Verbatim

The Advantage of Small

You know we have Coronas every year—now we have three Coronas a year in the Air Force? I have a Corona every day. … I don’t think they’ve probably had a meeting—bang, bang. I mean, [Gen. David D. Thompson] walks across the street, we have a Corona. We’re small. We can do things—we can do things because of our size. It gives us a great advantage.

Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, ASC21.

Broke-Back Burden

I’m sitting on about 20 F-15C models that are grounded right now, because the backbone of the aircraft is so cracked, I wouldn’t get in them and fly them. I definitely wouldn’t put my children in them to go fly. But right now, I still can’t retire them.” 

Air National Guard Director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, ASC21.

Slow and Steady Can Lose the Race

The biggest threat that I worry about is us. Because we move slow, we are deliberate. We don’t take risks anymore. We are risk-averse. It takes us two years to do an experiment, then two years to build a requirement, and two years to get a budget, and 10 years to build a program that is supposed to last for 15 or 20 years. And in the meantime, somebody like China has built four different capabilities all to do the same thing. And they’re moving unbelievably fast.”

Gen. John E. Hyten, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the 
Air Force Association 2021 Air, Space & Cyber Conference (ASC21).
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Selflessness

You look at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, it says ‘give me your tired, your poor, your homeless: all who are trying to seek freedom, right? You are the living embodiment of the Statue of Liberty, you are all that’s good about America. … What you just did was give 124,000 people freedom: freedom from oppression, freedom from fear, freedom from want, right?…That is no small achievement. And those 13 that were killed: 11 Marines, one Soldier, one Navy Corpsman, they died so others would remain free that they don’t even know. That’s the ultimate sacrifice.”

Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Airmen aboard a C-17 Globemaster III at Joint Base Charleston, S.C. 

Losing Formula

If we’re not careful, we’ll end up with fifth-generation fighters shooting fourth-generation weapons at sixth-generation threats.”

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chief of Staff of the Air Force, ASC21.

Home Rule

We will not go back to what we were doing before. I am setting that goal for Airmen, to see if we can get 50 percent in telework all the time. … We believe the younger generation, not more seasoned individuals like me, … like being in the digital world, feel comfortable operating in that kind of arena. They embrace it. If we don’t go do this, we will end up losing Airmen in the long term. It is a retention issue for the long term.”

Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., commander of Air Force Materiel Command ASC21.