The new Air Force Secretary sits down for his first on-the-record interview.
Growing up, Troy Meink wanted to be a pilot, then an astronaut. He joined the Air Force, but his eyesight wasn’t up to pilot standards, and the pilot dream was dashed. He began as a navigator, shifted into acquisition and space. He built airplanes in his garage and spent the better part of two decades buying, operating, and developing space systems.
Not surprisingly, this new Secretary of the Air Force is enjoying the heck out of his new role.
“I couldn’t ask for a better job than the ones I have right now, from just an interest perspective,” Meink told Air & Space Forces Magazine in his first interview since becoming Secretary in May.
Tieless, in an unclassified conference space adjacent to his Pentagon office, Meink comes across as curious, studious, thoughtful, and still just a little bit surprised to find himself in an office typically occupied by former politicians, mega donors, and titans of industry. He’s better described as a career technocrat who spent 13 years in the secretive, almost invisible world of the National Reconnaissance Office, most of the last five years as deputy director. Other stints included the Air Force Research Lab and Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, now a part of the Space Force as Space Systems Command.
Yet while Meink is instantly the most space-experienced executive ever to serve as Air Force Secretary, he is not going to stand by and be seen as ’the “space” Secretary.
“I would say I’m as much of an airplane person as I am a space person,” he said. His time as a KC-135 navigator was formative and he continues to tinker with aircraft in his garage. He flies an experimental, homebuilt RV-8.
“My love from day one was aviation, and then I wanted to be an astronaut,” he says, tapping his glasses, the reason neither dream came true. The convergence of those interests in the Department of the Air Force comes at what he sees as a defining moment.
“Air and space are becoming probably as important—if not more important than anytime since the formation of the Air Force back in ’47—and then, of course, the Space Force, they’re taking on new missions that didn’t exist five to 10 years ago,” Meink said. Then, echoing sentiments offered by his predecessor, Frank Kendall, when he took the job four years ago, he added, “And the opportunity to help steer, solve some of the problems, push forward, increase our capability, not only within the department, but to the entire joint force, it’s just a fantastic opportunity. There’s no way I couldn’t be excited about that.”
Air and space are becoming probably as important—if not more important than anytime since the formation of the Air Force back in ’47.
—Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink
Meink’s first message to the force in May zeroed in on the challenge: the need for sweeping modernization for the future and improved readiness right now. That’s a lot.
“We have a rapidly evolving threat, so we’re trying to maintain readiness against that threat today, but [concurrently] conduct the largest modernization effort since the Air Force was founded.”
Though Meink spent years in acquisition and might seem perfectly attuned to modernization’s cost, schedule, and delivery challenges, it’s readiness that has caught his attention first and foremost. Asked what has surprised him most in his first three months, he didn’t hesitate: “the readiness challenges.”
“We’ve gotten ourselves in trouble a little bit with, ’OK, well, we’ll back off on readiness a little bit, a little bit more, and face modernization a little bit more and more.’ And so we have to rebalance.”
“I knew going in, I’ve been in the government a while, and so I have a fairly good understanding of what’s going on, at least at a high level,” he said. “And I knew there were readiness challenges within the department. I didn’t realize this is probably quite as big a challenge as it is.”
Aging airplanes, parts shortages, the loss of experienced maintainers, fewer flying hours—all have contributed to an overall readiness decline. Meink intends to make strong, steady investments in spare parts, logistics, training, and more to turn that trend around.
“I would argue that probably over the last 10-plus years, readiness was not properly funded, and we dug ourselves into a pretty big hole,” he said. “We’re trying to dig ourselves out of that hole.”
Doing so will take years, he said, expressing gratitude that both the Department of Defense and Congress seems supportive.
Renewing the fleet is a separate, parallel challenge. Meink ticked off the list of major new programs underway, the B-21 bomber, the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a new nuclear command, control, and communications system, and the F-47 fighter, all of which come on top of ongoing programs like F-35 fighter and KC-47 tanker.
NRO earned a reputation for innovative, effective acquisition, and Meink stressed the need for applying similar discipline and efficiency in his new role.
“We have to improve execution,” he said. “We’ve had some good execution, we’ve had some not good execution, and we need to make sure we are being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are executing, executing, executing, because we can’t afford massively overrun, delayed programs.”
He commended planners for the work so far on two of the biggest programs: “I’m excited about F-47,” he said, citing work prior to his arrival. “I’m hoping to keep it in place and structure the program well so that we can be successful. The B-21 is another good example. But we need that kind of performance across the entire department.”
Sometimes readiness and modernization go hand in hand. Higher-than-expected sustainment costs have plagued the F-35 since its inception, undermining confidence among lawmakers even as pilots rave about its advanced capabilities.
“The F-35 has been a challenge from a readiness perspective,” Meink said. “The pilots love the airplane. It’s a great airplane. … The challenge is, we’ve just got to increase the readiness on the jet, and we have to work with the contractors, and maybe even [do] some R&D on increasing how reliable the parts are, how reliable the aircraft is to maintain, to make sure we can employ that combat power.”
F-35 mission capable rates have held stable over the past year but remain only about 52 percent. Historically, the Air Force strived for 80 percent.
“We never got the performance, from a reliability perspective, that we were initially planning for,” Meink said. “So it wasn’t just [that] we underfunded. We were actually planning for everything to last longer before it needed to be maintained,” he said. “So we need to fix both, right? We need to work with the contractor. We need to address some of those reliability issues, and then we need to make sure we’re funding the number of parts.”
Meink will have his hands full fighting for the funds to do that, but he projected confidence that the department will get the resources it needs.
“Both the President and his administration and Congress in the last budget have been helpful,” Meink said. “They are increasing our budget, trying to go after some of these things. … But that’s going to have to continue going forward, as we try to maintain this readiness at the same time we’re modernizing the force—and then making sure we have the people to do that.”
Talent is another concern. Interviewed in August not long after returning from a swing through Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Japan, and Alaska, Meink praised the hard work of Airmen and Guardians but also came away thinking that some things they were doing were harder than they need to be.
“I’ve been Active duty, I’ve been around Airmen and Guardians, [yet] they are even more impressive than I thought,” Meink said. “The ability to operate in those harsh environments, in that part of the world, with unimproved runways and operation areas: That was really impressive, really, really impressive.
“But at the same time, you could see that the readiness just wasn’t there. They were struggling with things they should not have been struggling with. So we need to improve that.”
One reason they’re struggling is because they are continuing to squeeze life out of aging gear. At Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, the Secretary took note of a KC-135 that looked extra familiar: he’s pretty sure it was one he helped crew as a navigator more than 30 years ago.
“It looked beautiful,” Meink said. “It was a Guard airplane, and they really maintained that airplane well. That’s one of the challenges: I never flew an airplane younger than I was when I was Active duty, and that airplane is still the basis of our air refueling fleet. Now, it’s a great airplane, but that tells you how old a lot of the fleet is getting, which is why both readiness and modernization are critical.”
Meink will kick off AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference Sept. 22 with a keynote before the biggest audience of his career. He’ll also hold his first press conference. He’ll never be an astronaut and he’ll never pilot an Air Force jet. But the former navigator is charting a course for the military branches under his direction, and more than 700,000 Airmen and Guardians comprising those forces. He controls budgets approaching a quarter of a billion annually, enough, he hopes, to make a difference.
