HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. -- The 505th Command and Control Wing bid farewell to Col. Richard Dickens and welcomed Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman in a change of command ceremony on July 16 at Hurlburt Field, Florida.
“The 505th Command and Control Wing has evolved to become the command and control epicenter for how the Air Force fights. When it comes down to it, we organize, train, and equip our forces to be a component to a joint force commander. In order for those forces to be employed effectively, to meet joint force commander objectives, and therefore national security objectives, it all starts with C2 [command and control],” said Maj. Gen. Case Cunningham, U.S. Air Force Warfare Center commander. “And none of that is possible without the Airmen of the 505th executing excellence across the gamut of C2.”
He thanked Dickens for his outstanding leadership and charged Coleman to continue to leverage the skills, talents, and expertise of the Airmen of the CCW.
“I have been in the business of command and control for my entire career, and never has it been as exciting as it is right now,” said Coleman.
Coleman continued, “It is command and control that makes the Air Force what it is. It is the way that we fight, the way we command and control our forces, that has made us so successful over the past decades. With the onset of ABMS [Advanced Battle Management System] and JADC2 [Joint All-Domain Command and Control], and with all the changes in doctrine led by our Chief of Staff of the Air Force, there has never been a better time to be in this business.”
“There’s a revolution in C2,” Coleman said in his closing comments. “The way we execute centralized command, distributed control, and decentralized execution will be the shock and awe of the next fight, and the 505th is at the heart of it.”
The 505th CCW is the U.S Air Force’s only wing dedicated to operational-level command and control. The wing is dedicated to taking testing, tactics, and training to the operational level by specializing in C2 in air, space, and cyberspace.
The colonel comes to Hurlburt after serving as the commander, 609th Air Operations Center, U.S. Central Command, Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. He also served as the commander of the 961st Airborne Air Control Squadron in Okinawa, Japan.