Air Force manpower chief discusses hot topics - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Air Force manpower chief discusses hot topics

Lt. Gen. Darrell Jones is all things Air Force personnel.

Jones, who took over as deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services in December, has the enormous task of trying to keep the right airmen in the right jobs, and trimming excess personnel at a time when retention rates have reached a 16-year high.

Today’s Air Force, Jones said, is not the service he joined 32 years ago.

He said some changes in recent years have been tough, but says an Air Force that fails to adapt to the changing needs of the military will become stagnant and irrelevant.

Going forward, the challenge will be to maintain a balanced force, Jones said during a June 14 interview with Air Force Times.

Q. Do you know how many airmen will be drawn down in 2012?

A. Not yet, and let me explain why. Every day we calculate the normal losses, and so then you have to get to the delta of how many people you need to get out. We have targets for each program that we develop and tweak along the way. Literally, the number of people we might have to take on a board — a force-shaping board, or a [reduction in force] board or whatever — changes up until the day of the board. A key point here is that retention is at a 16-year high. And if retention is at a 16-year high and you don’t do anything, you have two options. You can carry the over-strength and pay for it. But we’re not authorized to do that. We have to live within our congressionally mandated end strength. You can cut your accessions to make up the offset. If you cut your accessions and don’t do anything to the active force, you’re eating your seed corn because that gap will continue with you for 20 or 25 years in your officer and enlisted force.

Q. Is there a way to bring down the retention without doing some of these more traumatic programs such as putting people through RIF boards?

A. If there is I’d love to know it. We’ve looked at everything we can do. We’ve looked at voluntary programs. We’ve looked at waiving active-duty service commitments. We’ve looked at a number of different things we’re doing. Now, I can get down to those numbers with all voluntary programs. For instance, I can say, “Anybody who wants get out of Air Force can go,” but the problem is if you do that, what if everybody in one career field decides they want to get out?

So you have to be careful of cutting your nose off to spite your face. You’ve got to have some constraints. You can’t let all your civil engineers walk out the door. You can’t let all of your contracting officers walk out the door. You have to maintain the combat capability of the service when you’re doing these drawdowns, and that’s what makes it difficult.

Q. Do you have the personnel right now to accomplish the mission, and five years from now when you’re projecting down the line, do you know how big the force will need to be?

A. It’s very hard to predict what external stressors may impact the service to change that number. But right now we’re planning for 332,800. Do we have the people we need to do the job right now? Yes. Are we short in some career fields? You bet we’re short in some career fields. That’s why we have to manage the Air Force as a total force.

For instance, last year on the officer side of the house, we did something that we’ve been doing on the enlisted side of the house for years and years. We started cross-training officers. We’ve been doing this on the enlisted side forever.

Q. The Air Force has a reputation for being the most educated force. Some lawmakers in Congress believe that 100 percent tuition assistance is too generous in this tough economy. What are your thoughts on that and what would your recommendation be?

A. Having an educated force benefits all of us. The more educated we can be, the more we can adapt to changing society, adapt to changing challenges and come up with better solutions. However, we understand that there are mounting fiscal constraints against our nation. I’m certainly not in favor of doing away with the tuition assistance benefit at the levels we fund it today because it provides a key education tool for many of our airmen.

But I don’t think we can afford to stick our head in the sand. There are great fiscal pressures on the U.S., and there will be fiscal pressures on the Air Force. We have to be sure that as those pressures come down and we’re forced to make some choices — not that there is a choice in this area — that we evaluate all the options and come up with the best option for the Air Force and the nation.

Q. Times are tight and something has to go. What are those options?

A. I’m not going to parse whether we should get rid of this program or that program. What I will say is that we’ve got to make sure every individual we have in the Air Force is being utilized 100 percent and that all of our career fields are balanced. We can’t afford to have overages in one career field and shortages in another. We’ve got to get this cross-flow thing going because we’re all airmen. My job is to do not personnel work, not manpower and services work. My job is to do what the United State Air Force needs me to do. And we get the mindset instilled in the airmen, which it is, and they’ll serve in personnel one day and public affairs the next; they can serve in acquisitions one day and accounting/finance the next. We can move people back and forth to help balance the force.

Q. Do you get the best bang out of the buck when people change jobs and aren’t trained up in a specific career field?

A. In the perfect world you’d bring in 100 acquisition officers and they would march through the service absolutely perfectly and they would get out at the end of 20 years. But that’s not the reality. The reality is you may have brought in 100 and you want to keep 50 but you only kept 40. So is it the best thing to move 10 people into acquisition? No. That’s not the most efficient use of those 10 people because they didn’t grow up in acquisitions, but is it better to not have 10 people in there? No. There are benefits on both sides. One side you get a well-rounded officer or enlisted who has the benefit of a number of career fields. On the other side, clearly if you’re going to bring somebody up in a career field, it’s best to have them really understand that career field and be steeped in it. But that’s the traditional argument between breadth and depth. You can’t have them both, so you try to get that balance of them.

Q. You’re more than aware of the recommendation to open all combat fields to women. How would that opening work for the Air Force, and how would you prepare female and male airmen for that change?

A. The Air Force has the highest number of career fields open to women than any of the other services. We have for many, many years. We were way out in front of that in 1992 when women started flying combat aircraft. We have opened up everything we could to women in the Air Force. I believe that once the Department of Defense lifts some of the restrictions we have, I expect to see things opening up in the Air Force. I see the Air Force as having leaned forward a long time ago. We’ll evaluate opening up every career field as soon as we get the guidance. Right now that’s what’s restricting us.

Q. Where is the Air Force on “don’t ask, don’t tell” training and what is the time frame for completion?

A. We started education for “don’t ask, don’t tell” on the 14th of February. We’re on a glide slope to be complete around the 30th of June. We haven’t set a date that says we will be complete on this date, but we’re marching toward that without any problems. The issues that have come up have really been minimal. I think [Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz] said it best when he said a couple of months ago that he’s more comfortable now that we’re into the training than he was back in October when we started.

Q. Are you expecting the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to be a big deal or just barely a ripple?

A. Any time you change the way you do business or the rule set for the service, it’s going to cause a little bit of a ripple. But I think our service members, because they’re going to be trained, they’re going to be educated, and they understand the rules, they are going to handle this very well, if in fact it goes through to fruition.

Right now we’re just training. We haven’t certified; the law hasn’t been changed. But I will tell you under the pre-”don’t ask, don’t tell,” if I can use that term, I think the rules are still the same. We respect every airman. We respect their contribution to the force. We respect their dignity, and that’s what it’s all about. So in the Air Force, our standard of dignity and respect and how we treat each other [isn’t] changing one bit.