AFCENT command chief makes first visit to Balad Airmen

Published April 11, 2008
By Staff Sgt. Mareshah Haynes
332nd Expeditionary Air Wing Public Affairs

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq -- U.S. Air Forces Central Command Chief Master Sgt. Scott Dearduff made his first trip to Balad April 6, since he assumed the command's top enlisted position in February.

Chief Dearduff, who served as the command chief for the 332nd Expeditionary Air Wing from July 2006 - 2007, joined Lt. Gen. Gary North, AFCENT commander, and about 60 junior noncommissioned officers for a dinner to discuss enlisted issues.

After the dinner, the chief took the time to share his views and goals as AFCENT command chief. Below are excerpts from his interview.

Taking care of Airmen and goals for Airmen
My responsibility for taking care of Airmen is on a much larger scale in this position and starts and the strategic level. Things I can influence to make life better for junior Airmen, junior and senior [noncommissioned officers], every first sergeant and every chief will be strategic versus tactical in nature. We have commanders, officers and enlisted leaders who are out there to lead the tactical execution. My responsibility is to affect things on the broad scope and the only way I can do it that, and to get it right is to listen to what Airmen have to say. In my travels with General North, I ask a lot of questions, I take a lot of notes and I pay attention to what's going on. Then I can go back [to AFCENT] and formulate what I need to put my time into.

The first things on my mind are simple -- that every Airman knows what our AFCENT mission is, that every Airmen knows what their mission is at the tactical level and more importantly, how their mission fits into the big picture mission. I want them to be able to articulate and tell me how important they are to the mission. The second thing is [adherence to] standards. We don't give Airmen a choice of which ones they follow and which ones they don't. They're all important. As a senior enlisted leader, I have no tolerance for picking and choosing which standards you follow. If we don't follow standards, we increase the possibility of a Soldier, Sailor, Marine or Airman dying on our battlefield because we don't get our job done. I think that's how critical our mission is.

Winning the Global War on Terrorism
At our level [AFCENT] we get to read the big picture activities every day, both kinetic and non-kinetic. We see the results of our non-kinetic work and it's helping us meet one of our goals of transitioning Iraq back to [Iraqi] control. Whenever we can do something by non-kinetic means, it's wonderful. Usually in any operation where we've found an [improvised explosive device], tracked insurgents or done any of those things non-kinetically, apprehended versus having to kill an insurgent, there is a whole chain of young enlisted Airmen who are involved. The message to young enlisted Airmen at Balad and in the 332nd [Air Expeditionary Wing] is you're doing great. You need to keep doing what you do and be as good as you can be. The most important mission you have is the one you have right now. The most important person to that mission is you.

Fighting jointly
There are no Army guys over here. There are no Navy guys over here. There's Soldiers, there's Sailors, Marines and Airmen. We want every Airman to learn that, to know that, to understand that and understand the rank structures. We're becoming more and more joint everyday. There's value to an Airman understanding the difference in rank structure and recognizing their sister services by their proper rank. We want the same for ourselves. I don't get offended when a young Soldier comes up to me and gets a confused look about them or when they 'sergeant major, I don't know what to call you. I'm not sure what your title is.' I say 'that's OK,' I don't take offense to that. I tell them, 'I'm a chief master sergeant in the United States Air Force. This particular set of chevrons is a command chief master sergeant. You can call me command chief or you can call me chief.' I don't take offense to the term sergeant major, but I'm not a sergeant major. I don't want them to call me an Air Force guy or an Air Force dude. I am an Airman. I want to be called an Airman and in return I encourage each of us to call them Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Coast Guardsmen. I have too much respect for them to call them anything else.

On the horizon
The change [from U.S. Central Command Air Forces] to AFCENT was to make us functionally more cohesive with our sister services. The Army in this [area of responsibility] is ARCENT [U.S. Army Central], the Navy is NAVCENT [U.S. Navy Central] and the Marines are MARCENT [U.S. Marine Corps Central]. The change was, among other things, to bring us together with our sister services. It's a good change to align us. You won't see a lot of difference at the tactical level because of that change.

One thing I'd like to offer that we're working on at AFCENT is the fire retardant Airmen Combat Ensemble-Ground or ACE-G. That's a major is concern for our Airmen who are outside the wire routinely. Anything that's a safety concern or a confidence concern or that detracts from our ability to do the mission is important to General North and me and the entire staff. We're going to work the fire retardant ensemble so that our Airmen feel safe, they feel confident when they're outside the wire and if they should need the fire retardant capability, it's there for them. We want them [to wear an Air Force-specific ensemble] because while there are other things available currently, we don't want to lose our identity as Airmen. We don't want to lose what have in our heritage as Airmen. Our stripes are unique and distinctive, our badges that we put on our uniforms are unique and distinctive and we don't want to give that up. We love [our sister services] and all our civilian counterparts but we don't want to become them. We want to be, and continue to be, the world's greatest Air Force.