Dear Chief,
Congratulations on your selection. Just two dozen men have survived the culling to become Chief of Staff. Over the years I’ve interviewed 13 of them, plus perhaps two dozen other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Here’s what those conversations have taught me.
Statutorily it’s a four-year assignment. You might have signed on for less, but most who’ve held the job will tell you four years is too short to accomplish all you want. Being Chief is an all-you-can-eat affair, but you’re on the clock the entire time. It could take a year before you have any real input on the budget; two before you really have a full handle on the rhythm of the role. By the end of the third year, you’re a dead man walking—if you get that far.
Of the last 11 Chiefs, two were fired and two retired early. One of those was on principle; the other was under pressure.
It goes without saying that the first thing you need to do is be true to yourself. That’s easier said than done.
Focus on a few things and make those the focus for everyone. Start with readiness.
Up to this point you’ve been the big man on campus, but relatively invisible everywhere else. You’re still the same guy you were 10 or 20 years ago, just a bit grayer at the temples, wiser to be sure. Your staff thinks you are brilliant, strives to keep up with you, marvels at your energy. People love you. You can speak your mind. Sure, you might preface some of those comments with “don’t put this on Facebook …” but you do so with confidence because no one is really out to get you.
That’s not true anymore. From here on out, every word you say will be parsed. You will be held accountable for every negative headline, every delayed program, every blunder by an Airman, whether in Washington or on some far-off remote base that, in an instant, can fuel a political storm or blow up into an international incident. Every one of those things can throw you off your game, disrupt your agenda, set you back from accomplishing your goals.
Being true to yourself means understanding who you are, what you stand for, what compromises you are unwilling to make. Call it honor, integrity, character—it’s what will make others respect you and ensure you respect yourself after the fact.
Make a list of three or four things that are most important to your Air Force. This is where you need to focus your time. You will have a packed schedule from morning until night. Every one of those meetings will be the most important thing someone else will do that day. You owe it to them to respect their moment in the spotlight. But you also owe it to yourself and your Air Force not to get lost in the minutiae.
People will come to you for decisions that only you can make. But there is a difference between the questions only you have the wisdom to answer and those that belong to you by virtue of your job. Distinguishing between the two will save you time and brainpower. Former President Ronald Reagan’s famous “trust but verify” approach to arms control can apply here as well: Challenge assumptions, ask about alternatives, but be willing to trust your subordinates. You didn’t get to this level on your own, and you won’t succeed at this level on your own. Success is a team sport.
Focus on a few things and make those the focus for everyone. Start with readiness.
China targeted 2027 as the year by which its military should be able to seize Taiwan by force. That’s just 16 months away. Your team is almost done with its 2027 budget submission, and you haven’t even been sworn in yet.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, just three months on the job himself, said the thing that’s surprised him most since becoming Secretary was the state of readiness. That won’t surprise you, because you’ve been living it. Past administrations under both parties allowed this to happen. Your job is to get things moving in the other direction.
Modernization is every Chief’s preoccupation. Technology and warfare evolve rapidly, and he who stands still loses. Your predecessors have set you up with a large portfolio of programs America can’t afford to fail: The B-21 Raider bomber is flying, and all indications it’s on schedule and within budget. Keeping it on track and increasing the planned buy should be a priority. Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the semi-autonomous drones that could revolutionize air combat, are progressing rapidly. Keep your foot on the gas.
After that, it’s hazier. The brand-new F-47 fighter program will be expensive, which means the knives will be out annually, a risk to such a high-priority program. ICBM, an existential requirement, is behind schedule and way over cost. The KC-46 tanker, though a major upgrade over predecessors, is taking years to work out the kinks. The T-7 trainer, selected seven years ago with the promise of rapidly moving from prototype to production, has yet to deliver a production model. The E-7 Wedgetail, needed to replace the E-3 AWACS, is on the chopping block and shouldn’t be.
Your biggest modernization program isn’t even under your control, but rather is run by a joint office accountable to others. Congress and the White House have taken a hard line against the F-35 because of delays in development and delivery of upgrades. Pilots rave about what the plane can do, but rising costs, underwhelming readiness, over-ambitious promises, and contractors pointing blame at each other have Congress and the White House questioning the program’s value. That in turn has led to a slowdown in F-35 purchases.
Here’s where your two priorities collide. You need more F-35s faster to replace the aging aircraft you want to retire; but the F-35s are only mission-capable half the time because of parts and maintainer shortages.
Readiness is ultimately a people problem. You can’t get enough pilots through training fast enough to staff your Air Force; you don’t have enough planes for them to train on; you have too few experienced maintainers. They like the work, but the lifestyle is hard. You need to empower staff to identify the things, from logistics to personnel, that make being in the Air Force burdensome without making results better. Get rid of those irritants and morale will improve.
One more thing: Don’t start from scratch. Most new commanders want to come in with a bang. Some look to fire someone quickly, establishing supremacy and instilling fear. Others unveil new slogans, commission studies, move furniture. Gen. David Allvin’s original catchphrase “follow through” had one thing going for it. He wasn’t reinventing the Air Force. That’s not to say you should leave everything as you find it, but rather to say, again, to prioritize. Some things should be undone. Others can be left alone.
People will say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The Air Force isn’t broken, but it is worn down—and it’s nowhere near as ready and resilient as it should be. Much of the past two decades have been spent dismantling the force that made other nations stand back in awe in the 1990s. What made that Air Force so good was the training of its people and the quality of its modern gear: Stealth, precision, satellites, communications, remotely piloted drones, and other kit rival nations could only dream of. Now those things are almost commonplace.
America and its Air Force can regain advantage. Achieving 1990s-style overmatch should be a national priority.
