 Hi, I'm Brigadier General Jeff Gearty, and I'm joined today by Chief Master Sergeant Heath Temple. And we just wanted to kick off this virtual Commander's Call for those of you who were unable to attend in person with a scroll listing the amazing number of awards and accomplishments that you all have earned over the past year. So before we get going, we just wanted to take a couple of quick minutes to introduce our personal sides to those of you who don't know. Chief and I have spent some time getting to know each other, but we wanted to bring that to you a little bit too. You want to go first, Chief? Yeah, sure. I'll start it off. And I tell you, it's really good just to kind of visit where people come from, some of the things that they're passionate about. What it does is it creates connectivity that transcends ranks and backgrounds. We can all find a little piece of ourselves in someone else's story. If you look at some of the pictures that we're sharing here, this is a picture of my background. That's what you see up there are pictures of my family and some of the things that I'm passionate about. It's pretty clear that I enjoy the outdoors. You know, I've always been an outdoorsman, perhaps raised that way about my father. You see in the bottom left hand photo there, he's a retired Senior Master Sergeant. And I think like a lot of us military service runs in the family. And for us, growing up at a few different duty locations, there's never any question for me where I was going to call home. So that is the great state of Alaska. If you see the picture on the bottom right there and certainly that moose that we took down in that center picture there, that was growing up, you know, a part of our rhythm. We will go out and hunt, get a moose and it feeds a family of four for a year. And so my pride and joy, top right, that is my wonderful wife Courtney. It's one of my favorite pictures of us. I actually have an additional story I'm going to tell about her on this next slide. So this picture here, that picture on the top left. That's actually her ALS graduation. And so I was in the class that was coming after her and attending this graduation. And I had just a little bit to live up to because not only did she win the academic award, but she also won the Levato award. And I just rest assured I did not achieve that level of excellence, but I know how to marry up. So I'm in good hands. And I tell you that ALS graduation kind of starts a timeline with some of these other pictures shown here. The picture of me in front of that flag in the center was actually at AUD Darebase in 2001. And we were there in the end of September standing that base up from virtually nothing and to see what it's become today. That kick started a timeline of multiple combat deployments, which a lot of those other pictures reflect. I was very fortunate in a lot of ways, still here. But also the timing for a young EOD team leader couldn't have possibly been better. So I really got to stretch my wings. And that path led me to some opportunities as a chief to include being a command chief. And my first stop as a command chief is at the 435th Air Ground Operations Wing, which also has the AEW. So all of the airmen that were deployed in Africa were in our portfolio. And that picture of me playing with that young man there in Kenya was a result of some of those adventures. And so my final stop before coming to this location, speaking of opportunities and fortunate, I actually got to pay it forward in a different way by teaching at the Chief Leadership Academy. And if anybody can see those pictures from where you're sitting there, you might see some familiar faces. And what it was was an opportunity for me to establish connection from chiefs across the Air Force. And it truly was a privilege and an honor. And now I'm honored to be here today. Well, it's my honor to be your wingman and be working with you, Chief. So you say you married up chief, so did I. And you know Nora, you've met Nora. Here you'll see a photo of my family in the top left there. Nora and our three wonderful kids, they're central to our life. That's my parents in the top right picture there. My family of five, I have three brothers and one sister and we grew up in Denver, Colorado. And we're all big Broncos fans. It's something I love doing too. You see in the bottom left there is jumping out of airplanes. That's not normal for pilots, but I really enjoy it. And that's my son and I preparing to jump out of an airplane up in Tennessee. And I love getting outside, taking care of fitness, biking, running, swimming, those type of things. Helps build resilience for one thing. It's something that's good for me to do every day. And then you see me with a guitar there. That's a pretty new effort for me. And that was another one of those resilience building things for me when COVID hit. How am I going to spend this new time at home? Why not build a new skill that can help me build new connections? We put a band together and I never would have seen myself doing that four years ago, dedicating time to a new hobby and meeting new people. But it's been really good for me and my family too. I had a lot of fun there. And again, on the bottom right, loving the outdoors. That's my backyard in Colorado, the Rocky Mountains. So a little bit about my career. You see there that I'm a pilot. I talked about jumping out of airplanes, but I've spent a lot more time flying airplanes than I have jumping out of them. F-15Es mostly. F-16s is what you see here on this picture, but that was my career. I've also done some work with special ops and intelligence. That's what you see on the top right there. Had the privilege of working at SpaceX. That's what you see in the bottom right there for a little while. As a part of my education, the Air Force has been very generous to me, as it is with all our airmen, with an education. And I'm grateful for that. And then on the bottom left there, certainly my family has paid its dues. And I've done plenty of deployments as well. That picture there is my deployment bag just before I chalk out on my first deployment, and that's my oldest daughter. My wife set her on top of my deployment bags, as if I was going to be able to take her on that deployment. She didn't have a clue who I was when I got home from that deployment. And it's, you know, it's talking about priorities, sir. We got to spend some time together, you know, over the last six months or so. And I look at the order in which these slides are presented. And I know, for you and I, that also has an additional meaning, you know, that at the back, the backbone of it all is our family and our friends. And I hope that, you know, if folks are going to say something, share a memory about me, that it was good, good father, good husband, good friends. And had just had an incredible opportunity to do some great things in the Air Force. And that story continues. Excellent. So we wanted to spend a little bit of time connecting the team with our vision for the future about what we are going to do together. And that informed, connected, empowered vision that we set out in the first couple of weeks that I was here in command in early July. The rest of the team hasn't had the opportunity that we've had to discuss that over months and what those words mean to us. So we just wanted to spend some time kind of going back and forth and give the team some of that insight. So where do you want to take it from there? You know, to start with sir, kind of holistically looking at, you know, the three-part vision here. I chose these areas because they are kind of broad. And it's something that everybody can see themselves in, regardless of rank or position. These are ways that we can all connect and contribute. And each of them has the potential for multiple meetings, but to focus in on a couple informed can meet a couple things. Yeah, absolutely. So informed people can tend to think of as either a pull or a push. Some people kind of gravitate towards one or the other. People can say, where am I getting my information from? But really informed is a responsibility too. It's a responsibility to keep yourself informed by pulling information from your chain of command, pulling information from your colleagues, pulling information from other parts of the organization, but also everybody recognizing their responsibility to push information. What information is inside their mind or inside their organization that they need to make sure gets out to other parts of the organization so that we work most cohesively as a team? Yes, sir. And to affect that push and that pull and to get a great exchange, we need to work on our connectivity as well. And as we looked at, you know, using the word connect as part of our vision, again, something, you know, that could, you know, have a variety of meetings. One of the ones that's most important to me and, sir, you know, I hesitate to constantly bring up the worldwide pandemic as we transition out of that. But the truth is it could be a little bit of atrophy when it comes to human connectivity, some actual interaction, you know, eyeball to eyeball, kind of analog leadership, if you will. But now is a great time to start thinking about how we re-manufacture that connective tissue. Remember, there's a significant portion of each of our formations that knows very little, if anything at all, about life in the Air Force outside of COVID ops. And it's time to reintroduce them to the things that create that heritage and legacy that we all enjoy. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned connected is not, it's a couple of things, too. It's not just that interpersonal connectivity, which is so important, so important to every single one of us and everybody on Team Eglin. But there's also that technological connectivity. As we look to the future, that vision of informed, connected, empowered to meet the pacing challenge that is the People's Republic of China, we know our systems are going to have to be connected to in order to deter or defeat that future threat. Our systems are going to have to be connected. Weapons systems, communication systems in a manner that we're just not there yet and we need to make some progress with this decisive decade in mind. Sure. And to that end, with the decisive decade, I think about the type of environment that we need for 2030. And I think about the word empowerment, right? One of those things that's a lot easier to say than to do, right? These are things that we need to kind of get after with the collective vision, hence its place in ours. But when I think about empowerment, oftentimes I'll close my eyes for a second and picture an island out in the middle of the Pacific that nobody's ever heard of. Turn back the clock a bit and let's say Saipan or Iwo Jima. We've heard of those locations because of some of the sacrifices that happen there. And there may be dozens of other islands out there that nobody has heard of yet. But our airmen on a small team out generating air power, alone and unafraid, at an island in the middle of a Pacific that understand commander's intent. They have a left rail and a right rail and they are taking it to the enemy, sir. When I think about empowerment, it's just a picture that I have. Yeah, that's perfect. And empowered is something that Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Brown talks about is we need to ensure that our airmen are empowered and are able to understand commander's intent and go out there and sometimes make mistakes. We're people and we're going to make mistakes. And leaders have to understand that they need to delegate, they need to tolerate, and they need to iterate. So they delegate with commander's intent what they need their team to do. They tolerate when their airmen don't quite do it the way they were thinking they might have done it. And we learn and we iterate and we keep getting this mission done. Perfect, perfect. Ty answered another thing that I think about with empowerment. Perhaps right here in Garrison, that's the example. So look at what it is we're asked to do, right? To use the test enterprise to be able to generate these war-winning capabilities. And time is of the essence. So we think about ways to accelerate change or lose, perhaps for us to, you know, accelerate test, accelerate changes to our test processes. And to do that precisely what you said, sir, for airmen, our civilian airmen, officers and enlisted to be able to push the envelope, to be able to walk up to that line, to perhaps fail, and then learn from it and press on. That's the way that we accelerate change and accelerate test. Yeah, absolutely. That's our strategic advantage. Yes, sir. Speaking of empowered, I know and feel in just my first five, six months in command here, how empowered and amazing this team is at getting the mission done. You saw that scroll of award winners when we started this commander's call. Let's take a look at some quick video snippets that just show a snapshot of some of the amazing work that this team gets done. So as this team continues to execute that mission the way they have been with tremendous excellence already, we have to do that strategic thinking that really bridges us to that future. We have to do the strategic planning that makes sure that we allocate our resources, our people's time, our money towards that vision that makes sure that we can deter or defeat that pacing challenge that people's republic of China. So recently in early November we spent some time as a leadership team talking through that strategic plan. And we came up with these four lines of effort that we are going to spend our time and energy focusing on getting after the Eglin of 2030. That was our focal point for where we're going to focus our strategic energy. Sorry, a key part of our strategy is the mapping and connection with the strategies of our senior leaders. So a lot of messaging that we've seen from senior Air Force and Department of Defense leaders is embedded, is baked into what it is that we're trying to do here. So you will see elements of Accelerate, Change or Lose. You will see Action Orders A through D, Airmen, Broxy, Competition and Design. And you will also see a lot of touch points between the Secretary of Air Force's operational imperatives and what we do here at Eglin. And Chief Steph Brown's Action Order D Design Implementation for us it maps to deliver 2030 integrated tests. We know that we're going to have to test differently in 2030 than we do today if we were to meet that pacing threat that is the People's Republic of China. And so one of our champions is going to focus our team, our 96 test wing team efforts on that line of effort with those sub-objectives right there that you see on the screen. Those sub-objectives, that's a perfect example of what I was speaking to earlier, sir, with all of the connection that Eglin has with Secretary of the Air Force's operational imperatives and the cross-cutting enabler, specifically the enabler of weapons, which between us, our efforts and our mission partners here and Chief Eglin, the premier test facility to generate new weapons systems. So this is definitely a reflection of all the things that we do across Team Eglin and specifically for the 96. And Chief, one of the things that we talked about at that strategic planning off-site that this team doesn't really get the insight into is all those specific plans of action within each of these lines of effort that the team has been working feverishly to make sure that we have specific things that we're going to get done for this team and that we're transparent as we get those things done. And you are the champion for this particular line of effort, strengthen our team, which matches to Airmen. Tell us more about that. Yes, sir. How exciting is that? This is something that I'm very passionate about and I'm very fortunate as well to have a great team that is surrounding me in support. But you look at these areas, Airmen, readiness, resilience, warrior ethos, some things might stand out. You'll see some, again, connective tissue perhaps to Chief Massar in the Air Force passes. People, readiness, and culture. You also see that these are pretty broad areas to work in. What that does is it gives us lots of maneuvering to gather up our experts to speak to our Airmen to allow some creativity and really get after some things that we can know, kidding, and accomplish within the next 18 months to help generate the Airmen we need for the fight in 2030. And mapping to General Brown's action order B bureaucracy, it's really about making the changes to the things that we do right now to get after, again, that pacing challenge, the People's Republic of China. So how are we going to transform the 96 test wing for that digital future, not just tinker around the edges, but really, really iterate on some of those major changes that we know we're going to have to do to get after that threat? And, sir, you mentioned it before, being able to accelerate test as part of accelerating change or lose. And being a warfighter, you know, out on the battlefield throughout my time in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's one thing that keeps coming to mind is our continued efforts to make sure that we shorten the timelines between generating capability and put it in the hands of the Airmen that need it. So I think that if you look at some of the ways we're analyzing our own internal processes, we can cut those timelines down and do exactly that, get that capability in the hands of the warfighter that needs it on time. Absolutely right. And, Chief, I've mentioned it a number of times already here in this virtual commander's call competition. So People's Republic of China, that pacing threat. We know that is where we have to have our eyes for the future as we execute this mission with that vision, with a focus on 2030. And so these are some of the objectives within that line of effort to get at competition by building a more collaborative Eglin. We have this scope of capabilities and partners here at Team Eglin that really, really will get at building for the future that we need to meet that pacing threat. Sure. I'm so grateful for that support. Think about a lot of our comments today have been about accelerating things and shortening timelines and moving out with speed in a sense of urgency. Another piece that the old adage about if you want to go far and go together and we look at mapping out towards 2030, going together includes networking with our entire surrounding community here in the panhandled military complex. The relationships that we have with our communities, our partnerships, our infrastructure are absolutely vital to all the things that we do here at Eglin Air Force Base. And even before we get there, inside the fence, our allies here on Team Eglin, we have not just every different service, but we have members from different partner nations who are cracking at this same mission together. Yes, sir. Chief, you mentioned the importance of bridging with the community and making sure we're working with people not just inside Team Eglin, but the whole surrounding community, our community leaders, our community partners to make sure that we're doing the best that we can for our airmen. And these are some of the things that we're going to be spending, that we're already spending much of our time and energy on as a 96 test wing leadership team. We are working hard on childcare, making sure that we get the childcare solutions that our team needs. We know that's an area that needs a lot of attention. We're moving fast to get more capacity out there to the team. Another one of those things is housing. We're working a lot of different efforts on housing. We're doing a major study for one thing to make sure that we have the exact numbers as to what our demand is for housing here on base, if there are ways we can move fast to improve housing. We're going to get that done. And then one of the things that we're trying to make happen is that community commons up in the city of Crestview, you want to talk a little bit more about that? Sure, cancer. And like I said, no question. We have some very acute needs that we're aggressively generating some coas to get after here. And that community commons, I think, is a fantastic initiative in that if you consider this very test range that provides a livelihood for our mission partners, also creates a little bit of space and makes it difficult for folks to be able to commute to and from. There's a high percentage of any formation. If you were to just ask a question, ask folks to raise their hands, how many live in Crestview or north of the range in a long I-10? And you'll see a high percentage of hands go up to that end. I think location is important. And what we park at that location will then ease some of the burden for that commute and travel time. We've got a lot of capability here at Eglin, but to transition specifically a full-scale child center up on the north side of the range, a partnered VA facility on the north side of the range and let that then provide those services to the folks that are, to all of our mission partners, airmen, soldiers, marines and sailors. Yeah, absolutely. And even in addition to those two things that you mentioned, a military health care outlet up there in the city of Crestview is a part of that community commons. Yes, sir. So as we talk about taking care of our airmen, our families, it's also important to acknowledge how important it is to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves, so that we're building that resilience for ourselves and our wingmen. That we are the wingmen who build resilience in other people reaching out and making those connections. So the Chief of Staff introduced this spectrum of resilience that I think is a really excellent way to think about this. On that left side of the spectrum of resilience is that taking care of yourself part, your health, your fitness, your sleep, those really basic things that we are all going to have to have a pretty solid reserve of when things get hard. Then as you move further to the right, it's still very kind of low level interventions, if you will, things that we just need to constantly be nurturing and building with the connectivity, with different social groups, things like that. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that, Chief? That's our sure answer. And that, you know, the peer and social networks to me have always been just kind of a foundation. And earlier in the discussion, I mentioned the importance of perhaps some things that are to attribute that interpersonal connection. I think as we progress through the spectrum of resilience and we've looked at some things that we can control yourself, family and friends. And we engage with our peers and the folks in our work centers. We can generate even more connectivity. These are the ways that we can use that connection that we spoke of earlier to help reinforce resilience. And along the way, we might be then connected with some of the support entities that we provide here as an installation. And as we look further right on that spectrum of resilience, those professionals, this slide shows the names of those professionals that we have here on Eglin Air Force Base who are able to take care of those acute needs when people are in a time of crisis. Professionals who are trained in helping us get through those things. And it's really a sign of strength to reach out to these individuals and these professionals when you need to. It's also tremendously important that we be that wingman for each other, that we reach out and look into each other's eyes and say, how are you doing? And really not just in passing one of those ones that people can say fine, but be that wingman who really can look into the soul of the airmen around you and have those tough conversations that sometimes people need to have and be there for each other. That's going to be extra important. Yes, sir. And I'm grateful to have you as a wingman as well. You know, I think about the season coming up here as we kind of spill into a time that hopefully everybody's able to create some space, gather up around friends and family, but to underscore just how important each and every one of you are. And to that end, being able to reach out and know what the plans are of the folks that are on your team and help them connect as well. I mentioned that earlier in the video, maybe some of that atrophy that's there. Let's reach out, let's put our arms around the folks that are on our team and just make sure everybody has a safe and happy holidays as we glide towards Christmas. And to close out this virtual commander's call, I just want to say how thankful we are for the everything that you do for this mission. To meet that pacing threat that is the People's Republic of China, you are doing incredible work and we're extremely proud of you and wish you the best as you keep knocking it out of the park.