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AFCENT command chief discusses wartime operations

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Michael O'Connor
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing public affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  The command chief master sergeant of Ninth Air Force and United States Air Forces Central closed out a tour through the Persian Gulf Region April 25 following his visit with the Airmen of the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing.

The bulk of Chief Master Sgt. Scott Dearduff's visit here was spent meeting Airmen and seeing first-hand what they do, how they do it, and to make sure they not only understood the mission they're being asked to do, but how important every Airmen is in supporting that mission.

"Every day when you wake up here, it's the Super Bowl," said Chief Dearduff.

"There are no practice games ... there is no pre-season ... there is no training camp," said the chief. "When you get on the ground in the AFCENT area of responsibility, no matter where you're at, the day you hit the ground, its game on. You got to be mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually ready to go and you have to be technically sound at what you do."

Since becoming the AFCENT command chief in March, he and Lt. Gen. Gary North, the AFCENT commander, have logged about 50,000 miles visiting Airmen at four of six major expeditionary wing locations and a handful of other sites.

"I didn't come into to this position with any set priorities or goals for myself. But certainly in AFCENT we have goals and priorities," said Chief Dearduff. "And I would tell you that those that were passed on to me and those that we have developed and worked on together, that General North and I feel confident that our Airmen are meeting those goals.

The first goal is for every Airman to understand the mission of AFCENT and how their individual part plays into that mission, how important they are to the overall big picture and that no individual is the most important, but everybody is equally important. The second is establishing good standards and that all Airmen understand what those standards are so that they can successfully complete the mission.

"We don't want Airmen to pick and choose which standards they follow and which ones they put aside," said Chief Dearduff. "So we have an expectation, a goal that every Airman who comes over will follow the easy standards and they will follow the hard standards. It's as simple as that."

While the primary challenge for all Airmen is to come here and be ready. The chief said Airmen also need to be more ready than they were the last time they deployed, and to go back from here and prepare the next group of Airmen that are going to deploy to be ready to hit the ground and play the Super Bowl on day one.

"My impression of Airmen across the entire AOR is we're doing a great job," said Chief Dearduff. "We're working real hard under some tough conditions, and we're getting the mission done."

It doesn't matter what an Airman's Air Force specialty is, or whether they're on active-duty, or in the Guard or Reserves, they're motivated by the mission here, said the chief. They appreciate the facilities and the work that's going on. They dig in and understand their mission and they're knocking down obstacles as they come up.

"They're doing great things and I'm extremely pleased," he said.

"One thing Airmen need to understand is that as long as they're on our team, as long as they're with us, they're going to come back to the AFCENT AOR -- they're going to have the opportunity to deploy again," said Chief Dearduff. "So the challenge becomes how do you maintain a family lifestyle back home, how do you complete your professional military education, how do you complete your off-duty education, how do you continue to compete well for promotions back at home station when you're spending a great deal of your time forward deployed."

Base support systems are set up to ensure the families are taken care of while an Airman is gone, said the chief, but unfortunately, not everyone takes advantage, all the time, of the great programs that are available.

"Maintaining an Air Force family, or an Air Force family lifestyle back home, is an extremely hard challenge," said Chief Dearduff, a security forces defender who's been married more than 25 years. "All Airmen need to find time when they go home, to go to their son's ball game or their daughter's program in school, or their brother or sister's wedding and parents golden anniversary, and those types of things. Airmen need to know what's going on, ensure their family is taken care of, and to lesson their burden while they're deployed taking care of the mission."

The Global War on Terrorism has taken place on a significantly different battlefield than in years past, and the battlefield within this war has changed several times. What Airmen are doing today is significantly different than what they were doing in 2002.

"The Army and the Marine Corps have continued to need our assistance in certain areas. And what we find is when Airmen fill those non-traditional roles through the 'Request For Forces,' in what we call in-lieu-of missions, the leadership of our sister services are extremely pleased about what they get from our Airmen," said Chief Dearduff. "An Army command sergeant major with the gun trucker line-haul missions told me, 'Chief, your Airmen are hitting on all cylinders ... everything is getting done ... I can't give you anything that they could do better than they're already doing.' So that tells me that in this non-traditional battlefield with the non-traditional roles that we have, that we're doing everything that we're asked to do, and we're doing it really, really well."

Airmen should know that the missions they have today may not be the exact same mission they have the next time they deploy.

"That's what's so unique about this battlefield," said Chief Dearduff. "The battlefield is constantly changing, and I think agile combat support is an extremely important competency that we have. What we're able to do today on the battlefield, what we're asked to do by our CENTCOM commander, is so rapidly changing, that we have to be good [at everything we do on the ground and in the air, space and cyber space]. We need to be able to fly, fight and win on a full spectrum of battlefields -- all the time."

"From the one-stripe Airmen who told me about the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle he was processing through, to the wing commander and everyone in-between, I appreciate their support and the focus they have in the way they accomplish their mission," said Chief Dearduff.