Director of Staff, USSF came together for a session on “Airmen & Guardians in Demand: Meeting the Need” at the AFA Warfare Symposium, March 8, 2023. The session was moderated by Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.), former Commander, U.S. Northern Command. Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Voiceover:
Airmen, Guardians, ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our moderator, the former commander of U.S. Northern Command, retired Air Force General Lori J. Robinson.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Okay. So retired is the most important part, and not just Northern Command, but NORAD. So first of all, I want to say thank you to AFA for everything that you do for our Airmen and our Guardians. It’s really important, the notions that you talk about, the things that you say is most amazing. So for team AFA, can we please give a rousing applause for them?
So today, we get to talk about Airmen and Guardians in need and the demand. And I have to tell you, the three most amazing people sitting here on this stage, friends that I’ve known forever, friends that I knew, and friends that I think care about our Air Force and our Space Force. So what I’d really like to do is allow them the opportunity to say a couple of words about what’s on their brain and then I have some probably interesting questions for them. So if I could ask them to start first, Cruiser.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
All right. Thanks, General Robinson. It’s such a pleasure to be on the stage with you, and also General Hecker and General Armagno, and we do have a good team here when we work together all the time. And I do miss the time that we worked together in the past, and so there’s some really fond memories. I’d also like to thank AFA. It’s been a tremendous, tremendous week, and I got to give a shout-out to the resort. It’s really, they’ve done a great job of hosting us too, so thanks for that, Orville.
For what’s on my mind, as a PACAF commander, our objectives have remained the same, a free and open Indo-Pacific. Clearly, there are some countries in the Indo-Pacific that don’t want that, like China, Russia, and North Korea. And principally, in this last year, the Indo-Pacific has been doing more operations and with more aircraft at one time, but what I’ll tell you is, in my time in the Pacific, which has been quite extensive, we’re more joint than we’ve ever been before.
And so, people ask me, “What does that mean?” Well, in the past, we used to plan missions that were Air Force, Navy, Marines, and we’d put them together after they were already planned. Now, every single day, there’s a joint planning team that’s deciding what’s going to happen from space all the way to subsurface and everything in between. And so, extensively, joint operations are happening.
And then the allies and partners are a key part. We’re doing almost weekly integration with other nations that fly fifth-gen all the time, very interoperable with Japan, Korea, and Australia, and others, exercises like Cope North that had just happened last week where we had Japan and Australia and the French in Guam and the surrounding islands executing things like ACE together, so the allies and partners are doing ACE too. So that’s fantastic. And then what has us concerned mostly is some of the activities that China is doing in the region, and they obviously are placing pressure on the region. Perhaps we can talk about that more in the Q&A, and I’ll stop there and pass it along.
Gen. James B. Hecker:
Thanks, General Robinson and General Wilsbach, General Armagno. Appreciate being with you. And thanks, Orville, for setting this up. Sticking with the Jeopardy theme, the answer is 1,723. What is the number of senior master sergeants that got selected yesterday? Congratulations. And I had one of them too, so it was great.
Okay. What’s going on in USAFE? Well, I’ll tell you what, we have some great Airmen and Guardians that have been doing the job for a long time now. And if you haven’t realized, we just went over a year of the Russia and Ukraine war. And we’re starting to get some lessons learned from how that war has gone, and one of the big lessons learned that we got is their integrated air and missile defense on both sides, Ukraine as well as Russia, is working really good, to the point where they’ve downed several aircraft on either side, and pretty much the Ukrainian aircraft do not fly over Russian airspace and the Russian don’t fly over Ukrainian airspace for the most part. So what that means is, the war that they’re fighting is throwing 155 rounds back and forth at one another.
If you’re talking about the Russians, they’re doing it indiscriminately. They’ll do it into schools, they’ll do it into malls, and they’ll kill a lot of civilians doing that. There’s HIMARS that are going back and forth. Russia is able to do a little bit more sophistication and they’re able to take one-way UAVs that they get from Iran and send them across. A lot of those are shot down, but some of them get through and hit infrastructure or schools, civilian populations. They also have bombers that will shoot or that will launch long-range cruise missiles. A lot of those get shot down, but some of those get through as well.
So that’s the kind of fight that’s going on there. And when you have that kind of fight, you have a lot of casualties. Now, there are several estimates on the number of casualties, but almost all of them say over 100,000 Russians dead, 30 to 40,000 Ukrainians dead. To put it in perspective, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we had slightly less than 2,400. Now, one is too many, but 140,000 is ridiculous. So we can’t afford that. So how do we fix that? We need to make sure that we’re able to get air superiority. And as was mentioned yesterday by Secretary Kendall, one of the operational imperatives with the NGAD is it meant exactly for that.
One of the six fights that General Brown talked about is the fight for air superiority. So we got to make it happen. And the way you make it happen is, you take those IADS that I talked about that are very effective and you have to find a way to take them down. And that’s what we’re really concentrating on in USAFE. And we can do it pretty good at EUCOM and the USAFE region, but that’s just at a small scale. We need to be able to do it at a large scale. In order to do it at a large scale, we need our allies and partners to have the capabilities and the policies and the information so that they can help us so we can do it at a large scale.
In addition to getting that counter IADS so we can get air superiority, we also need to make sure that we can stop all the cruise missiles in the one-way UAVs that are coming into Europe. So we have to increase our capability when it comes to integrated air and missile defense and to make sure that we can take down one-way UAVs to include ballistic missiles as well as cruise missiles coming off of their bomber aircraft. So that’s what we’re concentrated on at USAFE-AFAFRICA and AIRCOM.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Next.
Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:
Good morning, everyone. Good morning. It’s the last panel of AFA. I am really proud to be on this esteemed panel as well. But before I say anything, I just want to remind everybody, this is March 8th. It is International Women’s Day. And I would like to personally thank you, General Lori Robinson, for breaking that glass ceiling. You have been an inspiration and a leader to so many people, but also women in the military and women across the United States of America. Thank you, Lori Robinson. You’re amazing.
All right. I am pleased to be here as well. Thank you, AFA. I do think this is a pretty fun venue. I think you nailed it, and it’ll be fantastic to come back year after year for Air & Space Forces Association, Denver, and the Warfare Symposium. I would like to talk a little bit about what we’re doing in the Space Force. And before I do that, it wasn’t that long ago when General Hecker was Scorch, you’re still Scorch, and I’m Ninja, and Scorch and Ninja were running around the halls and walls of Capitol Hill together in a Fellows program. We met that long ago as majors, and I think our entire class knew that Scorch was going places. We just didn’t know exactly where.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
So this is the best part about our Air Force, is these relationships that we’ve had forever. So when you listen to Nina talk about this, we should just revel in that and say thank you for that, because it makes us look better and look more forward. So thanks, Nina, for saying that.
Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:
Yes, ma’am. And for over the years, Scorch moved from different commands, different opportunities here and there. And I remember one time you were getting deployed and I was pretty nervous about it because things were, of course, always ugly over there in the Middle East. And I sent you a note, and I’m like, “Good luck, Scorch. I’m thinking about you.” And he’s like, “Ninja, don’t worry. I know you always have my back,” meaning Space always has your back. He told me that. He’s been telling me that for years. Of course, we’ve been doing space operations for decades.
The United States Space Force is in our fourth year, and our prime focus is to organize, train, and equip forces, space forces, and present those forces to combatant commanders, specifically the two combatant commanders we have here, but also across the world. We are putting component commands in each AOR. We have a component command in INDOPACOM. We have one in CENTCOM, USFK, and you’ll see one very soon, Scorch, in EUCOM.
It’s just a way to continue to provide forces for your needs as combatant commanders. You heard General Saltzman yesterday talk about his three lines of effort. And along those lines, effort number one is build combat-credible and ready forces. That is probably the most applicable LOE for this panel, and I look forward to talking about all of that. Semper Supra, always above.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Thank you. Thank you guys so much. So here’s one of the things that I really value that we have done across our force, and that is leading and working with our partners and our allies. And as we sit and think about our partners and our allies, not is it just working with them, but how do we worry about contested space? How do we think about where we are going to go in the forward of all of this? And personally, I understand your space and I’ve heard about your space and I think about your space, but how do you, one, relish what we do with our partners and our allies? Two, how do we worry about what they do in contested space? And three, how do we move forward in all of that? On with the mic.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
All right. Now, that’s a great question. And the one thing that I’ll say in the Indo-Pacific, especially if you focus in on China and you think about what’s their dilemma, they would love it to be China versus the United States, but in reality, it’s China versus the United States plus, and then I’ll have to spend about 30 minutes listing the rest of the countries that would probably line up with us, who also have the objective of free and open Indo-Pacific. And what we’re seeing in the Pacific in the last few years is, even the Europeans are coming over to the Pacific because they have interests in the Pacific and perhaps they’re seeing some of those interests at risk and they want to demonstrate that they intend to protect those interests.
And so, that’s a benefit that we have when you think about China, because who’s on their side? There’s not many people on their side, not many other countries on their side. And so, that’s an advantage. And when you get down into the operational and tactical level from military standpoint, frequency of operating together and doing exercises and having subject matter exchanges and dialogues and symposiums and all of those things that we have almost on a recurring basis in the Pacific makes us so interoperable, and that’s a deterrent value because, who does China operate with? Every now and again with Russia, very separately from North Korea. It’s not a habitual relationship, and we have habitual relationships with a number of countries, as does General Hecker in Europe.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
So, Cruiser, the other question I want to ask you, especially in that theater, we’ve got a ton of allies, and what’s one of your big things that you’ve got going on?
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
We’re really close with many. And oftentimes, people say, “Who’s your most important ally or partner?” And I say, “All of them.”
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Yes.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
Right? That’s the real answer. But I think what you’re getting at is, just recently, we had the opportunity to bring in Air Vice-Marshal Billy Newman, who is an Australian Air Force GO who is the deputy commander of PACAF now. It’s the first time that’s ever happened, and it really demonstrates Indo-Pacific Command and also PACAF’s willingness to work with allies and partners.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Yeah. And I think that that’s a huge thing to talk about, because when we think about going forward in the Pacific, especially, and the distance and the tyranny of all of that, and the fact now you have a deputy that’s an Australian, I think, is really amazing. So thank you for that effort in doing that. Really appreciate that.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
I really like to thank the Australians because they were willing to let him come and work for us. And so, Air Marshal Hupfeld and I cooked that idea up last year, and of course, the Australians allowed him to come this year, so it was fantastic.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Okay. So for the rest of the audience, for Cruiser to say he cooked something up, we should not be surprised. Scorch.
Gen. James B. Hecker:
In USAFE-AFAFRICA, allies and partners are paramount, and one of the main reasons why is because we’re not the pacing threat. Cruiser is. That’s where a lot of the money goes. But we still have a job, and I 100% agree with that. I think the National Defense Strategy got it exactly right. But it’s more important that we have allies and partners to make sure that we have the capabilities that we need to handle the things that Russia might throw our way.
Since the Ukrainian war started, the Secretary of Defense has asked nations, primarily their secretary of defenses, to come together on nine different occasions someplace in Europe typically. The last one that he did was in Ramstein, and he had 45 nations that showed up. So you have 30 NATO nations, 15 other ones showed up, some from your AOR. Japan was there. And the way it kind of goes is, the press is there, Secretary Austin will say some words, then the press leaves, and then it’s basically the Ukrainians saying, “Here’s what we need. Here’s what we could use some help with.” And then all 45 nations go around and say what they’re going to be pledging or what they’re going to ask for and those kind of things, and it pays off.
Every time, what the Ukrainians have asked for and what they really need, because they’re about to run out of it or whatever the case might be, they always have gotten it after that. 45 nations coming together. How many times has Russia had one of those conferences? I think you know the answer, zero. And I think if he tried to hold one of those conferences, the number of folks that would show up would be dismal and it would be embarrassing. Similar to what you said if China were to do the same thing.
So, unfortunately, for President Putin, what he tried to do and divide NATO and the Western and democracies, the exact opposite has happened, and it’s united us. Matter of fact, since the invasion, four more countries in Europe have bought F-35s. Two countries in Europe want to be part of NATO, and they’re pretty close to becoming part of NATO. So it’s had the exact opposite effect that what he has wanted. So they’re very important, to answer your question.
Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:
Just the power of relationships and the power of numbers is just incredible in war and in peacetime. In the space domain, it’s an incredible strategic advantage to have allies and partners. It is absolutely necessary. I remember several years ago during Schriever Wargame, where I got to attend, and the Five Eye were the main attendees, and we had invited that year, for the first time, France and Germany, and they were a couple of general officers. We had a tabletop scenario about a situation that affected the space domain.
And you might presume that it would only affect spacefaring nations, like the Five Eyes at the time, but the scenario was a ground-based laser lasing a certain piece of low-Earth orbit, where all of our satellites were traversing. And you can see the light bulbs go on as we walk through the scenario and the danger to all of us, not just spacefaring nations, but all nations who have any interest in the space domain. The light bulbs went on, and fast-forward to today, our partners are not simply Five Eyes, it’s Five Eyes plus Germany and France, who are… Now, we have exchange officers in the United States and are sending them over to those countries.
We share data. We work in the same op centers. We’re in the Combined Space Operations Center together. There is power in these relationships for deterrence and for many of the reasons you all stated. In the Space Force, we have so many projects going on right now. It is really exciting. In the next year or so, Norway is going to launch two commercial satellites. I’m sorry, two comm satellites for the Space Force, polar satellites that are absolutely important for our most special and NC3 type of communications. We’re trusting Norway to launch those payloads for us. Japan, we have partnerships with, and it’s just growing. So the future for the Space Force and allies and partners is growth.
We’re looking at South Korea as well and Japan, even Brazil, and I think General Dickinson mentioned some 160 so countries have actually signed space-sharing agreements with the United States. So it’s all about growth for us. And I just want to say one thing about Australia. Incredible opportunity with the Australians. I got to go there in November and made the conclusion that they’re basically a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for space, because location, location, location. Look where they are in the world.
They have radars and ground-based optical telescopes. They can launch from that part of the world very efficiently into the equator, which is the most efficient way to launch. They have an incredible opportunity to partner with us and they’re very excited to do so as well. So it’s full steam ahead for the Space Force in partnering.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Well, and they’re incredible. So I’m trying to be good on time management here. And so, I’m going to do two things. I’m going to ask each of these warriors a couple of questions and then to do some closing comments. We’ll do it at the end. But the first is, one of the things that we do as warriors, which I’m proud to have been one, is we kind of think about where we’re going, but sometimes there are some policy things that get in our way and that we want to make sure our voice is heard.
So I’m going to ask each of these warriors about if there’s any of that that they think about every day, not that they’re trying to adjust, but the other thing I want to ask these great warriors about is, what is it you’re working on? What is it you’re thinking about? What is it that you are trying to take the force to? Of course.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
All right. Well, the things that we’re working on, agile combat employment. In fact, I said the other day that no Airmen in PACAF is excused from being a multi-capable Airman and working on ACE every single day. And so, the wing commanders are working on that. We’re expanding the envelope. Daily training includes agile combat employment, and that’s because of the challenge we have with China and North Korea and Russia. And so, that foundational capability is going to allow us to execute the way that we need to execute in the event that deterrence fails. So that’s probably the biggest thing that we’re working on.
Certainly, modernizing. And we heard from the secretary yesterday, and there’s a number of programs that he talked about yesterday that are going to be delivered in the coming years that will absolutely be put into good use straight away in the Pacific, which will help for deterrence and then, if that deterrents fails, for us to be able to win. The policy? I would say the one that I think about every single day, multiple times a day, is our ability to share with our allies and partners, and we all know the frustrations that are associated with being able to send a note to somebody or to just release information to one of our allies and partners.
And if we could take a look at that policy, and I know we’ve been talking about this for decades, we need to actually do something about it soon, as in this year, and start to open up the ability to share with our allies and partners so that they can be in that fight with us.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
So, Cruiser, I’m going to bug you on this for a moment. Okay? So we’ve got F-35s in the theater. Right? And so, how do we, from a policy perspective, delve into that conversation? Because to me, as I think about F-35 employment, there’s this notion of, how do we share information so that we can employ together? What do you think about that as the PACAF commander?
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
I think the specific example with F-35s is we share… because those countries are read into the F-35 program. And so, we do share the F-35 program information with those countries that have it. And as a matter of fact, like Singapore, who has committed to it, they’re in our group now as well. So we have our PACAF F-35 users’ group and they’re sitting in the room with us. And so, the F-35 sharing, because of the way that we’ve constructed the info sharing on that program, that’s in decent shape.
But those same countries, Japan and Korea and Singapore and Australia, we limit a lot of information from them because it doesn’t say REL Five Eyes or REL Singapore, et cetera. And some of that information, we want them to… The commander wants them to have that information because it’s going to help us to be more interoperable and it produces the ability for us to execute together.
And so, what I would say on the policy is, the commanders have been talking about this for years, and it’s our risk that we are incurring by not sharing, and we’re not the ones who get to decide on the sharing policy. And so, I would say, one way to look at this from the policy standpoint is push authorities to commanders who have to manage the risk.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Okay. Scorch.
Gen. James B. Hecker:
Pretty much ditto on General Wilsbach answers. Sharing information is huge, and we have had some success stories, but they’re very difficult to have, but one is with space. When the Ukraine war kicked off, there were certain things we were allowed to share from our space assets to NATO allies and certain things that we couldn’t. And due to a policy change, we increased what we could share almost 100 times of what we were sharing before. Pretty good success story. That’s really good.
And that enabled us to do a lot of things that we wouldn’t be able to do. And you know how much it cost? Zero. It costs whatever the ink in a pen cost to do a signature and then we are allowed to do that. When you talk F-35s in our theater at USAFE, by 2034, we’re supposed to have over 600 of them. Of those, only 54 are going to be U.S., so less than 10%. And if those 10% can’t operate at 100% because we can’t share different things with them, we’re losing combat power.
So even if by sharing our data files, U.S. data files with them, if that increases their lethality and their way to integrate with other folks by 20%, that’s equivalent of their 550 aircraft that they have. That’s equivalent to 110 extra F-35s, that cost zero money, stroke of a pen. So we have pushed a bunch of these up to OSD. Another thing we just did, SACEUR and I co-signed something for our web tech. We’re going to have our first-ever NATO web tech, and we asked for three different SAP programs to be briefed to our F-35 NATO allies.
And hopefully, they’ll allow us to do it, because it’s going to let us get air superiority so we can get after counter IAMD. And if we can’t talk about it, we can’t get after it, and it’s free chicken, and we’re going to read them out when they leave. So we’re really going after this because it is a freeway to get a lot of combat capability, especially at least for us in USAFE, and I’m sure it’s the same thing in PACAF.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
Next.
Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:
I’ll definitely pull the thread on sharing data and classification as well. In the Space Force, with space programs, so many times, especially if it’s high-tech, so many times, we start new programs all SAP’d up, and it’s really hard to declassify SAP programs. I know that our acquisition partners are really trying to acquire technology that’s ready today, commercial technology that’s ready today, and that will be helpful. But regarding data sharing and regarding policy changes, well, there’s a free memo probably written in 2018 just before I left USSTRATCOM as the J5. I was the POC on this memo, until I PCS’d and they made an edit and now my name’s not on it. It doesn’t matter because that memo is still sitting on someone’s desk.
It was a framework on what to classify for space programs and why, because the theory at the time, and we can argue deterrence theory, but the theory at the time was reveal what we’ll deter. And if we can’t show it or talk about it, it can’t serve as a deterrent, because adversaries don’t even know the program or system exists. So this framework was very well done, General Hyten, stroke of a pen, and I have not seen anything since.
So policy changes, they’re not impossible and they are not hard to do, and you can partner this framework with a reveal-conceal strategy, and there we have it. More data sharing, more reduced classification that’s so important to share with our allies, because allies and partners and industry, you’re all part of the way forward for space. When we talk about resilience and building hybrid architectures that are layered and diversified and include commercial and allies, we have to crack the nut on sharing data and reducing classification levels.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
So ladies and gentlemen, Airmen and Guardian, we’ve only have a couple of minutes left. So what I’d really like to do is give these amazing warriors and my friends some last words to the audience and to the larger world, just because they have had incredible careers, and what they’ve done for our Air and Space Force is nothing short of amazing. And so, I just want to make sure that I give them some last words before Orville kicks me off the stage.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:
Well, thanks, General Robinson. I would not be sitting on this stage if it wasn’t for you. General Robinson was a Weapons School instructor when I went through the Weapons School, and that was the beginning of my mentorship with you, and then my boss twice as the PACAF commander and the NORAD-NORTHCOM commander. And so, I would not be sitting here if it wasn’t for you. I have learned a lot over the years from you. But what I’d like to say on the closing comments is maybe expand a little bit more on what we’re concerned about in the Pacific, and that’s China, and if you look back over the last year, some of the bad behavior that you’ve seen.
Before I get to a few examples though, I’d encourage everybody in the audience to read two things. Last year, I talked about the Taiwan Question white paper that came out in August last year. It’s a fascinating read to see how the CCP looks at Taiwan. There’s another paper that just came out just a few weeks ago called the Strategic Initiatives Policy Concept Paper, long title, and it’s a very magnanimously written paper and it talks about all these wonderful things that the CCP would like to do around the world, and then you compare it with their behavior.
And so, in the last year, what have we seen? Well, of course, the balloon going all the way across North America. That wasn’t the first time they incurred on somebody else’s sovereign territory with those airships. We saw the very dangerous intercept with the Rivet Joint. You’ve seen the video, and the video doesn’t necessarily show how dangerous that was, but it was extremely dangerous, close, where the Rivet Joint had to maneuver to keep the fighter from running into ours.
We had the Chinese fighter chaff in front of the P-8, the Australian P-8, that caused damage to the engine and the leading edge. We saw just last month the lasing incident by the Chinese Coast Guard on the Philippine Coast Guard vessel, and you just keep having these kind of behaviors, and then you look at their writings. And so, I pose the question to the audience: One, who’s calling the shots in China? Because it’s certainly concerning, and hopefully they’ve thought about authorities and who’s deciding to have these unsafe interceptions, who’s deciding on incurring, with a intelligence-gathering airship incurring into other people’s sovereign territory.
Who’s calling those? Who’s calling those shots? I don’t know the answer, but certainly, that’s something they should look at and take care of that. It’s been fabulous being on the panel with my colleagues and with you, General Robinson. Thank you for everybody’s interest, and have a great day, everyone. Thank you.
Gen. James B. Hecker:
Well, I too wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for General Robinson. She was a squadron commander at the Weapons School when I was an instructor there, and I would take your bogey dope anytime. So one thing that kind of struck me, and this doesn’t really have to do with USAFE, during the conference here was that we might be 10% short of our recruiting goal, as we celebrate the 50th year of the all-voluntary force. And then I read an article this morning that talked about how the Russians just ran out of the prisoners, because all of them have now died and they’re having to bring in some of their more professional recruits that have a couple months of training.
And then I reflect talking to some of the Ukrainian-enlisted personnel who are learning to operate HIMARS and how professional they were. I asked them, “Hey, are you afraid to go back to combat because you’re going back here in a week?” And they said, “No. We know exactly what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for our country.” And I go, “Well, how about the Russians? When you capture some of them, what do they say?” He goes, “They have no clue what they’re fighting for. They’re not professional.” We need folks that want to be in our Air force, and it’s going to take a recruiting effort from all of us.
So we all have the responsibility to share our stories, because we got great stories, to share our experiences. And by doing that, we’re going to be able to come get past this 10% problem that we have, but it’s going to take all of us to do it. So the last thing, as we end our careers, we’re at the tail end of ours, we don’t want to be the ones that went out and said, “Yeah, we couldn’t do an all-volunteer force and we had to start signing people up.” So help us go out on a good note and let’s do the recruiting and make sure that we get some people in here. Thank you.
Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:
I think I can help you go out on a good note. I’d like to talk about the future. There is another Armagno in the audience, and it is Cadet Giacomo Armagno, junior and ROTC at Kent State University. He’s been wanting to fly, well, the A-10, but fighters since he was like this big. And that’s our future. We do have an amazing future, a future of empowered, bold, creative, and innovative Airmen and Guardians who are willing to stand up and raise their right hand and support and defend the Constitution of the United States and carry on the national security of this great nation.
I know we have. I see it in my nephew. And so, in these last few seconds, what I’d love to do is ask all ROTC students who might be in the audience, the United States Air Force Academy cadets, or any other military school students who are in the audience, please stand, along with my nephew, Giacomo Armagno, so that we can recognize the future of our United States Air and Space Forces.
Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):
So the last thing I’m going to say, if this isn’t what our nation is about, it’s about you, it’s about them, it’s about our future, and we are blessed. So thank you very much for being here.
Voiceover:
General Robinson and our panel, thank you so much for joining us today. Feel free to take a short break to stretch, but be back here in 15 minutes for the Spark Tank competition. You won’t want to miss these inspiring Airmen and Guardians pitch their ideas to our esteemed panel of military and celebrity judges.