The United Sycophantic Air Force?

I wrote this entry as a response to Sue Rodriquez, who linked this article by former Air Force unit commander Tony Carr, which referenced this post by a (presumably) active duty Master Sergeant (MSgt), and was curious about my take on the United States Air Force's "zero-defect culture."

I have first-hand knowledge of how much the Air Force culture has changed. I served from 1981 to 2006 and retired as a Chief Master Sergeant (CMSgt). The first few years of my nascent career was a place we all got to make mistakes, get chewed out and embarrassed, and figure out how to avoid future dumb-assery. Drunk and stupid in the club? No problem. The Security Police (SPs) get your relatively more sober friends to drag you back to the barracks and the next morning you line up in front of the First Sergeant for some colorful invective. 

This meant a friendly drunken scrap might generate a letter of reprimand and that was that. 

Conversely, our daughter Naomi will hit her fifth year in the Air Force this summer, just sewed on Staff Sergeant (SSgt), and can personally vouch for the zero-defect culture that emphasizes off-duty education, PT, and volunteerism. She has a close friend on whom the Air Force spent millions, or at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, training and who, as a result of a .02 breathalyzer result, lost a line number and a stripe and is facing the end of a promising career. 

Let me illustrate just how much the Air Force has changed with a few anecdotes.

As a young SSgt, I remember Brad O'Donnell and I got into a dust up at the Incirlik AB club that spiraled into a wider fracas and resulted in police statements being written late into the night. The maintenance Colonel, a gin blossomed mustang with a penchant for carrying a baton, had to fly in from our home base at Upper Heyford. When he got there the next day, he waved everyone off, including the LtCol on-site commander, saying to me, "You guys were just having some fun." Brad still got his F-111 incentive ride. In today's USAF, we would have lost stripes, been forced to attend alcohol rehab courses, and I probably would never have made CMSgt. 

Another guy at Heyford, Ted "Ruxpin" Ernst was a famous carouser and I remember one Monday morning having to take a small crew to roust him out of his barracks room when he didn't show up for roll call. He was hungover and staggered out of bed in his skivvies, somehow managing to avoid shredding his bare feet on the shattered beer bottle glass that carpeted the floor. Ted made Chief in 2012.

Those times make for great "war" stories and I will be able to regale my grandchildren with tales of my roommate Rebel, who routinely went to the club, got drunk, picked fights, and subsequently got his ass kicked; he was never without a black eye or two. Or the shenanigans of the Appliance Destroyers of America, rooftop football, third story mattress diving, and Squez, who first fell from his third story barracks window onto the grass below, then climbed back upstairs and did it again when nobody believed he had fallen the first time. These are the actions of "spirited group of young Americans." 

But unfortunately, this tolerant culture of allowing kids to make mistakes without jeopardizing careers didn't always steer folks in the right direction or teach any lessons and bad behavior was allowed to slip into the SNCO and officer ranks. 

The same colonel who cut us slack in Turkey later rolled into our shop at 0400, hungover and looking for coffee and canned vienna sausages. He was livid because the O-club had thrown him out for throwing his knife into the club's acoustic ceiling tiles. 

Our weapons shop MSgt flight chief at Nellis AFB routinely hopped on his motorcycle after getting drunk at our fairly regular Friday afternoon keggers. 

Our TSgt shift supervisor on mids calmed his shakes every night with a couple of bottles of NyQuil and had been busted twice for smoking weed. He chewed me out early one morning when he found a MAU-12 safety pin only halfway installed on a loaded pylon. The ass chewing was warranted, but his alcohol soaked spittle flying across the truck'sinterior shot his credibility.

On the way to work early one icy English morning, I stopped for a young girl who was stumbling along the road barefoot in the sleet-wet gutter and dressed only in panties and an Air Force issue wool blanket. She had been thrown out of the barracks by one of the guys who had picked her up at the club the night before and then invited his friends over to run a train on her. I took her to the Ministry of Defence police station on base and showed up to work late, vocalizing my anger at how anyone could do such a thing. The subsequent sniggering in the break room pointed me to the culprits; they were airmen in my own shop. Yeah, nothing happened to them either. 

And physical conditioning was a joke. Our annual fitness test consisted of a pass/fail 1.5 mile run: make it in under 14 minutes and you were good to go for a year. Or you could choose to walk 3 miles and get a pass if you could make it in under 45 minutes. The annual PT exam was a morning for SNCOs to cluster up on the track, light up some smokes and stroll around the track. No, that isn't snarky  hyperbole.

Off-duty education was mildly encouraged, but hardly mandated. And while folks could generally do their jobs, leaders were less able to communicate effectively and tended to hold myopic views of the world and their place in it.

Air Force leadership needed to take a hard look at how we wanted our airmen to behave and what example we needed to set for the American people. Change needed to happen. The military needs to be ready: physically and morally for violent conflict, and we need to set our behavior apart and yes, generally above those civilians who thank us for protecting their freedoms. The American fighting force needs to be both capable and compassionate. Away from the field of battle, we need to practice clenching our fist and extending our hand. We need to be able to bring swift and overwhelming violence to our enemies and we need to cultivate "the better angels of our nature" so that in war, we can fight with distinction and leave the battlefield with honor.

The price for routinely failing to exceed civilian standards will be an erosion of confidence and dulling of our sword.

Now, I agree Tony Carr and the Master Sergeant who decry today's "zero-defect culture." The pendulum has swung too far. A "firewall-or-done" system with heavy emphasis on volunteerism outside the work place and the danger of a single rowdy night crashing a young career is flawed to the detriment of individuals and to the detriment of the force. On the other hand, why should we shy away from improving our physical and mental fitness through serious PT programs and recognize troops who both do a great job and take the time to pursue off-duty education? And who decides what is an honest mistake? There has to be a middle ground where young troops can make mistakes that don't involve felony offenses and whole-person excellence can be rewarded.

In the latter years of my career, I guest lectured at First Term Airman's Centers, Airman Leadership Schools and SNCO professional development seminars.  I found that it doesn't matter how much they gripe, almost every MSgt wants to know how to make CMSgt. I told them they could no longer rely on great duty performance alone. The Air Force is filled with great performers. I told them they needed to widen their experience, finish a college degree, stay on top of their physical conditioning, take on leadership roles outside the duty section and not act like ass-hats in public. I told them to retire or give up if they thought getting a Community College of the Air Force Degree or chairing the Air Force Ball committee or being president of the Top 3 was all bullshit and politics. Maybe they are. But I also told them had I not finished a degree and chaired a few committees and volunteered outside my duty section, I would not be in a position to advocate for the poor dumb kid who got a little too drunk to mind her manners.

The senior leaders of tomorrow are the ones who stay today. They are the ones who see the flaws in the system through which they are moving. I wish that angry MSgt the best of luck because he understands his mission exactly. I hope that he and my friends who are still in and now reaching flag-officer and SNCO ranks can steer us back toward that middle ground. Because if that MSgt and his ilk give up, all that are allowed to reach the top are"coat lickers" who, "on some level . . . know [the zero-defect culture] is wrong — even the senior officials who continue to champion such a culture" but who have abrogated their authority and continue to allow it to continue. If you are convinced they are wrong, keep fighting and replace them with those SNCOs and officers who can bring the Air Force culture back in trim without sending us back to our embarrassing past.