Fireside Chat: Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition
This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of Schneider Electric
Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):
Well, good morning. What an incredible day, thanks to all of you, and an incredible now three days. I
think we're sending a strong signal around the world about what we, Airmen and Guardians and our
industry partners are really all about. So we couldn't be more thankful for the leadership that goes back
a few years. Secretary Frank Kendall is a warrior statesman in so many ways. As we present the final
event of the 2024 AFA Warfare Symposium and we welcome our 26th Secretary of the Air Force, the
Honorable Frank Kendall, we're going to spend a few minutes today talking about, and reiterate, just
what we've been talking about the past few days in re-optimizing for global power competition.
This is by far, thanks to all of you, the largest ever AFA Warfare Symposium, with nearly 20,000 people
registered. I would argue it's also one of the most important, we're at a pivotal point in our history. "It's
a time of consequence", as General Allvin has said, and Mr. Secretary, as you have said, we're out of
time. We must re-optimize now for great power competition. Let me start with the first question, the
secretary and I have been listening, and our staffs and you all have been talking, no surprise. To start off,
Mr. Secretary, Airmen and Guardians are still, understandably, wrapping their brains around exactly
what all this change means for them. In their view, what do you think are the changes that our Airmen
and Guardians will feel the most and what changes will be most apparent to them?
Frank Kendall:
It's a great question, Orville. Before I start, I do want to thank you for all of your service, both at AFA and
in uniform. You've been a terrific leader. I think this is your last thing in this stage like this you're going
to do at AFA, so let's give Orville a big round of applause. I also want to thank the other members of the
senior leadership team of the department. You've got Honorable Jones here, General Saltzman, General
Allvin, this is a terrific team. You guys are all so lucky to have those leaders leading the department, so
give them a round of applause too please.
Now, let me take your question. We rule out a lot of things. What you see going forward is that the
Undersecretary will take a leadership role in the secretariat for the changes that she talked about. Chief
Saltzman and Chief Allvin will take leadership roles in the two services in implementing all the things in
the services. On that list, there are a lot of things that are going to affect us down, I think, at the unit
level. It won't happen overnight, but I think it's going to happen reasonably quickly. We're going to
orient our operational units on being ready for the fight we might have to be in at any time. And the
leaders associated with commanding those large organizations, all the way down to the wing squadron
level, are going to be tasked with, and you don't need to wait for somebody to tell you what to do about
this. This was in my letter from a few months ago. Start thinking now about what do we need to do to
be more ready, and do it. You don't need to wait for that. The conflict can happen at any time. We need
to be as ready as we possibly can.
But you're going to see a greater focus on readiness for the kind of fight we might be in. We're going to
be making some changes to how units are set up so that all the things that units need to be able to
deploy, if they're deploying units that they have and that those people can train together. For the units
that fight, are employed in place, we're going to do the same sort of thing. We're also going to look at
our garrisons and make sure that our bases are set up as was described by mostly General Allvin. So
those are the things we're going to be doing that I think are going to have an impact. You're going to see
opportunities open up for career paths, enlisted tech tracks and warrant officers and so on for a small
