Military

Chief of staff expands on wing reorganization

05/02/02 - EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) -- At almost every stop during his visit here April 24 and 25, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper was asked about the transformation of the Air Force's current wing organizational structure.

As a result of a reorganization slated to begin Oct. 11, each Air Force wing will be organized into four groups: operations, maintenance, mission support and medical. The reorganization will align these missions directly with wing-level organizations.

"I believe the two hardest things we do in the Air Force today are flying and fixing airplanes," Jumper said to troops throughout the day. "On the ops group side I expect the ops group commanders and their squadron commanders to be able to lead their squadrons into war."

All the operators in the wing should look up to the ops group commander and that person should be the model operator, the picture of proficiency and tactical level expertise, Jumper said.

The change is also designed to put maintenance back into the hands of maintenance professionals, Jumper said.

"I want the maintenance officers in the squadron to look up to the chief maintainer and say 'I want to be that maintainer some day,'" said Jumper, whose daughter is an F-15 maintenance officer. "In turn, I want that maintainer to be a colonel who out of a 20 or 24-year career has got about 14 or 15 years of experience working directly on the flight line."

Mission support group commanders also play a key role in the new wing structure, Jumber said.

The Air Force has to have a body of experts who know how to pack up a squadron-sized unit and deploy it half way around the world, he said.

"Right now we have people who understand bits and pieces of this but not all of it," he said. "So we are going to give that mission support group commander all the tools he or she needs to be that expert for us."

There could be exceptions to the reorganization effort in certain cases such as work associated with flight test and evaluation, Jumper said. However, exceptions would come only if they make sense.

"It's not one size fits all, but it's also not customized," he said. "For the F-22 where maintainers are an integral part of achieving the test parameters and the fixes that go into them, we'll have to talk about those issues and decide what is best for the program."