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Schwartz raises the bar for commanders

Five wing commanders dismissed in less than a year — two in October alone.

The Air Force hasn’t cleaned house like this since the mid-1990s, and its top uniformed officer promises more firings if his commanders don’t perform up to snuff.

The heads started to roll last November, about three months after Gen. Norton Schwartz took over as chief of staff; all the commanders were colonels and all lost their jobs because of what the Air Force described as a “loss of confidence” in their performance.

“We owe it to our airmen and to the American public to ensure we have the right people for the times in these key positions, and this is what our numbered air force and major command commanders have done,” Schwartz told Air Force Times in a telephone interview Oct. 30, the same afternoon that official word of the latest sacking came down.

Such a far-reaching drive for accountability last came in 1996 when 16 officers, including a major general, received disciplinary actions ranging from letters of admonishment to relief of command for errors that caused a CT-43 transport jet carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown to slam into a mountain in Croatia. All 35 people on board died.

How the services stack up

The Air Force does not track the number of commanders relieved for cause each year.

But at least 11 commanding officers have lost their jobs in the past five years: a major general in 2004, a brigadier general in 2005 and a colonel in 2006, all on the Air Staff; three colonels in 2007, all wing commanders; one colonel in 2008, a wing commander; and four colonels so far in 2009, all wing commanders.

By comparison, the Navy has fired about a dozen of its commanders, mostly O-5s and O-6s, per year for the past three years, according to Navy Times, a sister publication of Air Force Times.

Like the Air Force, the Army and Marine Corps don’t keep data on commanders removed for cause. Army Times and Marine Corps Times, also sister publications, have requested information from the services, but neither has provided the numbers yet.

The difference between Air Force and Navy numbers reflects the services’ cultures, said George Reed, a retired Army colonel who served six years as director of Command and Leadership Studies at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. He now teaches at the University of San Diego, Calif.

The Air Force culture emphasizes a pilot’s accountability, Reed said. If a qualified pilot errs, his wing commander isn’t held responsible.

In the Navy, commanders are given a great deal of independence but ultimately are held responsible for everything that happens on or to their ships, Reed said. If a ship runs aground, the commander is responsible.

In the Army, responsibility is shared. Although the commander is still accountable, soldiers far down the chain of command must answer for their actions.

No chilling effect

The high number of dismissals this year shows the Air Force is picking officers who don’t have the experience to lead and needs to change the way it selects commanders, according to a retired Air Force general with extensive command experience.

For example, an officer without experience as an operations group commander should not be chosen to lead an aircraft wing, said the former officer, who asked not to be identified because of ongoing business with the Air Force.

“You don’t have time to use 2,000 to 4,000 airmen as a leadership lab,” he said.

Two of the five commanders dismissed in the past year illustrate the general’s point.

Neither Col. Bryan Bearden, commander of the 8th Fighter Wing at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, nor Col. Joel Westa, commander of the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., served as an operations group leader before being assigned a wing.

Still, if a commander is doing a poor job, he must be let go.

“I’ve never regretted firing a commander,” the retired general said. “I did regret reconsidering and not doing that [the firing].”

The general said he fired several squadron commanders when he was a wing commander in the 1990s but never fired a wing commander.

Westa was the commander let go most recently. He got his walking papers Oct. 30 from his boss, Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, commander of the 8th Air Force at Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

Carpenter, in a telephone interview with Air Force Times, insisted the firings don’t discourage officers from seeking command.

“Most are competitive people and relish challenges like this,” Carpenter said.

Former Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley doubts the dismissals will cause wing commanders to second-guess their decisions.

When wing-level issues are operational, there isn’t an automatic assumption that the commander is at fault.

“The captain going down with the ship is not what the Air Force is about,” Moseley said.

More to come?

Lax maintenance that caused a fatal plane crash could bring another round of firings.

Last spring, not far from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., a T-38 Talon jet flying almost at the speed of sound lunged out of control at 20,000 feet. The pilot and the navigator were students at the Air Force Test Pilot School.

Pilot Maj. Mark Graziano lost consciousness when his helmet smashed into the closed cockpit canopy and went down with the plane. He died. Navigator Maj. Lee Jones managed to eject but suffered serious injuries.

An accident investigation board concluded the jet probably became uncontrollable when a bolt that helps control the tail rudder fell out. Inspections should have spotted the loose bolt, the board’s report said, but investigators couldn’t determine who last inspected the rudder control system because maintenance records were incomplete.

The board faulted “the mid-level leadership and supervisors” of the 412th Maintenance Group but did not specify how many officials it was referring to or whether those in charge were officers, enlisted airmen or civilians.

The managers, the report went on, “conveyed a disturbing lack of understanding of, or concern for, proper training procedures.”

Any disciplinary action would be meted out by the commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center, which oversees the test pilot school. Center officials have had the report since it was released last month but don’t have a timeline for when they will finish their review, center spokesman John Haire said.

In 1995, the Air Force filed charges against two maintainers who had incorrectly installed the flight control rods on an F-15 Eagle that crashed after takeoff from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. The pilot, Maj. Donald Lowery, died in the accident.

Tech Sgts. Thomas Mueller and William Campbell faced trial, accused of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty.

Their supporters insisted the maintainers were caught up in the service’s post-Desert Storm drive for accountability and took the Air Force to task for not ensuring the easily made maintenance error was not repeated after similar near-tragedies in 1986 and 1991.

Mueller shot himself to death Oct. 3, 1996, the day of his court-martial. The suicide caused the Air Force to rethink its actions; the charges against Campbell were dropped and he left the service.

Later, the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records concluded the noncommissioned officers had been unfairly singled out.

“In all fairness, how can an enlisted mechanic out in the field be held solely and totally culpable for a problem the Air Force had been aware of for nearly 10 years and done little to rectify,” the board opinion declared.

From the top down

Today’s upheaval of command started in August 2008 with the firing of Moseley, then chief of staff. Defense Secretary Robert Gates forced Moseley to retire because of the Air Force’s lax oversight of the nuclear mission and tapped Schwartz for the top job.

Though not specifically addressing the dismissals under his watch, Schwartz put fired commanders into two categories — those who have problem after problem and those who break the rules.

“There are some mistakes that leave little room for discretion,” Schwartz said, such as being charged with a crime.

To relieve a commander of duty for a series of errors is usually more difficult because it is a subjective decision, Schwartz said. Leaders consider the frequency and the significance of the mistakes as well as the wing commander’s attitude about his performance.

Once the head of a major command recommends a change, the request goes to the chief of staff.

“Decisions to remove leaders are not made lightly,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz said the Air Force has not changed its expectations for commanders and is forthright about the service’s past poor performance — from managing nuclear weapons to acquiring a new tanker.

Before a group of Air Force officers in June, Schwartz said: The American people “simply must know that we are accountable for all the outcomes of our performance, both large and small.”