The change-of-command ceremony was a great affair that took place on the parade field at Scott AFB on a sweltering Wednesday morning. As the U.S. Air Force (Midwest) band played at the center of the expansive grass field, I snuck a peep from behind the archway of a small, square brick edifice that would serve as our entryway. The main seating area consisted of white folding chairs perfectly aligned in rows on a permanent redbrick, riser type of structure, with each step leading up to the next level of seating. Every seat was filled, as were the temporary bleachers that were erected along both ends of the field. Immediately to the right of a simple wooden speaker’s lectern was a row of plush, rich leather chairs where the VIPs were to sit; the way the tarmac was packed with white-over-light-blue U.S. Air Force EA (Executive Airlift) aircraft a mere thousand feet to the east, it felt like half of Washington had flown in to attend (and, in some cases, participate). I say that not as someone so important as to merit such a gathering, but rather as evidence of the magnitude of the position. Becoming a combatant commander was a big deal.
At the appointed time and with all the pomp and circumstance that one might expect, we entered through the brick archway in a sort of procession, first Secretary Rumsfeld, then General Myers, General Moseley (the newly sworn in Air Force chief of staff), General Handy, and me. One by one, we filed down the stairs, through a human passageway formed by two ranks of four Navy side boys (same term applies to both male and female sailors) facing each other, mirror images with their right hands held in perfect salute, their dress white uniforms so bright that I really could have used a pair of my aviator sunglasses. At the base of the steps, the red-brick flooring terminated in the center with an elaborate Air Force Star insignia that had been laid into the flooring, mosaic style, with custom colored bricks. As an homage to the base’s first year of operation, the emblem was configured in the 1917 style consisting of a white five-pointed star inside a flag-blue circle, with a flag-red circle centered in the star. It was quite unique, and well known to be the focal point of the parade field.
We paraded past the guests and took our seats in those thick leather chairs. Suzie was already seated, as were Mickey Handy, Joyce Rumsfeld, Mary Jo Myers, and Jennie Moseley. It had only been five days since Air Force General “Buzz” Moseley had been sworn in as Chief of Staff, yet he was there along with the rest of them to lend his support. In the ultimate irony, in less than three years, General Moseley would be relieved by Rumsfeld’s successor, Secretary Robert Gates, creating the void that I would fill to take his place as Chief.
In the manner prescribed by Air Force tradition and United States law, General Myers stood at attention and accepted the white, yellow-fringed TRANSCOM command flag from General Handy, then crisply rotated to face me and offered me the flag.
I grasped the lower portion of the thick, wooden mast with my left hand, and the top with my right, smiling at the chairman as I proudly accepted the flag, and with it formalized the change in leadership. I then turned and handed the flag to Air Mobility Command Chief Master Sgt. Michael Kerver, and took my seat beside Suzie.
Chairman Myers stepped up to the microphone and directed the following words to the impressive gathering of TRANSCOM workers assembled in the bleachers: “This struggle that we are engaged in depends on you. It depends on you to deploy, supply, and sustain the warfighters on the ground, refuel our defense in the air, and respond to humanitarian disasters around the world such as Hurricane Katrina—all the while enabling our armed forces to deter other potential threats while we’re already at war.”
With friends, family, and peers assembled behind me, and members of the command filling the parade field and bleachers in front, I stepped up to the microphone and began my first public speech as a combatant commander. I began by noting that TRANSCOM is “unique in an extraordinary time, a time when the nation is at war and we face the consequences of a daunting natural disaster at home …” I went on to share some of our challenges, and how exciting it would be to meet those challenges. Then I paused, looked at all who had assembled, and continued, “Let us honor those Americans who have given their lives in the cause of freedom and those who perished in last week’s storm [with a death toll of at least 1,245 and property damage in excess of $108 billion, Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history]—and to a great public servant, the chief justice of the United States [Chief Justice William Rehnquist had died just a few days earlier]—by recommitting ourselves to the task of making it happen and getting it done. Together, we will serve our leadership and our nation’s taxpayers well, efficiently, and, if need be, with courage, precision, and reliability.”
This was all one big learning experience for me since when I started I didn’t know a lot about commercial transportation, or even that much about the details of the supply chain, but I worked hard to soak it all in.
Addressing the component commanders and directors the following day, I uttered words that I hold very dear, and they actually became the command’s motto: “A promise given is a promise kept.” Those simple words expressed a philosophy that I expected to be followed in all our endeavors, with none more vital than the pledge I made to our geographic combatant commanders in the first few weeks after my arrival: I pledged to them that we would answer their call to provide deployment and distribution capabilities with the greatest speed and agility, the highest efficiency, and the most reliable level of trust and precision. It was all about relieving the combatant commanders—and particularly those that were in the middle of a fight—of any concern about their supply, of any concern about whether the system was going to perform at a level that would support their scheme of maneuver. It was all about making it happen for them.
We were in the midst of the surge in Iraq while at the same time sustaining Afghanistan; these were major undertakings that mandated efficient integration of air, land, and sea transportation resources to ensure there was no inadequacy or shortfall. The only way this was going to work was for me was to cultivate relationships both in government and on the commercial side. As an operator, my instinct was to focus on ops and performance management (such as ensuring the best possible support for CENTCOM in the movement of troops and supplies into Afghanistan), but Rumsfeld steered me in a different direction. “In the process of emphasizing performance, pay attention to cost. This is a $10 billion business in which you’ll be working closely with the commercial side: FedEx, UPS, all the airlines, and maritime shipping companies with U.S. flags. By all means run it like a business.” It was excellent guidance.
More than any position I had experienced to that point, this would focus on team building, both internal and external, and that team was one that consisted of less than 50 percent government resources. Well over half was performed on contract by commercial providers. We had a very extensive relationship and interaction with the cargo carriers and passenger carriers of the airline industry, a very close relationship with both the ship operators and the labor force associated with the maritime industry, and a not quite so close but still significant relationship with the trucking and rail industries. It’s the rail folks who typically moved the armor and heavy loads from Army installations. We cultivated the teams with the CEOs and COOs of the top carriers, and tried to build the team with a focus on performance and cost, while ensuring that nobody experienced any inadequacy or shortfall.
One way or another, we had to ensure that at all times we had at the ready a mobilization base of long-range aircraft to support worldwide contingencies. The mechanism we had at our fingertips is called the CRAF activation—Civil Reserve Air Fleet. The CRAF is a voluntary contractual program where civil carriers (United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, FedEx, UPS, etc.), in exchange for being given preference in carrying commercial peacetime cargo and passengers for DoD (which is awarded according to a carrier’s level of commitment in the CRAF program), agreed to augment military airlift capability during a crisis when requirements exceed DoD air mobility capability.
That was a preferable solution to one that could have been used: invoking our statutory authority to declare a national emergency and nationalizing the airlines. But the airlines are a major part of the American economy, so you do not want to interrupt their business except on the margins if there’s any way to avoid that. Thus, the importance of having the CEOs offer their support completely voluntarily, and the importance of the CRAF contingency option. If needed during a large-scale contingency, airframes pledged to the CRAF could be activated in three progressive stages, with each stage providing additional airlift capacity:
• Stage I is for minor regional crises and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief efforts.
• Stage II is intended for major regional conflicts or major theater war.
• Stage III supports multiple theaters of war and national mobilization.
As of 2016, 453 (282 passenger and 171 cargo) aircraft were designated for potential activation.
As TRANSCOM commander, I was the activation authority for all three stages of CRAF, subject to the approval of the secretary of defense. In times of crisis when our own fleet was insufficient to handle the air transportation requirements, AMC (Air Mobility Command) would contact me and request that I activate the appropriate CRAF stage, which would obligate the preregistered participants to provide us with aircraft within forty-eight hours.
These activations not only allowed us to meet our service demands, but they also provided the airlines cover for any backlash or “failure to perform” contract violations they were forced to incur due to having a portion of their fleet committed to the activation. It gave them a measure of liability insurance they wouldn’t otherwise have had, had they done this entirely voluntarily.
This is also true on the sealift side, with similar maritime contractual commitments.
We had routine meetings at the CEO level to talk about performance and cost—negotiating contracts and such. Those relationships sure came in handy during the 2007 holiday period when I made demands on the commercial airline passenger carriers during the surge. I needed airplanes and needed them fast, because the surge more than maxed out what we could handle with our military fleet.
I was placing a great demand at a time when there wasn’t excess capacity. So we were actually pulling platforms out of commercial service to do charter work for the U.S. government. And some of the commercial carriers were easier to deal with than the others. I got it. They had commitments for a scheduled service that they were not going to interrupt. Fortunately, it never got to the point where they had to cancel scheduled flights, but we did call upon them to provide the airframes they held in reserve to fill gaps when an airplane broke down, so what we were really doing was zeroing out their contingency account. While these planes might not have been generating revenue, they were generating reliability across their fleet.
I needed the airlines’ support and cooperation, and the only way I was going to get that was for me, as commander, to help their CEOs understand the importance of meeting the timelines of the surge, and understand how vital a part their cooperation was to make this happen. It had to be at this level because no one at any lower level was in the position to weaken the posture of their system during the holiday season. That had to come from the top. And it did. They reduced their reliability reserve in order to make airframes available for us to deploy troops.
Besides supporting the surge, we had a mandate from the secretary to move thirty-seven hundred MRAPs (mine-resistant armored protection vehicles) to Afghanistan and Iraq. These are the V-shaped hulled vehicles that were intended to improve survivability on the roads in Iraq and Afghanistan—specifically enhanced to withstand improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and ambushes. And they had to be moved by December of 2007. We worked our asses off with air, surface, and maritime means to make that happen—but we did it and in doing so we kept the promise and saved lives.
Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM and humanitarian relief operations kept the command very busy. But there’s another area where I believe that we at TRANSCOM were on the leading edge, and it’s one that I believe every command, every department, and every company (whether military or civilian) should place in the highest priority. Arguably, it’s even more relevant today than it was back then. Due to the nature of our mission we had abundant digital interaction with commercial industry—airlines, railroads, trucking companies, and such.
Long before the days of WikiLeaks and the big Sony Pictures hack, we discovered that there were others who were interested in our digital information—presumably because it would offer them tippers—indications of our intent and future movements. Inquiries to airlines or maritime companies might signal potential troop movement for deployment. We found that our unclassified systems were being surveilled. Certainly by the Chinese, but most likely by others as well. We immediately worked with NSA, DIA, and other intelligence organizations to institute precautions that put us well ahead of the pack in terms of trying to harden the unclassified side of our IT systems. We mandated a higher standard of security than the services required of their own organizations. Things that may sound mundane by today’s standards—like prohibiting the use of thumb drives—hadn’t even been thought of in those days, and we ended up encountering a great deal of friction on it—mostly from the services. For example, we were based at Scott AFB, and the base had an existing infrastructure that was provided by the Air Force—an infrastructure that was expected to operate at the same standard as all the other Air Force bases. But we were going to require a higher standard of security than was typical of the Air Force—for that matter, higher than the Army and Navy components.
It was an interesting period and it’s one of those areas where I got to know Gordon England (twenty-fifth deputy secretary of defense, first deputy secretary of homeland security, seventy-second and seventy-third secretary of the Navy) quite well, because this was an issue that he championed. Same thing with Mike Hayden (past director of CIA and past director of NSA) and subsequently Keith Alexander at the NSA. Unlike other naysayers we came across, they were major advocates and supporters—big helpers in hardening our IT systems.
As an aside, it was also during this period that we had our first White House dinner. Earlier I mentioned that as director of the Joint Staff I was invited to the White House to attend the business portion of the president’s annual Combatant Commanders’ Conference (usually held in the Cabinet Room), but at the three-star level, I had to leave before the actual dinner. As combatant commander, there’s no such prohibition; in fact, not only was I invited to the dinner, but Suzie was invited to accompany me.
We found it interesting that the Bushes hosted us upstairs in the Family Quarters, which was quite a compliment. Later on during the Obama years, we would dine with the president in one of the more formal areas of the State floor (although Mrs. Obama would host the wives upstairs while we conducted business), but the Bushes preferred the intimacy of the less traveled residence floor. While the men (at the time) had spent the bulk of the day in the Cabinet Room with the president, Suzie and the other spouses were already upstairs on the family floor—being graciously hosted by either Mrs. Bush or Mrs. Obama, depending on the year.
Once we concluded our business in the Cabinet Room, we’d be led by the president from the West Wing down the West Colonnade and enter the residence through the Palm Room on the lower level, then (in the case of the Bushes) through the Center Hall toward the Grand Stairway, where we’d climb two flights and meet our wives. Then each couple would get a personal picture taken with the president and first lady, usually in the upstairs center hallway in front of a beautiful white built-in bookcase, which was filled with books and White House memorabilia that one could easily become immersed in for days. Suzie stood to the president’s left, looking resplendent in a violet and black skirt and matching lilac top set beneath a black high-waisted velvet jacket. Mrs. Bush, who stood between me and the president, looked elegant in a more casual style—wea
ring a black and white checked jacket over black slacks, with round diamond earrings that one couldn’t help but notice.
From there we slipped into the Yellow Oval Room, which faces south and opens onto the Truman balcony, presenting a spectacular view of the Washington Monument. By this point I’d spent over thirty years proudly serving our great nation and you’d think that I’d take everything in stride, but that moment, having my best friend and the love of my life beside me to share a dinner with the president of the United States—in the very room that John Adams held his first presidential reception (even before the room was completed)—standing in the same place where, on December 7, 1941, FDR learned that the Japanese had invaded Pearl Harbor—Suzie and I just looked at each other and were totally humbled and overcome with emotion: pride, gratitude, deep appreciation, and an almost surreal “is this really happening?” disbelief.
I squeezed Suzie’s hand, then we gave each other quick smiles and went our separate ways. What surprised us at first, but then we came to expect, was that typically Suzie and I were not assigned seats together. Instead, they would mix and match—not something I would have ever thought of, but it did lead to some interesting experiences!
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