Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz at AFA Air Warfare Symposium February 26, 2009 Orlando, Fla. Thank you very much Mike—I appreciate the introduction and Mr. Secretary, what a pleasure it is to join you. If I can just ask for a moment to begin by perhaps asking the four-stars that are sitting here in the front of the room… may I ask you to stand up? You know, not frequently enough do we acknowledge the fact that the people that do the real work in our Air Force. You know, the Secretary and I, get lots of attention and so on, but in truth, along with Chief McKinley and the other senior NCOs in our Air Force, these are the people who do the work, so to you, thank you very much. (Applause) Thanks to you all for attending this year’s symposium and thanks as always Mike and Joe and the team for Air Force Association hosting this event. Your support of our Airmen and their families and for all you do for the United States Air Force. And thanks to all those that work hard to make this conference a consistently excellent showcase of the contribution that America’s airmen make to our nation’s defense. And I’d also like to thank Secretary Donley for joining us and offering those thought-provoking remarks. It is truly an honor to serve alongside with you, sir, and Suzie and I are grateful for you and Gail and we’re thankful for your service and for your steadfast leadership. Your contributions to the Air Force go back decades, but some of the most indelible improvements are the result of your most recent efforts and the Air Force owes you a debt or gratitude for your steadfastness and, of course, your wisdom. Thank you for your service, for your and Gail’s sacrifice, and for sharing your time here with us at this very important event. Thank you, sir. (Applause) I think this event is important for a whole host of reasons. The forum allows us to take some time away from our daily routine in Washington or elsewhere in order to renew old friendships, vitally important, and to focus on our heritage, our current challenge, and the future. Right here in this room those three vital aspects of our identity as a service converge for a very brief moment in time, and I think it’s important for us to stop and think about the magnitude of what we’ve done, what we’re doing now, and importantly, as the Secretary suggested, what we must do in the future. I thank everyone here for sharing in this event, and for your contributions to global vigilance, reach, and power, which we all provide for America’s defense. Speaking of service, sacrifice, and contribution, and service to the nation’s defense, I’d like to take a moment to recognize one of the Air Force’s finest. He’s with us today, and his name is Staff Sergeant Zack Rhyner, and Zack if you would please stand up for us, and I’d like to ask everyone here to please hold your applause for a short time because I have an important story to sort of relate to you about Zack Rhyner which I think will cause you to celebrate in a few moments. I ask everyone here to give attention to this story as I focus on this young Airman. Zack is a representative, ladies and gentlemen, of America’s Airmen who serve this nation every day, in the finest tradition of integrity and service and excellence. But his story is a dramatic reminder of the extraordinary work that our Airmen are doing in very remote, in very dangerous places around the world. He currently serves as a special tactics combat controller and I’d like to tell you about some important things he did on April 6th of last year in a place called Shok Valley, perhaps appropriately named, in the remote mountains of Afghanistan. Then Senior Airman Rhyner was operating with his special forces team during a daylight rotary wing infiltration to grab some high-value bad guys from a village was high on a mountain ridge. Teams like this are an ongoing partnership between joint U.S. forces and Afghani commandos who live, fight, kick ass together, day and night. The team overcame near-vertical terrain to reach the outskirts of the village when all hell broke loose. The events that took place on that faithful day are almost impossible to imagine, unspeakable to a degree that Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, who Suzie and I know well, Commander of the United States Army Special Operations Command, described the circumstances by saying, “if you saw it in a movie, you would shake your head and say ‘that didn’t happen’. You can’t imagine the intensity and the stress these men endured for hours and days on end” and the Army staff sergeant who was there simply called it a “nightmare,” “a baptism by fire”— devastating sniper rocket propelled grenade, and machine gun fire poured down on the team from elevated and protected positions on all sides, and there was only one way to wake from this nightmare, and Airman Rhyner was trained and ready. Courageously moving into position without regard for his own life, he returned fire with his rifle to cover his wounded teammates while they were extracted from the line of fire. He bravely withstood the hell of fire to control A-10 Warthogs, F-15 Strike Eagles, and Army attack helicopters in danger close air strikes. Airman Rhyner was shot three times, seriously wounded in his leg, trapped on a 60-foot cliff under persistent, heavy enemy fire, and yet he directed over 50 aerial attacks that continuously repelled the enemy during an intense six-hour—or perhaps it was six-and-a-half-hour—battle. The vicious fighting took its toll in the form of brutal injuries to members of the team, but Airman Rhyner’s control of air strikes turned greater devastation to the enemy, and opened a path for the team’s exfiltration. Those special-forces soldiers lived to tell the story because of the courage, tenacity, and closely integrated teamwork that that larger team displayed that day, including the invaluable and selfless efforts of Zack Rhyner. The team earned an unprecedented 10, 10 silver stars on that day for their devotion to duty and courage in the line of fire. And in two weeks’ time at a ceremony in the Pentagon or perhaps at Ft. Bragg—we’re still working the ultimate location—I will consider it the highest possible personal honor to decorate Zack Rhyner, to pin on the Air Force Cross for bravery and heroism in the face of the enemy. (Applause) Now, ladies and gentlemen, does anyone here doubt—does anyone doubt the respect for Airmen a searing experience like this engenders with our Joint teammates? Does anyone doubt whether our Air Force—your Air Force —is ‘all in?’ Again, Zack, it’s a wonderful thing you did and how proud you make us all. Think of all the effects Airmen around the world have orchestrated to make this story a reality, from Strike Eagle aircrews, to maintainers on the flight line, and logisticians in the depots, the intelligence professionals, the satellite communication experts, munitions buildup and delivery, and command-and-control leverage through cyberspace. These Airmen are responsible for generating global reach, vigilance, and power, and we could not be more proud of all that they do. Zack, thank you for being here, and thank you for your exemplary service. (Applause) When I look at Airmen like Zack Rhyner I imagine what excellent deeds they will accomplish in the future. In future years, the senior airmen and staff sergeants of today will become chiefs. The Air Force and the Joint team will reap the benefits of their combat-proven leadership. And an example of such leadership is with us here today and I’d like to take a moment to recognize him as well; Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Rod McKinley. Chief McKinley is an incomparable leader, an exemplary Airman. He’s devoted his entire adult life to our Air Force in taking care of our Airmen and their families. Chief McKinley has accomplished so much throughout his career, but in his current role he’s made monumental contributions. At the very beginning of his tenure, he worked to improve the enlisted evaluation system, and efforts resulted in the first major changes to that feedback and performance report and the forms associated with them since 1990. His advocacy of pride in being an Airman in the warrior ethos helped lead to the creation of the first and the last Airman’s Creed. Chief McKinley has always led by example and with the highest standards of personal ethics. He’s been a proponent of a highly skilled and professional force. He was at the forefront of implementing programs to transfer Community College of the Air Force credits toward Bachelor’s degrees at civilian institutions. And he’s helped care for our deployed Airmen, our wounded warriors and their families each and every day. It is truly bittersweet to congratulate Chief McKinley like this, as he and Paula have come to the point in their exemplary career in the Air Force that the time to retire is approaching, and that will occur later this summer. And we will reflect on that remarkable career of service, integrity, and excellence—Chief McKinley, may I ask you to rise as well? Thank you for all you have done for the Air Force, for America’s Airmen, and the nation is better and we are more secure for it. Thank you very much. (Applause). I hope I get some whistles at the end of this, too. (Laughter). Rod, Suzie and I owe you; it’s a great debt of gratitude for your leadership and your contributions, sincerely. Thank you, again. Now, please allow me to turn perhaps briefly attention to the theme of our conference. For this is a great event that provides thought-provoking opportunities to consider our contribution to winning today’s fight and meeting the challenges of tomorrow. Our theme, “Cross Domain Integration: Warfare in the 21st Century” inspires thoughts on the nature of the challenges that we face, the challenges of delivering game-changing air, space, and cyberspace capabilities for the combatant commanders, two of whom are represented here today, in an uncertain security environment. I invite everyone here to consider this on two levels of strategic thought. The first consideration is how we can innovate our ways and means in each of the three domains to provide new ways of achieving the joint commanders’ objectives in the fight, or helping prevent a fight through assurance, dissuasion, and deterrence. We’re building legitimacy alongside our multinational partners in building our capacity together, and the second consideration is how we can better integrate these capabilities with joint and interagency partners along with the command and control concepts we need to effectively and efficiently deliver effects across these domains. And perhaps this second consideration is at least equally important, maybe even more, as we think of future strategies. Because even if we devise the most compelling capabilities in any given domain or form of warfare,the capability is of little benefit to us if we cannot effectively command it for our purposes in the field, or integrate that capability with a host of others to bring about our desired end state. As we consider these strategic issues together, I invite everyone here to think about this vital area of importance—our contribution to the joint fight will likely depend upon the idea of integrated domain control: an idea broader than simple freedom of action across air, space and cyberspace, land and maritime. It is rather the ability to leverage scalable command and control capabilities across the spectrum of conflict, from global to local contexts, in order to exercise and ensure joint freedom of action for the purpose of exerting control at the time and place of strategic importance. We need more than the basic capabilities necessary to ensure freedom of action—these are surely important, I don’t dispute that, but they are not sufficient for strategic purposes. Integrated domain control calls for flagship command and control capabilities that readily interface and interoperate with joint interagency and multinational partners, maximizing the contribution of our inherent Air Force attributes of speed, range, and flexibility in air, space and cyberspace. I challenge each of you to consider how we must innovate across the vast range of capabilities to achieve this, for the Air Force will be called upon in a variety of ways in the future to create a variety of effects around the globe in response to a variety of challenges and diverse strategic contexts. But one constant in every single one of those scenarios is the need for command and control of these and other joint capabilities. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking humanitarian assistance or global mobility or aeromedical evacuation or ISR or special operations or major theater conflict contests for air, cyberspace, and space superiority. Scalable, reliable, and interoperable command and control forms the foundation for our success in each and every case. And America’s Air Force is poised to leverage both the capabilities and cooperation necessary to ensure that we deliver world-class integrated domain control in any context. We should expect nothing less as we continue to innovate and provide global vigilance, reach, and power for the nation. This compelling need exists as we face new constraints on our resources, and we all realize that a period of austerity is dawning. Austerity that some experts compare to the greatest our nation has faced in history. Our soon-to-be-released Air Force Climate Survey suggests austerity will intensify the strain and demands on our people and our operations. But does it limit our ability to innovate our ways and means? I’d like to take a few minutes to share a couple of thoughts on this challenge. As I see it, all of us here in uniform and out, have a duty to promote innovation. Some would have us believe that cutting-edge innovation directly correlates to resources and funding, and that a downturn in resource allocation causes a reduced capacity to innovate or to imagine. I do not believe this is the case now or has it ever been true, for history is loaded with examples with some of mankind’s greatest innovations that occurred in times of austerity. In fact, in many cases, austerity created the necessities that became the mother of revolutionary inventions. I ask you to consider one such innovation that changed the world forever—the technology known as movable type was as revolutionary as the internet that we enjoy today and maybe more so. While there exists some scholarly debate over this invention’s origin, modern consensus credits Johannes Gutenberg with this discovery, but if you visit the tiny city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, you will see old statues and monuments that claim to know the tale based on old historic manuscripts. They cite evidence that Gutenberg and the Mainz 15th century printing press benefited from the humble early 15th century Dutch innovation. No one can say for certain where the idea originated, but if you ask the Dutch, it all started with the most unlikely words from one of the most unlikely voices, and it was, “Look, grandfather, see what the letters have done.” These were the words of a young boy as he played with the small pieces of bark carved for him by his grandfather, Lawrence Koster. In their humble austerity, the family could not afford to buy toys for the children, so the elderly Koster used his skill to carve playthings from soft bark for each of his youngsters. On some of the toys, he carved out letters, and the young boy noticed that the imprint created when he pressed the bark into the sand. A mirror image of letters was left on the ground. Koster reasoned that he could use this process to teach the children how to read, and set about carving more letters in individual pieces to help him and them form various words. As the story goes, he refined the process of forming the letters, the material he carved them from, and the ink and paper that he would eventually use. Until Koster had formed the fundamental basis for printing whole books with a crude form of movable type, which culminated with him printing several books some years later. Shortly thereafter, the knowledge of these early inventions made their way to Strasburg and to Mainz where Johannes Gutenberg would refine and perfect them into their industrial form, yielding his now-famous Gutenberg bible through a process that changed everything. Mystery shrouds the way in which Gutenberg made his discovery, and whether the Dutch version of events is real or apocryphal. But the fundamental lesson is the same—for the concept of pressing and imprinting has been around since the 7th century, when the Chinese scribes worked and carved images in similar fashion. But the phenomenal technology that changed Western society in the Middle Ages and led to centuries of reformation and enlightenment, was not the product of vast sums of investment or the result of national effort, but rather the humble and the unexpected work by entrepreneurial common folks thinking up new solutions to old problems. And I think little has changed today. Regardless of the resource constraints, thinking is still free. Austerity is not our enemy. The inability to think creatively and ask hard, perhaps uncomfortable questions—that’s our enemy. We must continue to work together to ensure innovation lives on, and it is up to us as leaders to encourage, promote, and foster free thinking and the very best ideas, regardless of our origin. This is why Secretary Donley and I have joined together to promote a mutual message on diversity because the fundamental emphasis that seeks to empower the very best ideas without regard to occupation or tribe or demographics of origin, a vivid scene from a story that comes down to us through history, believe it or not from ancient Greece, I think, illustrates that point. The story took place in ancient Athens during the Golden Age of Pericles, the most brilliant period in Greek art and literature. The city shined like a beacon to the world as it existed then, beckoning civilization to join the pursuit of betterment of mankind through beauty and the power of ideas. But as night fell and citizens retired from their daily activity, one man’s labor had not ended but had just begun in earnest. He quietly slipped into the basement of his home to secretly begin another night’s work. He was a master artist who worshipped nothing but beauty, and he didn’t feel fatigue at all as he pursued his passion of sculpture in the middle of the night, but why was this artist hiding? Why did he conceal his masterpieces? Why did he do his labor in secret by candlelight at midnight? The reason is this—he was a slave, and Athenian law decried that only free men could exercise the arts, and the penalty for pursuit of sculpture was death. But Creon was the son of a genius stoneworker. He could think of nothing except freeing beautiful figures from their marble confinement, and he continued his work even as the law sought to keep the artist’s chisel in the hands of society’s elite. He worked by night, aided by his sister, who kept the candles burning, covering the doors and bringing him food as he worked throughout the period, and though many nights of hidden labor, and through those nights he completed his collection of statues, ready in time for the art festival in the Agora, where the greatest works of Athens would be displayed and judged, with the greatest works to be selected by General Pericles himself, the first citizen of Athens and the ruler of the people. Every artist sought Pericles’ attention and praise, for the greatest artworks would yield immortality for the artist, and the reward came with a crown crafted from olive branches. The Agora festival was unlike any other scene in the ancient world. Pericles sat in regal estates surrounded by the finest poets, philosophers, and artists that the world had ever known, and the most modern thinkers of the then-nascent sciences. The world and the works of the contestants were brought before the leaders and placed on display, surrounding a court on every side. Paintings and statues, exquisite in their every detail, perfect in their finish, a wondrous display of artwork, crafted to earn the admiration of the crowd and no doubt the criticism of rivals. But artists seeking cheers from the crowds of onlookers who flocked like sports fans to see who would win the crown. But among these amazing masterpieces, one group of statues surpassed all others. That collective attention of the vast assembly was riveted on these very few marvelous works of stone. “Who sculpted this group here?” the ruler of Athens demanded. Eyes filled with envy searched the crowd for the proud artist that should jump forward with a shout at any moment, but no one came forward. No one answered the king; silence. The court was gripped by mystery, the crowd of free citizens filled with murmurs and whispers—“who could it be? What artist would not come forward immediately? Could these be the work of the gods? Or even more unthinkable—could they be the work of a slave?” As the crowd continued to search for an answer, a commotion rose at the far end of the crowd. Two officers dragged a woman through the masses as she cried out. They brought her to Pericles and reported that witnesses said that this woman knew the identity of the sculptor but refused to speak. Pericles spoke next, saying, “The law is imperative”—do we have any lawyers here? “We have no other choice; take this woman to the dungeon as the law requires.” Just then, Creon ran out from the crowd and threw himself on the ground before the king and begged loudly, “Please, sir, forgive and save this woman, she is my sister, and she is silent to protect me. I am the culprit. These sculptures are the works of my hands, the hands of a slave.” The astonished crowd bristled with outrage, shouts of, “To the dungeon with the slave” and “Death to the criminal” filled as the Agora’s angry citizens got louder and louder. Pericles stood and faced the crowd: “As I live, no, not to the dungeon but to my side bring the youth. The gods have used that group of sculptures to reveal to us, that there is something higher in Greece than an unjust law. The highest purpose of justice should be the development of the beautiful and the discovery of truth, and this is the decision: to the sculptor who fashioned these give the victors’ crown.” The crowds’ jeers turned to applause as the queen lifted Creon to his feet and placed the crown of olives on his head. And in the moment the barrier erected at that very moment, the barrier erected by man’s law was demolished in order to achieve the finest merits of which mankind is capable. Ladies and gentlemen, America has long viewed itself as a modern-day Athens. Our hearts are filled with pride as we see signs all around us that old barriers have been torn down so that people can achieve their full potential regardless of their race, their culture, or their tribe. The fact that I am standing before you today and the events of January 20th are particularly notable in this regard. We must continue this process in America’s Air Force, for our vitality, for our effectiveness, and because it is right. We must foster a culture of merit that fuels innovation with the very best ideas regardless of their origin or with whom those ideas might originate. It is only through this process of discovery and promotion that we will poise ourselves to effectively meet tomorrow’s challenges, for the future security environment will demand unprecedented thinking and cooperative action through collaboration with others. This is the challenge in our ongoing efforts to train and develop our future leaders. Future challenges will require Airmen, like Zack, who are comfortable with complexity, collaboration, continuous learning, courageous innovation, and the ability to jettison obsolescent ideas. I look to you here to help our institution identify the specific qualities and attributes in the various fields of endeavor, and I thank you for contributing to the body of knowledge that will doubtless propel our airmen, present and future, to victory. We must never underestimate the need for airmen that are ready and able to contribute to the joint interagency and coalition success. Achievements in conventional challenges are the work of brilliance, but achievements in future challenges will be the work of collective genius. This is the price of admission for the foreseeable future of our nation’s military instrument, because future leaders will have to develop and rely on collaborative genius, in order to be fully successful members of the national security team. And I thank each of you here for endeavoring to develop those attributes of collaboration in yourself and each other, and of course those who will follow us. This symposium in an important effort in that regard, and thank you very much sincerely for allowing Suzie and me to join with you today. Thank you. (Applause). (Archives)