SecAF outlines top priorities during all call

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Rachel Loftis
  • 99th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. --  On her six-month anniversary as the Air Force's top official, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James received a first-hand look at the abilities and characteristics of Nellis AFB.

The base visit consisted of mission briefs of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School and U.S. Air Force Warfare Center, a meeting with the Nellis Sexual Assault Response Coordinator, and an all call to speak to Airmen about her top three priorities, and challenges the Air Force is facing today.

James emphasized that her top three priorities are taking care of people, balancing today's readiness with the modernization needs of tomorrow and making every dollar count.

She said taking care of people meant we needed to continue to recruit the right people, as well as retain those people to shape the force by having the right people in the ranks and specialties.

"Taking care of people is fundamentally important," James said. "Part of taking care of people is making sure the work environment is a climate that treats everybody with dignity and respect and focuses on our core values of integrity, service and excellence."

The Secretary explained her second priority of balancing today's readiness with the modernization needs of tomorrow.

"We made the choice to fully fund readiness in Fiscal Year 2015," James said. "The demands of 12 years of persistent warfare have atrophied our readiness levels over time across the full-spectrum of operations. We decided in the FY15 budget we needed to get our readiness up."

James continued by saying, "We also chose to invest in key modernization programs for the future, which include the Joint Strike Fighter, the KC-46 tanker program, and the long-range strike bomber. Our charge is to make sure that we're focusing not only on today which is very important, but that we're also investing in tomorrow."

The third priority the Secretary discussed was making every dollar count in the current budget constraints.

"Two years ago, the projection of the Air Force budget today was $20 billion more than we actually have. That's a big difference," James explained. "As a result, we had to make some tough choices and not one of those choices is popular. For example, we have proposed retiring entire fleets of aircraft, to include the A-10."

James said the request to retire the A-10 fleet would save upwards of $4 billion over five years and is being debated on Capitol Hill right now.

"We're also considering retiring the U-2 which is a high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform, as well as reducing compensation and growth on military pay," the Secretary continued "These are the very difficult choices we are facing to pay for the readiness and investments we need today and in the future."

Nellis AFB was the first of three stops, to include Creech AFB and the Nevada Test and Training Range, during the secretary's five-day visit to the area.