I think if someone grew up with the Air Force of the 1970s...and then came to view the Air Force of 2008...they would be totally shocked at the leadership, the vision, the change-the-change-to-the-change mentality, and the business-like management style of today. Companies used to come out to Air Force bases in the 1960s and 1970s...to see how to run a smooth operation. The Air Force gave up and started making tours of civilian operations in the mid-90s and have lost a tremendous amount of creativity...working on creating “centers of excellence” which are mere shadows of what we had twenty years ago.
Across the entire Air Force...they’ve got a broad spectrum of senior NCOs and officers who simply don’t know how their office, division or operation functions. There are senior NCOs out there who haven’t functioned in the shoes of their airman for more than fifteen years. The junior enlisted get daily sessions of “moral direction” rather than train on accomplishing an impossible mission. I can remember exercises in the early 80s that were rigged up for 150 percent of what you’d face...which you couldn’t possibly accomplish everything...yet you learned how to prioritize and set an achievable goal with what you could do. Today...they plan an exercise, which is mostly scripted and like some kind of cake-walk...mainly because so many leaders don’t know that job or the operation.
I spent twenty-two years in the AF...and continual to work in some fashion outside the uniform today for them. The Secretary of the Defense is correct...there is something disconnected and not working right.
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Back in 1984 I took a group of managers from my company out to a large Air Force Supply depot to look at their supply operations.
We came away impressed with the efficiency of how things were going.
I wonder what went wrong between 1984 and 2008.
I believe that the military is relying way to much on civilians to solve problems that used to solved by hard working enlisted men.
I was out at the Navy base today and men in uniform were rare to be seen.
However,civilians were everywhere such as the grounds keeping crew in front of the base commanders home.
We don't even finish one change before we start the next one.
I saw it-some where in the 90’s, they politicized the Senior NCO corps, It became more important to “Fill the squares” for promotion than actualy knowing the job and leading.
Couple that with the drawdown of the 90’s where a lot of the best airmen and NCO’s left because they saw the writing on the wall. Much of what was left over was NCO (No Chance Outside)
Roll in the lowering of compliance standards you speak of in exercises and inspections brought by Quality Air Force and it made the brew that has caused many of todays functional problems in the AF.
There are other factors I am sure-but these are the ones that come to mind now