Photo By Staff Sgt. Nick Wilson | U.S. Air Force Gen. Ken Wilsbach, Pacific Air Forces commander, smiles after...... read more read more
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Senior leaders from Headquarters, Pacific Air Forces hosted the 2022 Spring Commanders, Command Chiefs and Spouses Conference at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, from April 5 through 7.
This iteration of the Commanders’ Conference brought senior leaders and their spouses together in one central location to exchange ideas and discuss key topics to strive towards supporting the PACAF mission across the Indo-Pacific region.
Gen. Ken Wilsbach, PACAF commander, kicked the conference off by laying out the priorities and focus for the attendees.
“The conference will focus on three key themes: resiliency, warfighting and innovation,” said Wilsbach. “The next couple days are an opportunity for our leaders to proactively work together in face-to-face discussions, to share ideas, learn from one another and confront the challenges we face every day across this complex AOR.”
Leaders and spouses participated in various discussions regarding their organizations’ capabilities to support the Air Force’s priority to “accelerate change or lose.” This effort supports Action Order B, a component of U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr.’s CSAF Action Orders. Action Order B achieves faster alignment across PACAF by focusing on innovation, improving the quality of decision support, and easing the flow of information and decision-making processes.
“If you take a look around at all the commanders and senior enlisted leaders at all levels throughout the command, this is the team that makes mission execution happen.” said Chief Master Sgt. Dave Wolfe, PACAF command chief. “We’re going to take what we learned this week, and then go and try to do good things for our folks.”
The three-day event started with focusing on PACAF’s readiness by prioritizing resiliency. Speakers emphasized support in a way that allows Airmen and their families to be mentally, physically, socially and spiritually ready to “fight tonight.”
“Many people across our force are struggling with resiliency, and we need to take the time to provide the support to make us all stronger,” said Wilsbach. “We need continue to emphasize taking care of Airmen and families. We need to ensure their workplaces and the places where they live and serve is a place of belonging, a place of inclusion, and a place where they're loved and taken care of.”
Spouses were engaged throughout the conference with detailed discussions such as housing, family quality of life, enlisted aid and the Exceptional Family Member program.
“We feel extremely blessed with the people that we have serving with us here at PACAF. We are unique in certainly our distance in far flung locations that proved to have a lot of challenges in the last couple of years,” said Cindy Wilsbach, First Lady of PACAF. “Hopefully, we are equipping you all this week as spouses as well as our active duty members to lead well in your organizations, and to be strong.”
“There is a great civil rights activist named Shirley Chisholm who had this inspiring quote, ‘if you don’t have a seat at the table, then bring a folding chair,’ and I think as an enlisted spouse, that’s how I felt for a long time,” said Dr. Doniel Wolfe, spouse of Chief Master Sgt. David Wolfe. “And so I hope that you bring yourself to the table, and also that you remember that we’re here to help. Don’t let bureaucracy get in the way of letting us know what we can do for Airmen and families.”
The second day of the conference focused on warfighting, which included topics such as sharpening agile combat employment (ACE) techniques and procedures, enhancing joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) and distributing communications across the globe to the correct people at the right time.
“What we need to be doing in the way of warfighting is expand the ACE envelope,” said Wilsbach. “We need to modernize and stay ready while also being able to execute to accomplish the ‘Seize the Initiative’ strategy.”
The final day of the conference featured PACAF’s second annual internal Spark Tank Competition where Wilsbach emphasized the importance of “bringing the future faster” with innovative and modernizing tactics, techniques and procedures.
“We really encourage the environment of innovation — that’s our secret sauce,” Wilsbach said. “I encourage all commanders and command chiefs to continue to have Airmen think broadly about innovation and come up with ways on how to perform the mission bigger, better, faster and cheaper.”
The 18th Logistics Readiness Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan, was selected as the winner for PACAF’s Spark Tank competition. Their idea titled “Project Venom” supports PACAF’s lines of effort of innovative, lethal, and ready by supporting combat sorties through the process of converting commercial-grade fuel into Jet Propellant 8 fuel (JP-8).
“We are a very innovative service, and we encourage it,” said Wilsbach “I want to make sure that we're rewarding that innovative spirit as best we can, every single day. We have an advantage here with free-thinking that allows us to be innovative. And so I say, let that run free.”
The conference concluded with a resiliency event providing one last opportunity for the command teams to come together before returning to their home stations. As the Air Force’s priority theater, PACAF Airmen remain ready to meet emergent challenges across the U.S. Indo-Pacific region.
| Date Taken: | 04.12.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 04.12.2022 19:23 |
| Story ID: | 418383 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 161 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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