Three F-15E aircraft undergo Planned/Scheduled Depot Level Maintenance at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., June 3, 2025. Each F-15 aircraft underwent extensive overhaul and repair to maintain readiness through sustainment and project lethality for global use by the Air Force F-15 fleet. Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Joseph Mather
workforce. And as we think about the acquisition process and all those good things that are going on with the ac- quisition system, I think we need to pay equal attention to our workforce. Frankly, as a refection of our larger society, there are some challenges in developing and maintaining a workforce that has the skills and the expertise necessary to do the things that we do. My colleagues here working for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Product Support are absolutely focused on workforce development and we are very close partners with them, particularly for the OIB. So, this is very much a priority and very much another area where we have to think about the workforce diferently to make sure that we’re incentivizing, that we’re able to recruit, that we’re able to retain and that comes with the right level of train- ing and fnancial incentive just to continue to work for the department. So workforce development is very much something that we think and talk about frequently. Q Is there anything that you would like to discuss or point out that perhaps hasn’t been covered thus far. A. First I appreciate everything that DAU does to enhance the ability of the department to fulfll Warfghting require- ments. I think that what we need to think about is that the en- vironment has changed dramatically over the last several years, and I think many of us grew up in a military where we were logistically dominant. We were not challenged. Frankly, the biggest logistics challenge often was fnding a Starbucks when I got of my plane in my forward operating base. That environment was very diferent.
I think people really need to internalize that the chal- lenges we now face and will face to a larger degree through which we could enter confict. The challenges are very dif- ferent, and they’re going to be much more difcult to over- come. And if we don’t start thinking about those things now, we may be arguably already behind the 8-ball to some degree. We’re going to be challenged in ways that we haven’t been challenged since World War II. And those like me who have been around the military for 30 years will be challenged ways that we have not been challenged before in our entire careers. So, I think there’s a danger, maybe of complacency, where our experiences have been shaped by logistics dom- inance. And we make assumptions about our warfghting capabilities based on how we have been able to support combat in the past without interruption. We’re facing just a completely diferent paradigm be- cause we will be challenged and we will not have the luxury of the logistics capabilities that we had in the past. We will face an adversary that will use precision munitions against us and will be a peer competitor in a way that we have not faced before. And I think we just need to assess our current invest- ments in logistics capabilities writ large and think about the readiness outcomes that we want, that we need, to fght and win and make sure that our investment inputs are equal to or can sustain the readiness that we need in order to fght.
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