Early Onset Alzheimer’s? - The Air Force at 60

By Tony Kern, Ed.D, Lt Col, USAF (Retired)

It seemed a bit awkward this week to see the USAF celebrating its 60th birthday while simultaneously trying to shake off one of its most embarrassing moments – the uncontrolled movement of nuclear weapons across the continent. Viewed through the long lens of military history, 60 years does not even register in the bottom of the hourglass, yet it appears to be long enough for the Air Force to have forgotten who they once were.

The Air Force was born with professional discipline in its DNA – forged with the iron fisted, take no prisoners approach of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), where uncompromising discipline was a condition of continued employment. The minimum passing grade on a doctrine test was 100% and the penalty for failing was mission decertification, several weeks of humiliating remedial study, followed by a recertification in front of the Wing Commander. SAC is no longer with us – reorganized out of existence in 1992. But somewhere between then and now professional discipline fell from favor. I’m not talking about the lite beer version of flight discipline that continues to show up in safety posters and general’s speeches, but rather the hard core professionalism where one aviator looks the other in the eye and demands peer to peer accountability.

A quick journey through the USAF’s recent history reads like a Rogues’ Gallery of high profile errors resulting in not only service-wide humiliation, but national embarrassment, including

C-5 self-induced mishap at Dover AFB
B-1B gear up landing in the Indian Ocean
F-16 friendly fire in Afghanistan, resulting in 4 dead and 18 wounded Canadian infantry
A-10 friendly fire in Iraq which killed a British soldier of the Blues and Royals Regiment
The uncontrolled transfer of nuclear weapons across the continent
Officers and aviators lawyering up and taking the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) version of the 5th amendment

What the hell?

Perhaps, in its quest for the technological high ground, the Air Force may have lost track of one of its professional touchstones – uncompromising attention to detail and professional flight discipline. General Fogelman, the Air Force Chief of Staff sensed this in the late 1990s and began to tackle the challenge in a “Little Blue Book” of Air Force Core Values (1997 Version), where he stated:

We're entrusted with the security of our nation. The tools of our trade are lethal, and we engage in operations that involve risk to human life and untold national treasures. Because of what we do our standards must be higher . . .

But we need to go back even further to find the genetic material that the Air Force must regenerate to reclaim both its proud heritage of professional reliability – and its reputation.

Whether we venture into realms of Space in our latest vehicles, or whether we are concerned principally with overhauling our engines and loading our ordnance here on the ground, we will still be part of a vast proud mechanism which must function cleanly if it is to function at all.

The author - General Curtis Lemay.

The path forward must begin by finding this lost discipline, as well as the courage to challenge on a peer to peer level. This is more than a leadership challenge for commanders – it is a gauntlet thrown down to every living member and of this proud service, past, present and future.

General Lemay finished his quote above with five simple words – “Crank her up. Let's go.”