 How about now? There we go. Okay. If I could have everybody's attention. We're delayed just a minute because we've got a good response The crowd is checking in While I've got your attention The restrooms for those of you who haven't been here in a while the men's is just on the other side of the cashier's cage There's actually a door there But go to the little hall beyond that and the ladies is beyond the the stairs to the sky lounge on the same side on the Right side down the hall if you all would please turn your cell phones off or put them on Whatever and we would appreciate it because it'll come through in our movie and the sound and everything because we're taping it So thank you Everybody you get settled please at this time I would like to call the 2016 annual meeting of the order of the Dalyans to order and with that General Brown if you would please sir come up and provide us an invocation if everybody please stand as we'll Do our invocation and then we'll follow that with a pledge of allegiance If you bow your heads, please Lord we just thank you for the opportunity to gather this Let's just group of the Dalyans those who have served our country those who still serve our country We thank you for the safe travel that you've given us today and We ask that you be in present with us as we go about our business for the national order we asked your protection on those who serve us this moment both near and afar both in Within our country and also in hostile areas of the world as they keep us safe And give us the opportunity to gather in a place like this peacefully Lord we have business that we will conduct today and we need your guidance need your Help as we have open minds and open hearts to what we're about Thank you for this gathering for the work that we will do here this day and all God's people said amen the Dalyans to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands One nation under God Indivisible with liberty and justice for all Folks, please take your seats. I would like to Welcome all of you to Randolph Air Force Base and to the Paro Club and to this 2016 annual meeting I Can't tell you how excited I am about today, and I also approach today with some angst Many of you are aware that we have been engaged for a number of months in an effort to Look at the order and how we operate and to look at our future And I am pleased to report to you today First that we are in great shape and you're going to hear about that today in just a few minutes But that we are also in need of discussion about the way ahead as we go forward today This is a very big deal an important meeting for us such so That this meeting is being live webcast To all of our Dalyan members around the country and anyone that would like to listen to this So with that in mind as we talk today if you have an opportunity to speak I will ask that you wait until a mic is put in front of you So that whatever you choose to say will be heard by those that are listening Around the country and to those that are listening around the country welcome You are as much a part of this effort as those that are sitting in the room and we encourage you to participate with us There's an opportunity to chat with us And if you have anything that you would like to do to say or ask Please let that be known through the Mechanisms that you have through the web so again welcome to all of those that are joining us through the webcast None of y'all knew that was going to happen today. Did you we have gone really high-tech We are also filming this so not only is it going to be broadcast. It's going to be filmed At the end of today Everything that you will hear about everything that you will see is going to be live on our web page When you go to our web page this evening It's not going to look like the web page that you are used to seeing when you go to the diane's org You're going to see a picture of an f-35 on the On that is right there big on the screen And you're going to see the word make us relevant Right underneath it And then under that you're going to see links to everything that we're going to talk about today The information that we're going to to pass along is important and we're going to give it to you in About three or four different ways, so I want to make sure that you understand it that you Have an opportunity to digest everything that we're going to talk about and then Be able to share that with others Before we go on I would like to acknowledge that we do have Lieutenant General Nick Keough our past national commander General Tex Brown Also past national commander major general Andy and reason is is here beside Nick our current vice commander Major General Jerry Allen our foundation chairman is with us up front and he's up there because he's sitting down He can't jink or jive whatever you're going to throw throw that way He can't move fast enough to get out of the way So Jerry is is my wingman in this and I mean that in every sense of the words From the time that this has started Jerry and I have worked together on all of this and This is not just an order Issue this is an order and foundation issue and meeting and with that I would like to find out who's here So let me start with the directors and trustees if you would be so kind as Just raise your hand. I won't make you stand up Okay Those that are here From outside of San Antonio that are either that is either a flight captain or Representing a flight captain. Please raise your hand. That is terrific. Thank you And those that are from here from Stinson's flight, please raise your hand Stinson's flight happens to have their normal meeting this evening So this is going to be a long day for those of us that will partake of of all of this We have an exciting day set up for you. We are going to go through the motherhood part of the the Effort that's going to go by pretty quickly and then we're going to get into the meat of the morning and we are I'm anticipating a good two to two and a half hours worth of discussion on on that topic And we're going to set up a buffet lunch and we're lunch will be set up over here. We'll have an opportunity to To gather back in this room and and eat and then at 1 30 Colonel Magnum Drick to who's sporting a somewhat of a mustache that comes off here in two days has set up set up for us a Tour of the 558 flying training squadron, which is the RPA squadron here on base And he's done that to allow all of us that have no exposure to RPAs the opportunity to To see one up close and personal to see how it operates to see what they do and we're going to hear a little bit more From from Magnum here a little bit later Magnum is the Stinson flight commander. So we are very fortunate to have his his leadership engagement not only with the 12 flying training wing, but also with the local flight this time let me move right along and open this up to Gary Walson with the to read the previous meetings minutes Colonel Walson is prepared to read the minutes unless someone would like a Motion has been made that the reading of the minutes had be waved and it has been seconded all those in favor say Hi any opposed I Would offer that those minutes are available to you to all of you to read at your your leisure and with that Gary Your work is done. Thank you my friend At this time we I will invite our adjutant Colonel Jim Kellogg to come up front and I would like to offer the new members of the new Myself and the others that were elected on this ballot for a swearing-in of Of the officers but Jim That would be fine all the elected officers That's everybody Good all right. Do you soundly swear you will faithfully discharge the duties of the office to which you've been elected or appointed? So help you God and keep yourself said steadfast. I do. Thank you We are efficient if we're nothing else at this time I would like to invite Randy Randy to come up and present the financial Assessment hello, I'm your treasurer colonel Randy putz and next slide please This is the status of the order of the dadians as of 31 December 2015 the top part of our a Report here shows if you look at a corporate balance sheet it would be this would correlate to an income statement 2015 was a more expensive year because of the Convention the good news is that revenue exceeded expenses by $7,326 so kudos to our National staff that ran the the order in a very efficient manner if you go down to the bottom part of the sheet We have that would correlate on a corporate Financial statement to a balance sheet and where we stood at the end of 2015 our order had $136,911 in their operating account Our life member fund had $2.3 million for a total of two million four hundred ninety-nine thousand dollars two hundred six Now the purpose that life member fund is to cover a liability that we have There are sixty seven hundred and sixty sixty-seven 67 life members and that creates a liability of two million 66,283 Can I just ask real quickly how many in the room are life members? Okay, the vast majority of you so the purpose of that What that liability means is that we take a piece of that every year and Transfer it over to the order operating account to provide for your magazine and other An operation of the national staff throughout the year So that's a real liability. We're supposed to be taking care of you Our youngest life member is in his early 20s So we could have 60 70 more years of of liability for taking good care of him But you can see that our total assets exceed our life member liability by about $430,000 the current state of Our life member fund of our order of the day and assets is very strong Are there any questions? Thank you Thanks, Randy At this time, I would like to ask our foundation chairman to come up and give his report Good morning. First off, thanks to all of you. This is a very good news report 2015 was our second best Fundraising year ever that was exceeded only by it was either 2000 or 2001 when we got the majority of the Brigadier General John Egan estate That was one point three million dollars So it's going to be tough to top that year But this year was a very good fundraising year. Thanks to all of you for your generous support That 2015 total includes some very special gifts that you see in the top line there We won 18,000 plus and big give prize money. That's free money from the local charities Because of our enthusiastic and successful participation in the big give We got 7,500 from Lockheed 10,000 from a Texas Foundation the Moody Foundation 54,000 from an estate of a longtime member $25,000 from the estate of General Horace Wade and $25,000 From a family that wanted to honor a previous member now deceased Colonel Hedges Want to thanks to thank all of you thank all of our donors and especially want to thank Maureen D. Feliz who is the catalyst for our fundraising work? She's got great energy. She's got great ideas, and she's darn persistent. Let's thank Maureen The scholarship program grew $25,000 remember we have added $500 to the matching that we will provide to each flight that participates in the scholarship program Headquarters matching now totals $2,500 per flight The participating flights grew from 32 to 37 recipients were down by a couple That's a function of how many scholarship recipients you nominate primarily because matching is the largest part not the total part but the largest part of our scholarship program of our scholarship program We encourage every flight to do whatever you can to award scholarships to aspiring aviators and take advantage of the $2,500 that the headquarters will contribute I want to thank will Hendricks who's the chairman of our scholarship committee And all the participating flights for making the scholarship program a real success third bullet Tex Hill and Les Loy CFIP soloed 25 students versus 23 the previous year and the number of flights participating increased from 10 to 13 Want to thank Ed Sheeran who does a tremendous amount of work on this program Plus of course all the participating flights and again we encourage more flights to participate Providing the thrill of a young person's first solo flight is a pretty darn Significant achievement, and we're proud to do it. We'd like to do more We presented over 1300 junior ROTC medals 55 flights participated along with 11 Dodd schools Ed Sheeran does a ton of work on this program Here's the bad news in this report Declining investment performance and the prediction of the same for this year forced a $22,000 reduction in our 2016 scholarship budget We've partially offset this by reducing the amount of money we provide to the Civil Air Patrol Final bullet there is a big push that you'll be hearing about in April and the first couple days of May We ask all of you and we ask you to spread the word to your flights, please to consider participating in Big Give San Antonio as I said the local charities provide a lot of money free money as prize money in this event So the better we do the better chance we have of winning prizes We encourage you to make a gift to encourage your spouse to make a gift Different name different credit card encourage the members of your flight and your friends to participate because every gift From a different individual of $10 or more helps us win one of those participation prizes in the Big Give There's information on the chart there But the key is if you want to help if you want to pre position your credit card With number with Maureen or Christy all you have to do is contact them either by calling them at the headquarters emailing them or You can go online on the 3rd of May and make your Big Give gift 2015 was a great year for the Dalian programs We need your help to keep these programs strong in the out years. We're doing great work We want to continue doing that great work That concludes my presentation save anybody have any questions on what I've talked to you about All right, we got one more bit of good news We have Chris Nivens here from Granite State Flight and Granite State has a wonderful deal with the state of New Hampshire Where the state Contributes money to help support their programs and Chris and the flight have decided to share some of that money with the Dalian Foundation Chris Well on behalf of Granite State Flight 53, it's a pleasure to be able to make this award We're here because we had a very good year. We have a very new program called charitable gaming That we have in New Hampshire. It's associated with the state of New Hampshire It's not has nothing to do with bingo night or or lucky seventh or any of that stuff But charitable gaming where we get free money, too If we sign up and if we become a charitable trust, which we are In there and so we've been very fortunate and I noticed a very place to see all the donations that were made by individuals Our flight has come through also in a lot of ways so through the great pleasure that the board of directors of Granite State Flight 53 has Asked me to give you sir This $2,000 check to go towards a CFIP or whatever you want to use it for We have a great CFIP program a couple of great cadets this year. We also donate to the civil air patrol I'm glad we're strong enough to be able to do that not only in New Hampshire, but also in Maine the state of Maine So again, thank you for all you do and we're going to keep on trucking and hoping we'll be able to do this again next year All right Personal note, I joined the dadalians at Granite State Flight. So this is very meaningful to me again I encourage all of you to please do all you can to continue to support our great great dadalian programs. Thanks At this time we'd like to present our annual awards And we're going to present them in the order of the first dispenser award Then the new pilot initiative recruiting award and then finally the do little awards for the outstanding flights and I'd ask Jerry to to help me with this and we would like to start with The Lauren and Randy Spencer recruiting scholarship award presented first to Stenson's flight Tell you what you stay there. We'll come over to you Magnum, thanks. Thanks very much. Great work. The second award goes to the fourth flight national capital flight The next Spencer Ward goes to the 18th flight mile-high flight with each of these Certificates also comes a $1,000 scholarship award. Great work. Thank you The last Spencer Ward goes to excuse me the 74th flight possum town Jay, thanks very much. Great work. The next award is the new pilot initiative Certificate that for recruiting and this one will go to the 59th flight from Laughlin the George Beverly flight Anyone here from Laughlin? Let's give Laughlin a great big hand The last awards that we'll give out today are the do little awards and these recognize outstanding contributions to the order by size category So we will start first with the category a flights and winning the do little award in that category Is the 13th flight from San Diego for the category B? We've got 48 flight the Harley Pope flight Category C winner is the 23rd flight from Dallas, Fort Worth And finally we've got for the category D the large flight is the second flight stinson flight And stinson's flight also ends the overall outstanding flight award for the year and we normally give a print for this But they have covered their walls with our prints So we will give them a $200 check to spend as they will and add to their general fund at this time, I'd ask general brown to come back up as we recognize and Pay our respects to all of our didians that have passed over in 2015 all of you have A list of the names all 254 That passed out of our order from this past year Thank you, Doug I'd ask that you take a look at the brochure you were handed out those on the Webinar don't have a list in front of them. We'll make sure this gets posted Uh on the website so that you can see who who we have lost as fellow didians this past year As I look at the list I see names I see friends Instructors men or women I've flown with And I'm sure you do too I there former Leaders of our order Members who served on this on the national level board of directors This this list is not unusual though this this list is similar to last year's in the year before The problem we have is that the list grows As we become an aging order if you'll bear with me, I'll I'd like to read the words that John McGee wrote You can find them on the back Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings Somewhere I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun split clouds and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of Wealed and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence hovering there. I've chased the shouting wind along And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air Up up the long delirious burning blue. I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where neverlark or ever eagle flew and white was silent lifting mind of trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space Put out my hand And I've touched the face of god Let's pray for those that we've lost Lord, we thank you for those that Have now joined you we pray for their souls We thank you for the lives they lived here on this earth as they served our nation As we flew with them under them their sacrifice of service Is why we sit here today in a free country We appreciate what they have meant to us So today we ask that you Comfort them comfort their families Thank you for the purpose in life. They get they lived and gave with us As fellow members of the order order of the day With all these things we pray in your holy name. Amen. How's everybody doing? Everybody okay We are Going to move then into the next portion of the meeting And this will take up the remainder of the time that we have If everybody would like to take a short break right now before we get into this just Raise your hand and we'll take a five minute or if you'd like Okay Are we good in october at the october board of directors meeting I approached our directors as we were discussing our budget And asked them For 25 000 dollars To hire a marketing firm To help us With branding and marketing our order In an effort To increase our membership as all of you are aware In almost every meeting that we have of any type whether it's at the flight level Or at the board level Or at an annual meeting at a convention You pick it The subject of membership Always comes up As I monitored the board process in route to taking over for nick that happened at every single board meeting that I attended before I took over as the national commander last may so as I came on board And started speaking with others and going out to visit with the flights This notion of marketing Sounded like a reasonable way ahead. So I approached the board. They okayed the 25 000 dollars. This was at the end of october And we went about beginning in november in earnest this project if you will to tackle marketing and branding of our order the first part of this Was to figure out what we wanted to market and then hire somebody to do it We interviewed a number of companies We in fact wound up with two One of them is represented here today over on the side over here chris and kandace from public alliance Represent public alliance the one of our marketing firms that is helping us And I've invited them here today Because what they know of us to this point has come out of the committee effort that we stood up In that october meeting I when I got the approval for the funds I also told them and I was going to stand up a small committee. It had five people on it It was diverse in nature It had myself to lead it Major marne general marne peterson Who is on our Board of directors And I don't see uh, uh, joe stallings major joe stallings on the end over there active duty major from from here in town charlie bowman from the stinson's flight And ed sharron ed were you my friend? Ed representing the trustees was on it So we only had five I then asked that jerry Uh help as an advisor and colonel dricta as a senior active duty member help and our staff with uh, uh, with marine and jim We took this on In and about the november time frame We got the got the marketing firms hired and beginning the first of january We have been at this every week And some of us More often than just once a week This has been a concerted effort on our part To do good work and to do well by this order to present recommendations to the board of directors and trustees About a way ahead my initial thought when all of this happened was that we would hire the marketing firm We would update our website. We'd come up with some snazzy logo And we'd go with some nice tag lines and we'd go out and we'd start recruiting new members quickly But one of the things that we ran into when we got into this was we had to do a little bit of introspective search of ourselves and we had to take a look at our membership As it as it was And what I found as I went through this and what we did we did a deep dive into our membership We cut it front ways sideways and backwards And to my knowledge, this has never been done to the degree that we have done this We have always talked about this We know intuitively That there are issues with all of this But we've never taken this on in the manner that we have and the reason i'm telling you this up front It's because we put a lot of work into this And back on the 4th of february We had to go to the directors and trustees To get approval and guidance on a way ahead I had no intention of doing that until the summertime frame But we got to a point that we could not proceed with our marketing effort Until we took some initial steps And one of those steps is what we're is you're going to get all of this today I'm going to talk about what we've What we presented to the board and directors and trustees and we did it in a joint session with the trustees And after it was over with I went Person by person all 29 that were in the room And said are you on board? And in that meeting all 29 said yes So what i'm going to present to you today is backed fully By the board of directors and the board of trustees and I say it that way because we are all in this airplane together The way that the order goes so will go the foundation over time They are supported. They are manned by us So as we got into this it became very apparent very quickly That we have mutual interest at stake in all of this and so That is how this came to be So we are now at a point on the 29th of march Where i'm going to bring to you a change to our proposal for a change to our bylaws I'm going to tell you how we got there. I'm going to tell you why this is necessary and I am Going to tell you that this is something you should support I'm also going to tell you that this is an emotional issue to some In fact, there are some probably listening on the on the web Maybe even one or two in this room That as I go into this will have made up their mind that this is not a good thing before ever having listened to one word That is that is said today I get that I fully understand that We all come about this from different perspectives There are five generations There's six generations Of the dayans in this room One of them the earliest For the earliest generations is sitting right right here Evelyn Pardon Yvonne joined us last year her dad Is a founder member and she's got a wonderful book with all of his stuff on it And so we look forward to talking with you after this, but we represent A full range Of generations here everybody that's living today and then those that have passed This is an enormous undertaking So it is not unreasonable to think that there would be a wide range of opinion about this But what you're going to hear today is that we have approached this not from emotion, but from logic With facts and data And that's what we're going to present you and I ask that you listen to what we present and then make up your mind But i'm going to expect after all of this is said and done My expectation quite frankly is that i'm going to convince you this is the right way to go Some of you already have sense of what this is about But i'm going to convince you this is the right way to go and i'm going to expect all of you to go Back to your flights and carry this carry this water with you and convince your flights. This is the way to go And on the 30th of may We're going to open this up for a vote And the vote's going to run from 30 may until 4 july And at the end of that I need two thirds of those voting To have voted yes And i've spent several minutes Talking about something i haven't even detailed yet This is what i'm talking about right here. It is the word relevance Everything that I say from here on out Is about relevance Okay And as we as I toyed with what to title this I went through this slide Several different ways and I came up with this because this summarizes exactly what we found early on in our in our research This is a problem of relevance and it's a problem of our future Now we sit and listen to randy and we listen to jerry talk about how great position we are in today This is not going to last very long And i'm going to show you why that is why that is true And here's how we're going to get there i'm going to talk about this first from historical context and put this in In a way that I hope all of you will appreciate where we came from and how we got to be where we are today Then i'm going to get into the membership deep dive itself And i'm going to pull up the charts that we used and i'm going to walk through those so you can see what we saw And then i'm going to tell you about the changes that we have already made I took five changes to the board of directors. They approved four of them the fifth one was the one that I need the vote on And then finally we'll talk a little bit about the way ahead Now a lot of this I'm sure you think you know I thought I knew about the didians until I became the national commander and one of the first things that I did was I went into our archives and they're terrific I went back to the volume that has Papers 1934 on it And I went from that volume to the next one and to the next one. I'm still not finished But I am far enough along in this To pretty well understand The essence of our history and what our founders thought when they thought it And it's striking what you know is that 35 members got together on the 26th of march 82 years ago this past sat or this past saturday They got together and they they chartered this way that we're on Their purpose principally was air power They represented the first that flew their nation's aircraft in a time of war That is what this was about. It was also about camaraderie That is why they designed the Eligibility the way they did they started talks about all of this in 1921 at the time that jenny billy michael saintheas freesland off the virginia capes They got together then one of the reasons it took from 1921 to 1934 to get this together They couldn't decide who they wanted to let in This initially started off about flying cadets and those that had gone through the flying cadet program They didn't want regular army officers and they didn't want anybody from west point and they had bad Experiences with the regular army officers This is not this is no joke This is how this came came to be it took that long for these individuals to get together and decide that the regular army pilot guys were okay It took them that long to do that and then they did And then they sat about on their purpose of air power In 1940 on the cusp of world war two or world war two Our national commander at the time was major general george brett At the annual meeting In 1940 at patterson field Part of what he left them was this He said the didyne group has been the workhorse for the air corps for a good many years In most cases the backbone of our aviation leaders There is more aviation knowledge concentrated in the didynes than in any other group in the world I hope that every didyne will give This his most serious consideration with the view of taking some positive action As in the manner we can really contribute something to the air corps To the national defense and to the order They held their last meeting in january of 1942 just a month after pearl harbor And then the order went into hiatus Not just for the length of the war, but the next annual meeting was not held until october of 1948 In that january 42 meeting One of the things that they talked about was broadening the eligibility up to balloon pilots gunners and the like And then the war got in the way and that was never resolved But membership was an issue with the founders from day one They achieved their initial objective in large part in september of 1947 with the establishment of the air force Up to this point and through 1947 it's important to realize that every single member of the order of didynes Was a us army officer pilot Rated before november 11th 1918 Not only that they were all active duty You had to be an active duty Person to get in this initially and then once you retired you could stay active duty If you were not in one of those categories, you were not a member Just out of curiosity What do you think our membership was say in 1960 by number? Somebody throw out something How many how many world war one pilots did we have? 14 000 world war one pilots. That's the number that we throw out about About what what flew In 1960 There were only 836 members of the order of the die is Only 836 But at this time all of these Were active duty or retired officers post-world war two in 1950 the big meeting they had at In maryland it came up. We got a bunch of world war two flyers We ought to have them in the didi and so they proposed the junior icarus category Remember icarus is the one that the wing melted and he went in I'm not sure if they it's what they thought of the world war two flyers But what they did think they're not ready So in 1950 the opportunity to open the order up beyond world war one flyers was soundly defeated As we went through this One of our members said this Said if greater steps aren't taken are not are not taken in the near future to perpetuate our organization We will become a last man's club in the next generation. What do you think about that? It's a true statement, isn't it? Well interestingly enough it was true in 1953 too because that's when it was said and it was said by general clements mullin Who was the national commander and this was in his letter to the membership in april of 1953 This is a fascinating letter and it's going to be printed in total In the dead a deadless flyer that comes out with the article that talks about much of this But a couple of things i'd like to leave you with out of his letter He says i think it's time for us to consider the manner of extending the glory of those accomplishments throughout the ages to come He was talking not about world war two. He was talking about world war one He went on to say the aircraft as such is a much greater accomplishment than the boat or the wheel Aircraft operations is not delimited it is not delimited by shorelines or paved highways The flying officers of the aviation section of the united states army Signal corps made flying a commonplace Performance more than any other group of people in the whole world We developed the vehicle which the right brothers had proven to be possible Our experience gained during those early days was the foundation of the air industry our transportation And air military operation He was talking about a grand view of what they had done And what he was trying to get them to understand was that the order that was founded To acknowledge those accomplishments was on its way out By 1953 The youngest Dadaian was well over 50 That's why he said that he said in order that our organization May have a purpose for ageless existence He didn't say till the world war two Folks go away or the vietnam folks or desert storm. He said for ageless existence I propose that we dedicate our efforts to a ceaseless program Of improving safety of flight and then there was this and I found this profound He said well our periodic meetings provide great personal interest and satisfaction in visiting with our comrades of past years and meeting new members I believe our achievements in the development of aviation As a vehicle for the greater promotion of international amity Transcends the personal satisfaction of social meetings and warrants are embarking upon a worldwide program for the promotion of safety of flight That is profound. He looked well beyond What they had done Did something that they could represent and to a purpose For the future and out of that Flight safety became the next purpose of the order And not only that The named membership category was approved Not one single person in this room or are on the web right now Could have been a member of this organization until 1953 unless you were a hereditary member Not one person in here not one Navy or marine person either could have done this until 1953 Need to let that gel just a minute because I I found that Fairly striking about where we sit today in the perspective that we tend to take about all of this But in 1959 We took on a new purpose and that was the diddalion foundation Lieutenant general how george our first National commander was also the first chairman of the foundation And just so you know general george stayed Very actively involved in all of this Until near his death in 1986 at 92 years old He became the permanent chairman of the board of the order We'll talk more about that in just a second Well, I'll talk about it right now. We've heard first from jerry today how About all the great things that the the foundation has done just this last year over 175 thousand dollars worth of scholarships and teaching young people how to fly And inspiring young americans toward futures and military aviation that is part of our and one of our objectives It's the number three objective that we have is to do that The foundation is zeroed in on on that part of that In 1972 there was a move by the board of directors To let the honorary memberships go away and to establish a new associate category general george Held the reins very tight And to my knowledge this is only known in the archives because i've never heard it talked about anywhere else And he reaffirmed that the order is about those who first flew their country's airplanes in time of war That is how he wrote it In in the document that he drafted that is how he wrote it. He was reaffirming. This is about world war one pilots 1976 and 78 we had policy changes which allowed reserve officers And separated officers in and in a minute you'll see a chart that shows a very steep Incline of membership increases. It was mostly because of this I'll come back to the 1984 Perspective by the national commander on the 50th anniversary because I think it's very poignant what was said back in 1984 But in 92 93 We had already hit our high water mark as an order in terms of membership 17,500 92 93 time frame we started a decline which has been underway ever since We'll talk more about that as well in the 2001 a policy change that allowed wasps and warrant officers into the order as as well And in 2011 the new pilot initiative was put into place And to be very blunt it has performed Very poorly We have not realized out of the new pilot initiative Near the number of permanent members that we thought we were going to get remember that new pilot initiative offers three years of free membership To anybody graduating from pilot training And after that was up the first 2011 2012 folks that were eligible for permanent membership They aren't joining up So this has not worked out the way that we had that thought it was So point of fact in all of this as we have gone From 1934 forward Our principal objective and point of relevance was air power safety Scholarships and what we have found in all of that as well It's not been something that has made us truly relevant past 1947 The scholarships and things work are terrific. This is programs that we have to continue But it only gets at a portion of what we're about So we came to the point in our discussions within the committee Of answering these two questions What do we want the organization to stand for today? And what in fact Is our purpose and what makes us relevant today Every time something has happened in our past About membership. They try something a new initiative I don't want to call it a gimmick, but they've tried something new that doesn't get at these two questions Relevance is the key to this whole thing. This is the problem The membership piece of this is just a symptom And here's why we need to address this now this chart Let me explain what you're going to look at here across the bottom Is night are the years from 1969 70 all the way to 2015 Up the left side Our membership numbers They go from 2004 6 8 10 up to 20,000 I mentioned that our high water mark was in uh was 17,500 That happened At about the 1988 time frame But let me let me try and put this into a perspective and into context that might might make a little more sense Because this is all about Of all about the context 1969 There were about three and a half million americans under arms The air force had 862,000 people on it the army about a million and a half Navy three quarters of a million at 776,000 the Marines at 310 We were big then we'd come out of world war two with over 16 million million having served And at this point in time at the height of the vietnam war we had three and a half million I mentioned 1972 and all of this and remember That we start here at about 4500. So I asked earlier about the 1960 numbers We went from 836 in 1960 to 4500 in 1969. It was a steep incline The vietnam war ended in 1975 1976 we allowed the reserve officers in 1977 the first women pilots became didiants in 1978 we allowed the separated officers in and the and the Incline of membership just continued forward Vietnam has drawn down. I graduated from pilot training in 1981. There were about 40 folks in class 8107 The air force was producing about 2,000 pilots a year in 1988. We hit our high watermark in 89 the burlin wall fell 1990 we all deployed to desert shield 1991 We started Desert storm the soviet union fell the cold where cold war ended And we started 25 years of continuous combat and contingency operations in 19 From 1969 To 1980 We went From three and a half million under arms to two million under arms The air force went from 862,000 to 557,000 in 1995 We were down to about We were down to 1.5 million. We were 2 million excuse me 2 million in 1990 In 95 we were down to a million and a half and the air force was down to 400,000 This continued has continued all along Today we sit somewhere in the 310,000 range give or take 5 or 10,000 Not 5 or 10 give or take 2 or 3,000 in about the 310,000 range The army went from a million and a half in 1969 today. It sits at just over 500,000 And it's going up or down So we've been in continuous combat ops all of this time We let they we permitted the wasp and the warren officers in at this point This line that you see here is our Life memberships which represents better than half of what our total membership looks like I mentioned the upt graduates that happened in 2011 But you can see that in 1992 93 time frame we started with a decrease of about 300 per year And right now it has accelerated To about 500 per year There is no reason right now for that to stop There's no reason for that to stop So what we did Is we projected this on out This is today We will hold our next convention in washington dc on in 2017 If we do not check the decline of where we are It is likely that that will be our last annual convention Next year All of these are Possible these are not hard and fast but based on a declining membership And based on our using up our life member funds and the like These are the decisions that will have to be taken And as you can see we will start in with issues with the foundation as well as this goes down Stopping some of the programs we will get down to a headquarters that's run by volunteers only And by 2033 We will give the building back To the air force and to Randolph My friends that's 17 years out Now you can debate What any of this might be and when it might happen you can debate that all you want You can't debate the previous slide It's fact And you can't debate the fact that we are in a state of decline There is Possibility that this could level off somewhere down in here But whether or not that makes us a viable national organization or not is is left to be determined So what we did then was we took a look at ourselves now if you want to know really why we are the way We are this is it across the bottom are year groups 20 to 30 years old 31 to 35 36 to 40 You can see on down 51 to 55 56 to 60 66 to 70 75 80 85 90 92 plus I then had them overlay the war years just so we could put this into another Perspective to give us some sense of this And what this basically shows is we've got about 1300 Of our members of our 10,500 members today are over 85 we have 50 over 5200 Fall into this category over 66 The combination of these two puts us over 6500 over 66 years old our average age today as most of you know sits at 68 That quite frankly is low because it's driven by this number This is an artificial number quite frankly because it represents the new pilot initiative And as I've mentioned to you that has not gone well Most of these are not paying are not dues paying members. They're free memberships I take this out and our average age goes to over 70 in a snap The other thing that is striking about this is we and it's hard to see this but You'll see a code down here That shows that the blue this blue is air force army navy Coast Guard and marines and coast guard We are far and away represented by air force members 90 plus percent are of us of that 10,500 are air force members The other piece of this I highlighted the desert storm. This is the 25 years of continuous combat operations Embedded in that I had them highlight what I call the active duty age group This aggregate number right here Is less than 1400 It's about on par with what we've got over here Now that's just the age group There's a significant piece of that or a less Significant piece of that is actually active duty My guess is we're under a thousand active duty out of our 10,500 That's my guess So what this paints is that we are a very mature organization When text talked about the 254 that passed that and he mentioned that this is standard That is true. That is what we are seeing This is going to accelerate as we move to the right over here The problem is we have no one on this side to fill it back in This gets into the relevance part and then into the generational changes The question we have to ask our young airmen today that are flying The question they want answered is why should I be a daddalion In the visits that I've had to this point most of those that participate here Do so because of our ties to heritage. They like that. That is a draw for them But for the rest it's not There's no relevance to what they are doing today to the air power that we represent or that they represent today And that is a problem for us We looked one more thing and this was surprising. This is a simple chart. This is from 2011 This is 2015 just to compare these were our new memberships in this time frame What struck me about this was not this side of the chart The under 25 or so but this side These are new members We've got folks coming in That are over 85 and in 2011 we had about 15 of them that came in and joined the organization Over 85 years old If these numbers stay high then there's no way the average age of the of the order goes down and we we actually perpetuate that problem Not that we don't want them in we do But we certainly have to work on this side So this was our assessment of all of this This is a problem of purpose and relevance for us today The membership issue has always been a symptom We've been in a steady state of decline since 92. We've started at 300 per year. We're now going past 500 per year And there's no reason right now nothing to stop that Especially when you look at the age demographic of our membership And left unchecked we've got you pick the time frame if you don't like 17 Think it'll go quicker pick 15. You think it could go slower pick 20 25, but it's going to go I we are confident in our assessment of this about where this is headed The other thing that we came up with and realized out of all of this That the legacy of our founder members was not An organization Of world war one pilots the legacy of our final founder members was in fact air power They knew that when they Put themselves together They figured that out as they worked toward 1947 and realized the air force as a separate service But as they grew older Our membership were less and less active duty More and more retired and we distanced ourselves from the senior leadership of the air of the air force and the other services To the point that today we are principally a heritage organization That does great things through through our scholarships And through our programs through the foundation But we have little relevance to what air power represents today We need a break Let's take a break and we're going to come back and i'm going to talk about air power today Take uh, let's take, uh, let's take a good 10 minutes and then we'll come back. Okay One of the later members I'm 80 years old today For years Please take your seats Okay, folks, let's take our seats, please Let's take our seats, please and we'll get started back up Magnum if you'll go ahead and make your way up this way, please We've spent Pretty good bit of time so far this morning Talking about The circumstances about how we have gotten to where we are and this notion of relevance And why today relevance is such an important part of the calculus about our way forward As you will see in a few minutes one of the Groups that we are going to target For marketing Is going to be our senior leadership Our active duty senior leadership As someone brought up in our committee When was the last time we approached? Our any of our services leadership and asked them what we could do for them I don't have an answer for that Least by demonstration We have not done that probably in a long long time The other thing I would offer to you is as we consider this notion of leadership Is that in the late 20s? Going into the 40s the army air corps the requirement by law was that Out of our air corps 90 percent Of the serving officers Were pilots they had to be pilots today That percentage of officers at least in the air force Is is something less than 25 percent So what does our leadership look like today? Well just over a week ago Secretary defense nominated general lori robinson Who is the pac-af commander? To be the commander of north com A combatant command general robinson Is an air battle manager? She does not wear the kind of wings that that we fly that that we wear I was In 2006 2008. I was the wing commander on guang which I mentioned to david a minute ago The incoming wing commander For the 36th wing Is a brigadier general by the name of dug cox When I was there he deployed out of barksdale. He was the deputy ops group commander He's a navigator He went on from there to be the vice wing commander of the 36th wing and then the commander of the fifth bomb wing At minot And now he's headed back to guang as a brigadier general today The commander of pey con Is navy admiral harry harris anybody? Heard of him no one with him He was commander pack fleet before taking over as commander of pey con He's a naval flight officer To the air force guys and navigator He is an nfo Those of you that remember admiral bill fallon box fallon Who was not only the commander of pey con, but also the cno or vice cno And the commander of sent comp when he retired Is a naval flight officer a navigator So today our senior leadership Looks much different than it did in 1945 in 1950 53 70 73 It looks much different today the air force Just General larry spencer who was the vice chief of staff of the air force Was not rated at all He came out of the financial field so the point I'm making here Is that the senior leadership that runs our services today Reflects a demographic That we do not represent Now on its surface that may seem okay It may seem that this is the way the the founders set it up But I go back to the fact that in 1934 90 of the people that were wore that uniform were pilots It was a necessity as much as it was A matter of course So what i've Done is magnum and I have talked and he has been a very stalwart member of an advisor on our committee Magnum is going to tell us a little bit about what air power is like today You turn this mic up, please still not there yet. There we go. Great. Thank you general elements I'm honored to stand here today Or we will hear or whatever you want to say And say that I am a diddalion I will also tell you i'm a fighter pilot and I will represent one of the About 1400 or a thousand active duty members that are doings today General Owens asked me to talk about air power and what it is today and its relevance So I mentioned i'm a fighter pilot. I came into 1991 I flew f-15s after being an instructor in aetc and being an air liaison officer with the army for a couple years A little bit different story behind that but I got to the fighter And my first duty assignment was up at omidor Which is a fighter wing. It's not a fighter wing. It was a composite wing still is a composite wing And the people in that wing Were on that other side and those other squadrons to me. I was still a fighter pilot I was flying strike eagles world's greatest fighter And What I quickly realized was that just because I was a pilot I wasn't the team. I was part of that team Because six feet behind me whether I was dropping bombs or crashing into the side of the mountain There was the whistle right there And so as I employed Throughout that that tour It was a team effort And that team continued to extend to the other side of the base and those other squadrons And so I'll tell you that every large force exercise we did The air battle manager was there Leading that as a mission commander briefing up the formation on how we're going to employ air power And then I stepped back from that world for a little while and I did a couple of staff assignments And I went to school and I got smarter or dumber depending on your perspective But when I came back to randoff, I was lucky enough to be part of that team again Where we do have Relevance relevance and training air power for america and training instructors to train that air power So I got toast back over here from vance and we've got jay from columbus glad to see them here And we're producing instructors here at randoff in that pit mission that you all know and love To go teach at pilot train We're doing a lot more than that We've got Sizzos here sizzos are the old navs now the new sizzos And we train instructor combat system officers to go be instructors at pencecola as part of the same wing that i'm in now um I have an iff squad and i'll come back to that in here in just a second But realize they have the wizos that we're sitting in my strike eagle backseat as part of who I am and as a team And then I have an entire squadron as one of my six squadrons here five flying squadrons But that fifth squadron of the flying squadrons is an rpa squadron And let me bring you into the now That is the growth in the air force. We're 307,000 people as general and said But that mission is growing exponentially We are doubling the number of rpa pilots that we're producing this year alone From about 200 to about 400 And I'd like to come over at 13 30 and we'll we'll walk you through that squadron and show you what that looks like But more importantly than that that's part of the team Last year we created more rpa pilots and we created fighter pilots Those fighter pilots me i'm a dinosaur. I've been passed. I will be eaten here in the future but In next year in this upcoming year. We will produce More rpa pilots than any other type of pilot out there mac soft Fighters doesn't matter rpas. Why do I tell you this? Because that's how we're fighting out there All the video that you're seeing on cnn isn't my world's greatest fighter strike eagle stuff. That's another platform And that platform is merely a vehicle an aviation vehicle to employ air power across the spectrum I said i'd come back to the iFF squadron and here's why i'm going to come back to them because they just got back from red flag They did some great training out there at red flag And it blew me away when I had a captain come in and tell me about the day there Because the first thing they did as part of this air power team Is they looked at cyber Cyber what? I don't know what that is. Tell me what that is We were looking at the networks where the networks defended was our information actual information or inserted information by an enemy Were we able to not only defend as a cyber perspective? But were we offensive as a cyber perspective? So were we go out and intruding into networks? Air defenses all those other things that cyber can do now Okay My brain is too small for that. Let's talk about something else. What happened next? Then we started with the intel now all of us have got the intel brief right intel come here and tell me what i'm supposed to Do today tell me what the threat is But that intel is so much different today than it ever was before It's data. It's networked. It's from multi platforms. It's not an rf4c It is rpa's it is national satellite assets. It's all of that and it's fused all together Those assets and that data is all part of air power today And then we got into the main brief sir and here's what we did and that sounded a lot more comfortable to me There was air barrel manager there. There was ground control there. There was mission commander there AWACS was on station everybody was bringing this to the fight And we had rj and we had everybody doing intel signal feeds so that we could adapt our air power to those targets at hand And I got into my comfortable spot where I'm just proceeding from the push point to the ip to the target and dropping my bomb With the whizzo back there guiding it in as I exit stage left But I thought about where I was in 1991 as the fighter pilot And how I walked into a wing thinking that I was everything And how that has fundamentally changed over my career And so I stand before you now as general loans talked about as a leader in the air force And looking across the spectrum that is my operations group and really realizing that that has never been more diverse Nor more team oriented if I'm going to get air power done for america Sir that that's uh all ahead unless you have a question for me. That's terrific. Thank you So where does that leave us? What are we going to do about all of this? What is going to be our purpose? What's going to be our relevance to today? How do we how do we move from an organization that is principally one? That is based on heritage and camaraderie to one that includes those things That goes further to make us relevant to today's air power so that we can reach out And encourage and entice A new generation of airmen into our fold The first question was do we want to do that? This is a legitimate question. We asked ourselves this Do we want to do that or do we want to accept? The inevitability of what we saw on the slides that I showed you And as I mentioned earlier You can debate when it might happen Or how bad it's going to be But you can't debate that it's that it will in fact Happen it's going to happen So in my committee We decided no That is not what the intent of the founders were. That's not what your father wanted To have happened to his organization It is not the intent as it was expressed By general clements mcmullen in 1953. He was very very clear And so we took that and we went back to the wisdom of our founders and decided the answer is We need to continue the perpetuation of the organization. In fact The right way to look at this is the way that I looked at any position of responsibility that I had when I was on active duty And that was that I was the steward of that particular position until it was my time to go and somebody came in behind me Well, each of us is a steward of this organization in the name of a world war one flyer In fact What makes us unique Amongst all of the other aviation organizations that are out there and there are many of them You are I'm sure there are folks in here that are members of type organ type organizations whether it's the caribou or our Skyraider or whatever it might be the qb's whatever What makes us different from all of them? We are the only ones that hold our individual memberships In the name of a world war one flyer. No one else does anything like that We are not unique because we are pilot only organization. That is not true So that is not an argument that can be played That can be played Against this discussion We are unique because we honor our founders through named membership. So here's what we proposed And we took this forward the first thing was that we need a mission statement This organization has never had a mission statement. It has had a set of tenants and objectives But nothing that we could truly rally around as an organization and say This is what we're about when somebody comes up to ask me What the dadalians do after I explain what a dadalian is I can tell them we advocate for air power We honor those that flew and fly in defense of our nation I don't have to go through our tenants and objectives and all of Could tell me how pulling your founder member number is no kidding William co1's 5 9 5 3 Somewhere along the lines We have lost this We have lost our connection to our founders in most any flight meeting that you have If we're not talking about Something going on today Tonight magnum has got the f 35 Project officer from here at aetc going to speak to the speak to the folks if you don't have somebody talking about something today What are we talking about We're talking about what you did Talking about what you did What you did It's not that it's bad But somewhere in all of this we lost sight of what our founders did And I will go back to that wonderful letter that clements mc mullin wrote to the membership in 1953 That we need That to be up on the forefront of our organization. That's why we exist We don't exist for the guys flying in harm's way today or for the guys and gals that flew in Previous conflicts we exist because of the world war one flyers So the the part of this about the honoring those that flew is to reinvigorate that within our organization We may even look at rephrasing Our our oath To include something about our founder members that we are who we are Honoring by name We need to reconnect with our founders And we need to honor those that continue to fly today We need to recognize that this is not a heritage organization So the advocating about air power also takes into account this notion and the question is going to come up What does that mean? Actually, it came up the other day and I had a fine discussion about what does advocate mean. Well, I said it means support Well, what does support mean? Well, this could take a number of Direction with other we can partner yet. We'd be known For advocating for air power whatever form that might take This organization does have a history of sitting on the sidelines and not taking a stand about anything Only twice that I can find have we actually written a letter one was about Not supporting Those that went across the border and the candidate in vietnam I remember we took us we took a stand on that That was that was not difficult to do But very few times have we ever actually as an organization taken a stand on anything that was mattered today We need to think about that and i'm not prescribing that that's what this is But we need to explore how we become more relevant in today's environment The second thing was to amend our objectives for relevance Because we elevated the first objective up to our mission statement and because of our discussion On being relevant to today's air power We created as our number one objective In priority that we support air powers current total force Now we use the air forces Definition of this because it was comprehensive. So we have active guard reserve and civil air patrol Some might go well why civil air patrol in there because the secretary the air force said it's in there And we've had a relationship with them in the past so part of this in an effort To advocate for air power is to support today's total force That happens strategically from the headquarters level In our advocacy of things that matter at the strategic level and it happens at the flight level Where you live especially if you are tied to an active base where They are performing any mission whatever and Especially if it's a deployment mission an operational mission But the training missions certainly apply because they deploy as well How do we engage at the flight level with our with our active duty? Folks that are performing the mission The second one is the sixth objective Which is now reads to recognize Exceptional performance by military aviators. We took the word pilot out Did you know that in all of our tenants? And all of our objectives That the word pilot is owned was only mentioned one time And it was in this objective because it said recognize exceptional performance by military pilots Last may We gave the exceptional pilot award out to an f-15e crew To the pilot and whistle We set the precedent last may Acknowledging there's more than one person in that airplane So it made sense to us in terms of relevance and you'll see why as we move forward down here to acknowledge that excellence as we would like to recognize it Can be by the community of aviators not just pilots The third thing and this is where this all started. We actually got this one pretty quick This is who we're going to market to and you'll notice that as we look at this These different cohorts. There's six of them we want to market to current members right now today We are losing about 300 current members every year not by passing away Because they are dropping out of the organization. They are becoming inactive. They are not We are not meeting all of the their personal objectives in all this. We are not relevant to them personally and they are leaving us So the combination of them leaving by choice Those that are passing away The average of about 300 that we're bringing in every year We're losing net about 500 per year So it became incumbent. I wasn't expecting this. We need to market to our membership And because we represent a number of generations We need to market very specifically to age groups So our idea and thought here Is to market to the 25 to 45 year olds because those are generally the active duty age group And then beyond that to the next age group up to about 60 And god bless everybody that is older than that and I will be shortly We're doing fine in the in the older ages. We don't need to spend a lot of effort in the older ages Just keep walking talking and being part of all of us So beyond the current members, we need to then market to the new members We need to figure out within that same age group category How we answer the question. Why should I be a didalia? Or put more bluntly what's in it for me? Especially for that 25 To 45 year group the millennials Their take on life is different than ours Almost all of ours. There is a millennial in here They look at life differently. They hear differently. They see differently We need to figure out how to break that Break that code and figure out how to market to them As I told the board of directors in October We cannot do this internally We do not have the wherewithal The knowledge The oomph To do this part internally. That's why I asked for a marketing firm And that's why we have a millennial sitting over there as part of this And that's why Candace is helping us figure out how and what makes these younger folks take Our vision is that we start to fill in that membership Graph on the low end of this To help us with the end game of what our membership will be My sense is We will never see 17,500 again My desire is that we don't go To a point keeps this organization going in the spirit that the founders intended it for One way to do that is through Marketing to the act of duty senior leadership We have to be careful with that and I'm going just the fact that I am doing this in this audience Live on the web. This is going to be tape televised and the like. This is out there forever I'm telling you we need to market to them When I joined in 1983 The biggest reason that I went to the meeting Because my squadron commander said Let's go He was there. The other squadron commanders were there Wing commander was there This was a place that junior officers could go To be with the senior leadership In an environment other than the flight line It was important. It was part of their maturation process That allowed them and us and me to learn about my senior leadership Other than hey, you I enjoyed that part of this We need that back I need to be able to walk into the chief of staff's office as a national commander of the didaliens And regardless of what badge that chief of staff has on the lapel I need that person to understand that we represent His whole air force The same with the army The same with the navy. I need to be able to go in and say we represent air power today Not that we Are just a pilot organization and we think we know better than anybody else But because we represent the full demographic of the american population that serve our country today That's why And finally We need to market for the foundation. We need to market externally For an external audience and donors They can make there's no reason that this that this foundation instead of 175 thousand dollars a year isn't doing a million dollars a year There's no reason that that can't happen other than the fact that we We don't have the resources internally to help promote that in a way that makes Makes good marketing sense So we are going to take that on as well The last thing and i've talked about the new pilot initiative Returns on that are abysmal. It is not where we want it to be So the final recommendation we took to the uh to the board that they approved Was to do a complete review of that and then to relaunch it And it may not it may not take the same shape that it was in before But that's going to be a top priority and we are going that is something we can work on Right now all four of these Were brought and approved by the board of directors. So these I mean, I am informing you of what has been done We have a new mission statement. We have changed our objectives. We are going to go about marketing We're going to develop a marketing plan And then we're going to uh, we've got the uh, the committee identified for the review of the Of the uh new pilot initiative and we're going to step out smartly on these things We are going to do this. We are going to do these things regardless And I say regardless because the fifth thing that we took was this one We are proposing that we expand the eligibility of the didiants Right now that eligibility States that current or former Officers of all services You have to be a military officer a warrant officer or wasp of any service component You have to be a pilot that is what can be a didarian today We are proposing to keep this language the At least with the military officer warrant wasp in any service component Keep the pilot and add to that this Navigator combat systems officer naval flight officer air battle manager astronaut rpa pilot and flight surgeon This is a bigger list than what we started with And here's why and we did our homework on this We went into each of the services. I personally pulled up all of the regulations that were out there AFI air force instruction 11-402 Army regulation 600-105 The navy's mill perse manual 12 10-10 20 and 30 all of them address Aviation and this and and those things that contribute to aviation I was looking for commonality between them Because without some reference that we can hang our hat on Then any discussion about increasing memberships become becomes arbitrary And one of the things that came out of the meeting with the directors. I had a go-do out of that I didn't like it, but it was fair uh, and We went back you're laughing they do that to three star generals retired so Especially in retirement So I had a go-do so I went back and I did we did the work on this And when we came back what we decided Was that Looking at all of the services through all of the regulations The one that best represented what we wanted to do was in fact afi 11-402 That afi Recognizes seven Rating categories And the seven it recognizes Is navigator combat systems officer air battle manager It uses the term observer in afi 11-402 But in fact it is awarded by nasa. It means astronaut. That's what it means RPA pilot and flight surgeon The army We use the term rated in the air force. So these are all rated Specialties the army uses the term rated But it only has two It has an army aviator, which is a pilot And then they recognize the flight surgeon as a aviation rating The navy does not use the term rated except as it relates to their enlisted force Navy enlisted have ratings And if you ever figure that one out come write a book on it and you'll make a lot of money because I could never figure out the navy rating system for their enlisted Well what they do have in their personnel manual In 12 10-10 20 and 30 all three of them They acknowledge and recognize naval aviators with your pilots naval flight officers, which are Navigators Weapons controllers and everything else everything else goes into the naval flight officer and and then they also have Flight surgeons they also they also do the flight surgeons The marines pretty much follow The naval and so did the coast guard they pretty much follow the the sea service in terms of their how they How they deal with ratings and because they use as much of the same schools So for us to be consistent and remember that this This afi 11-402 has its basis in title 10 authority It in law That's how this is determined So in our discussions and what I took back to the to the directors and trustees was that to be consistent to be fair to be above reproach in this we chose 11-402 plus the service equivalents Ergo, we include the naval flight officer in this by name Does that make sense? This is the proposal And the way it will read named member A current or former commission slash warrant officer or wasp In any component of the united states armed forces Who is or has been a military pilot? Navigator combat systems officer naval flight officer air battle manager astronaut RPA pilot or flight surgeon who is accepted as a member to perpetuate the membership of a founder member Only two named members are authorized by any one founder member And that's not a change that has been consistent with the bylaws for a long time In anticipation of questions We considered Early on a separate category That we keep the name category as it was And create something Different Maybe the junior acaria category We laughed you laugh The reason that doesn't work is because any way you cut that It becomes less A lesser membership in our order We did not want to do that We wanted everybody treated the same with the same rights of Speech the same rights of voting to be treated as a normal to die in and what And I was actually in favor of the two category thing early on I really was because I could not get past this notion Of the pilot fraternity aspect of all of us I had a problem with that I was not in favor of this But then when I went back and I looked at the history of the order And I looked at all of the changes that had been made over time and there's been many of them I remember that to start with you had to be a U.S. Army pilot officer Rated before November 11th, 1918 That was the requirement to be a member of this order Only one of those things Only part of one of those things remains true today and that is the pilot piece The other part of that is no longer valid And as we looked at that it made more and more sense that the purpose of the perpetuation Was not about them and us It was all about honoring the world war one pilot officers through named membership And once I made that connection I had not only had no problem with it It was a very simple leap for me So I am I think this is absolutely the right way to go with us We do not need a different category It it would not serve our purpose as well Rather than make us more relevant It would Make us more discerning and different in how we approach our our membership and that would make our problem more difficult We need our membership to reflect our power today It's a simple statement, but it carries a lot of power and weight with it This allows us to better advocate For air power if we represent it in a better way We continue to honor those that that flew we continue that tradition through the named membership Now here's one that some of you are probably going to swallow real hard about This is not about numbers Because let me tell you what's not going to happen On the fourth of july when this vote is over with And we are successful and I we passed this by-laws change and it goes into effect On the fifth of july Well, I'm not going to have a line of folks standing at the headquarters door at stinson's flight or anywhere else There's not going to be a line of folks standing there Waiting to join The only place that might happen is with the rpa guys But that's not going to happen immediately Because they don't know about us Most of the air force today does not know about us and what it is that we do So I go back to the previous slide about who we market to How we market to them and what we say when we market to them How do I answer the question? What's in this for me? I have to be able to relate to five generations of airmen And those that are younger than most of us in here today Are a little bit more challenging than what we were Something came to me as I was finishing this Um And it is in our way ahead I told our meeting as we gathered yesterday. We had a final meeting before today And one of the Guys in the committee made the comment that we're done, you know that we thought this was going to be it And I looked at him going to go no No The work now starts this is the easy part This is the easy part So what i'm telling you all of you those that are on the web and those that are here in the in the room When we affect this change We then have to know kidding follow through with the marketing piece of this This will not solve our problem by itself So i'm not asking you to do this as a panacea approached anything This is a very complex problem We recognize that in our group I want you to understand that and be able to talk about this With those in your flight that this is not about immediately generating numbers. It's not going to happen Truthfully what this does this affords us the opportunity to engage with the services From from o6 level up to o10 From herald to general captain to admiral This allows us to have a conversation with them about our relevance to their service And then from that we can get into much more detail about how we proceed with this That's what this is about And that's what I need to be clear that you understand and what i'm trying to communicate to you This is not a one-shot deal Any one of these taken out of context doesn't doesn't work all of it has to be done and the thing is I told you that The first four director approved actions are going to occur regardless that is true But i'm also going to tell you if this fails If this fails it makes that portion of this that marketing incredibly difficult Now you're I will get argument back from that Well, let me just Do this real quick And here's the argument that's going to come they're going to somebody's going to say let's let's do something Let's try another thing You pick the thing let's try it And here's the deal Oh, it's not there The backup's Pardon Okay And over the last dozen years We have had no less than a dozen Initiatives we celebrated and honored one of those today the spencer award for recruiting We also had as one of our initiatives Every member bring in a new member If that had happened we'd have had 20 000 members by now We have tried lots of things nudging around at the symptoms of this What I am proposing to you Is a comprehensive plan to go after relevance And address membership as part of that And make us relevant to today's air power We have tried we have tried numerous things and they're all it's not that they're not good But in their their little slice without without taken into a much broader context For the problems that we have They simply will not work By themselves So Let me get back to where I was today For two months for the next two months We are going to promote this And on the 30th of may we're going to initiate the vote We will do this electronically and we'll do it By mail We're going to stuff 10 000 plus ballots it'll include a ballot and a letter from me that will go into some detail You may not realize this But you Here in this room and on the web That are active in a flight I found this shocking only represent about one third of our membership found that striking So we are going to do everything we can to reach the other two-thirds over the next two months We will make a deliberate attempt to visit with some flights neck and texan i are on On the hook to go do some of that in the next couple of months And i'm counting on you To carry this water and this message back And everybody gets a vote And here's my real interest in this I absolutely 100 want you to vote yes You're going to vote something other than yes. I don't care if you vote or not I would prefer that you didn't I would prefer that you didn't And let the rest of us carry this ball forward And let us put this airplane into afterburner get it off the ground And fly That's what I want you to do. That's what i'm asking all of you on the web to do Is let us do this So I need all of you to think bigger than yourselves remember what mullin said about the camaraderie piece It's important, but it is not everything And please don't imagine In some in some way That you are protecting them because you're not if you vote no You are absolutely 100 percent not protecting them If anything you risk letting their organization die And that is not something That my committee the board of directors or the board of trustees wants to have happened So we're going to commit to the mission and purpose We're going to have and define a three-year strategic plan And we're going to partner with the flights to make sure that they are part of that and understand it And that we have a way ahead We're then going to get about the business of advocating both strategically and tactically and we're going to embrace the legacy of our founders We're going to bring them back to the forefront and acknowledge them For the role that they played in air power that exists today I think that's way cool We lost that somewhere along the way And I'm excited about the prospects of going back out and finding it And then something came to me I've heard the term what we need to be We need to be careful about quality membership and the quality of who comes into our organization I absolutely 100 percent agree with you. We have the stick and the control over who does that But I would leave you with the notion that quality membership equals quality Or positive advocacy that advocacy makes us relevant and that relevancy makes us sustainable If you take a piece out of that none of this works And what I've given and provided for you today gets us to that point Now some of you may wonder what our founder members might have to say about all of us Well, it just so happens that last week An 83 year old gentleman by the name of harry d steward came into the offices He is a he is a hereditary member much like of us And marine had the opportunity to talk to him. His dad's name was malcom Malcolm flew and got his wings in 1917 Flew for 34 years His three sons all flew two graduated from west point. They're gone now and harry's the only one remaining He regrets that he couldn't be here today or I would have him stand up and make this pitch himself marine asked him after she told him what we were about And what was going to be proposed. He said, what do you think your dad would have to say About rpa pilots being part of the order of the dead And without thinking or question his immediate comeback was he'd love it He would be for anything That promoted the defense of our nation What is our first tenant His nation before self I mentioned to you early on about the 50th anniversary 50th anniversary I've lost my page I do good right up until I don't On the occasion of our 50th anniversary the national commander of the time was lieutenant general john flin Long time pow from vietnam On his way back from meeting he wrote his insert for the datalus article And at the end of it he said these things He says only our maker knows how we didians will be transversing the skies Even space on our 75th and 100th anniversaries Some second lieutenant newly graduated this year may well be our national commander on our 75th anniversary, which was in 2009 Our national commander on our 100th anniversary may not yet be born The 100th will be in 2034 and 18 years And there probably will be considerable change in our configuration And even composition of the didiots Let us continue to nurture this gradual change It is good as we have seen on this 50th anniversary Even necessary for survival provided that we never violate The principles and objectives of our founding fathers, which are implicit In the didi you know That was in 1984 He talked about gradual change We have not had a significant change To our order Since 1953 So The responsibility rests with us It rests with each of you To embrace this and carry it forward And perpetuate our organization So i'm going to ask You on board You Dex Randy Joe Bruce Are you on board? I learned something from a from a dear friend of mine And it went something like this People know what the right thing to do is even if they don't like it And I realize that in part of this I risk my personal Let's call it appeal I risk my personal appeal to all of our didarian members By what i'm doing I can live with that Because even though There are those that don't Like this They know what's right And they will support this But then they may not talk to me I'm okay with that Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah Fortunately, you don't have a mic The good general's proposition was that they found me appealing to start with and Yeah, okay. I'll give you that You guys on board Ed I used to do this when I was active Dude, you scared the hell out of people We need it's not on yet Let me see if I get this one Test There we go Okay Um I thought it was a great presentation You went down through the numbers There are things that have changed In the years I think that um The original organizations of flyers and there were many Centered around battles that the flyers were fighting That a lot of the army leadership were against You know, Billy Mitchell was not supposed to sink the battleship So, uh, there there was this common advocacy common battlefield that everybody wanted Needed to be on together What we have today with the a of a May be filling a lot of this niche to where I don't see anything wrong with what you advocate Because air power has changed and I think I've said for a long time the admiral You know is not on the bridge, you know directing this weapon that weapon. He's a battle manager so, uh Morphing changing with the times rpa's their role in today's world is absolutely You know essential. I mean things have changed But I don't know that this saves the organization What what is it that makes us unique? That that binds us together and it's advocacy advocating for air and space power is what AFA does quite well quite honestly So how do we? You know, I don't I'm this is really a question Because what discussions happen on what are the battles we're going to fight today as a group? You know to improve air safety to improve the use of air power To make sure the the country knows we've been engaged in active combat For a lot more years than they think we have I mean, what is it that binds us together as a group that makes us special because if an air battle manager joins the group under the new plan What's in it for them? Let me address it maybe in two parts The The the thing that makes us special Is in fact our heritage That is what makes us unique amongst all the other organizations all the other service type organizations and everything The fact that we celebrate honor and represent by name World war one pilots that makes us special and unique The issue with relevance Is what helps us relate to today's air power in the 40s and 50s The Order of the day had a very specific purpose that it that it targeted which was Which really culminated in september 47 it really did They understood that What they did then would not carry forward. So they that's why they They took on the notion of safety why we then took on the notion of the scholarships and And the like of inspiring young people all of that still is is relevant But what we can do to help us with With the cause of relevancy to To the services in general one is we're not Even though we're 90 air force. We don't have to represent ourselves as an air force organization So we are not afa We are not the navy league. We are not kwade the fact that andy sits up here and is on the board I guess at kwade, right? He was the president of kwade and is the vice president of us Uh, the fact that I talked to vice admiral gerry unrocked down at pennsycola yesterday Makes makes us different from the other service specific organizations We can represent air power in total we can represent service specific Uh interest but represent air power in total there's work to do here. I won't I won't I won't kid around about that And even with what we have done what I propose None of this is a guarantee of success It does best posture us To go forward and be successful I I won't I won't and can't stand up here and tell you that this solves all our problems But in our efforts in dealing with all of us The actions that we we've uh prompted here today Help position us to do this as best we can Now there are some that would say if I can't guarantee then why should I change a fundamental piece of of of our tradition Because you need to because you need to think bigger than what we are and and let's recognize where we where we can be with this So I can't I can't guarantee this Mike please One thing I'd add is in albuquerque where I'm from the 17th flight Is I'm working with civil air patrol I'm creating new pilots They now have a balloon that was donated to them. They are looking at buying another one The country is on the verge or is already into a huge pilot shortage Right and the FAA is addressing some of this because the stick and rudder skills are being lost Some of the buffoonery we've seen With aircraft accidents were very avoidable. I mean it was buffoonery So as an organization Anything that helps us promote good stick and rudder skills good aviation sense Air sense and getting young people into flying and wanting them wanting to be pilots Is going to help the nation overall because again, we're we're into a huge pilot shortage now That the military is not cranking out the pilots we used to The airlines don't have the the resources From us to draw from anymore. So, uh, like I said, I'm partnered right now with civil air patrol I wrote the proposal form to submit So that they could get another balloon and it's all about teaching air sense And the judgment that comes with with being an aviator because as we all know You have to make decisions when you're flying because when you don't do anything That's a decision and hope you can live with it So so anyway, this is where I mean I again I have no problem with your proposition Okay, it just is a matter of taking it far enough to advocate for more pilots for the country For the airlines for all of us I think it's a good thing. Okay We we very deliberately Left this I had to come to you. I had to get this on the table now because we we can't Progress with our marketing piece until this question is answered On the 18th my committee gets back together to start tackling the what's next piece of this So we are we're all in this together and I we are excited about any proposition That can help define what that advocacy means to us in in total We'll we'll take any of those kinds of things Dave. So I think that's I think that's terrific And before I continue around the room, let me just stop and let let's open this up to the floor Go ahead Keith For those of you who don't know who I am colonel Keith ward. I'm the vice wing commander at the 163rd attack wing out in California, we used to fly tankers prior to that. We were f4s Now we fly reapers so MQ9 remotely piloted aircraft we converted to that about two years ago in 2005 we converted from tankers to predators and So far we have flown Over 110,000 combat hours. We have done 365 24 7 since 2006 Without a single day off And I can tell you one thing as a member of the dadalians my wing commander is a member of the dadalians I've got three or four other manned aircraft pilots that have joined the dadalians I've got seven 18x. That's the undergraduate remotely piloted aircraft training candidates in the pipeline right now That are going to be coming to my unit The air forces goal is eventually to have 90 percent Of the rpa pilots out there to be 18x These are going to be individuals that will probably have never flown a manned aircraft How do I as a wing commander Stand as a dadalian and look at my 18x 19 or 90 percent of my force and say You can't join this organization Because you didn't fly manned aircraft. I studied the objectives. I've studied the tenants And I can tell you hands down there is not a single one of those objectives Or any of those tenants that our rpa pilots are not fulfilling 24 7 365 It is the new air power. It is part of the new air power We do missions where special ops or joint and coalition partners will not go forward without an rpa in the stack Because of the capabilities that we bring I do have some opinions on better ways to train Our rpa pilots, but that's a strategic doctrinal discussion that I probably need to have with That guy over there, but just to bring some perspective For my flight I wrote a talking paper over this upcoming vote And just to give you a couple of quotes at the end of it Back in 1945 General Henry Hap Arnold on vjday said the next war may be fought by airplanes with no men in them at all Take everything you've learned about aviation and war Throw it out of the window and let's go to work on tomorrow's aviation. It will be different from anything the world has ever seen And then just recently General Herbert hot Carlisle comac commander acc testified before the senate armed services committee On the status of remotely piloted aircraft mission in the air force senator cotton from arkansas stated Maybe our society should pay them the respect they deserve Then honor their service and not attach any stigma to what they do since they are keeping us safe in our beds at night I agree with general owens wholeheartedly 100 percent I know there are people that are going to disagree with this But I believe 100 percent That the relevancy of what this organization has and to establish and continue the legacy of what our founder members had And wanted to instill for future generations Comes with this vote and us allowing not just rpa's But air battle managers navigators and everybody else who have flown aircraft or done aviation skills in defense of our nation Appreciate your time Over here, please Thank you. This is going to be short How many of you are vfw american legion members? Millions of people every all the veterans. They're in big trouble. They have been in big trouble Membership is dwindling at a alarming rate. Why one word relevancy I commend you sir on addressing that word And if we don't do something We're going to go the root of many other organizations That did not keep up with that word Other questions or comments general owens Sir over here hang on. Go ahead magnum Sir, I'd like to address the very good argument from albuquerque There and it spoke to something that just happened to me yesterday Um, and the the discussion there was we need stick and rudder skills. We're facing a tremendous pilot shortage Absolutely 100 true And what we are also facing is the integration of air power Across our nation and you need look no further than the f a circular that many of you private pilots out there Have probably read that involves rpa operations. So the drone operations And just yesterday The wing here across joint base san Antonio named my office the 12 ops group As the integrator of air power both for manned aircraft as well as unmanned aircraft We have many fields operating right around here And so we're not going to just need to stick and rudder skills, which absolutely we can't build them fast enough But we're also going to need that relevancy to look at air power as it evolves when Amazon starts delivering packages By drones, right? Where's john larison? John, how you feeling right about now? With this with the skies that you're operating in with your lighter craft as well And so I think it's important that we look at that relevancy as we transition the national airspace And how we bring air power to the fight okay over here Sir from the pope flight a couple of comments On your pilot initiative One of our college students that we awarded a scholarship to Recently finished training at seamore He's on the way to lake and heath. He's not going to see the dalyan flight for his whole tour over there If you're stationed west of hickam, you're not going to find a dalyan flight So I think part of the initiative is a part of marketing is we got to figure out how to get those overseas flights in the continent in europe I think there's two There's none in okinawa and none in uh in japan so We got to figure out how to get those going again. So the the young pilots or the Whoever we approve can have that opportunity and second we see our pool to be the army Pope air force base has very little air force presence now We're having trouble recruiting the army So whatever you can do at the director level, whether it be the makeup Or any tools you can provide us to help recruit the army. We'd appreciate it. Okay Hey, sir, um great presentation Uh, I'll have to be a little bit of an ace there. So I did listen But uh, if you could go I don't know if you can go back to the slide of the people that are the career fields that you want to let in Can you go back? Oh, hang on just so you can't I got it If you if you look at that what is that demographic? Great presentation on the current demographic of of the membership But if you you add up all those all those career fields that you're going to add right now You're going to get maybe 6,000 people in the current active duty The navigator combat system officers the flight the naval flight officers. They're a battle manager They're dying career fields just like anything else. The only thing that is growing is the rpa career field the astronaut We've got maybe four five hundred astronauts Uh and the flight surgeons just within the air force. I mean you're talking a small group so You were somewhat dismissive of not letting them in because if if we let those in then that gives you the power for advocacy Was that is that the general argument or yes, okay? You're not going to get advocacy with anybody in the air force these days Unless as soon as you go into a general heightened or a lorry robinson the first thing they're going to tell you is I want an organization that's got everybody in it. I need the back end of that rpa team I need you to have them in there. I need you to have space folks in there So you're not going to have the advocacy just by letting that go repent The first thing they're going to tell you is you got to let the other folks in So anyway, that that's just my that's my The other thing the second point was the afa There's not only afa. There's a ton of advocacy groups that you've got to compete with And this organization. I mean it just doesn't have it afa has over a hundred members They have they are located in dc. They have a media operation. They have marketing operations I can tell you if you talk to general spencer today He will tell you that he struggles getting access to the senior leaders within the air force and within naval flight aviation And he struggles to find that advocacy as well too So when you're when you talk about changing the rules or changing the background simply to get open the door You're not going to get to get the doors open. I just don't see it happening. So anyway, that that's my take But I I appreciate that. Um, we in our discussions about about this we recognize that In general the numbers are small and and with respect to the navigators at least It is a dying career field. The sizzles not not so much. The numbers are just small the combat systems operators The numbers are just small As we go forward with this I respectfully Disagree with the notion that this doesn't help us with the relevancy part I do believe that As a pilot only organization in today's environment That that is a huge stumbling block to getting into a door with with any of the senior leaders talking about relevancy While this may not include everybody It includes and we very deliberately went after this is what the air force calls rated This is what the air force calls it. It's not this is not what general robinson or general heightened call it This is what the air force calls rated. So we are We've defined ourselves as a An an aviation fraternity by by this definition by what we're talking about here I think that carries a lot of water I having Having fairly recently walked in in these circles I I think that to be true, which is also why I I also Think with the afa Concern that you had not looking to compete with them I want to partner with them I don't want to compete with a service Organization I want to help them and them help us. I want to find a way that we can can do business together I think that will help us get to a A big part of what you're what you're talking about. It's not a competition Sure This his point for the web was that we You're right. We had to draw the line somewhere So we drew a line that we thought was defensible And I I I have I have no problem Defending what we've provided here to any one of the Any one of those people that we're talking about Here's the alternative We do nothing And if we do nothing That slide that the chart that showed the slide this way is a matter of fact. It's not a matter of proposition so I choose That we go this way And Don't Don't have any idea I I just No, you're fine This is a good discussion. I what I hope Is that somebody Has a discussion like this at this with this level of effort to go into the discussion Before 60 years passes That's what I would hope It took that long for the 53 thing to settle in and for us to realize that today We're in the same position that the guys were in 53 I made the comment that the oldest uh The youngest to die was well over 50 We're not far from that on a by average now 85 percent of our folks are over 65 Yeah, that's a great discussion. I'll I'll end there. Okay. I'll yield the floor. Thanks Joe Are we going to get in trouble with grassroots? And uh, I say that because I think there's a great opportunity here to go out and work at the state level for Our representatives Which I've been doing with a group of guys for five years to go in and talk about things that are necessary for the air force and air power and aviation And we go to our senators and we go to our congressman And we sit down and talk about what we're going to talk about beforehand and make a point You know the the point you made about having air university publish a paper when the Daedalus flyer, that's a very good point You know, but the people that are going to vote on some of these issues are living in our communities And unless we're stepping over a line someplace and there probably needs to be some guidelines that go out for it We have a powerful Voice for the people that are recognized in our community to have access to the politicians We're the ones voting for them. You're living in la la land. I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not suggesting that for you But washington's just a tough damn place and to get the policy makers and get the attention you need The guys that we can get to are the ones that know that if we say don't vote for you They're not going to go back in office And they will listen so we never fail to have a chance to get access to these people And in fact have ongoing dialogues That I think are starting to make a little bit of difference as we're looking at the hard times that the military is having So in that regard Maybe there are some guideline things to be about what our thing is, but I'll tell you what I still think the The voice of the dead aliens given the experience that is represented Just in this room about air power and what air power can do is a very powerful voice Thanks, joe Go ahead. Yeah. Hi. I'm ed conant. I'm from flight nine. I will say ahead of time. I don't represent the flight Obviously, I represent myself Very compelling Presentation, but I'm here to tell you One nice thing about being retired is I don't have to play group think okay Get to speak my mind. I'm I'm a member of the dead aliens for about two years. I joined for I'll say because of who we are And because of what we are doing Okay, we're a member We're an organization of military aviators and I do agree with the discussion on that But I have put my life at risk in prosecution of the wars in our country And at least in Dayton we run CFIP. We do air camp. We do scholarship. So we do good things Now I'm a member of a half dozen or more other organizations who in here is Okay, all right I'm a member of a f a they advocate for air and space power I'm a member of the society of experimental test pilots Okay, I think they have a criteria you have to be a test pilot to be in Where am I going with this you have to know who you are and what you want to do this seems like Well, you're saying that I have to be like an rpa pilot with all due respect When that rpa gets shot down the guy might spill his coffee It is not the same And it doesn't mean they're not warfighters. I totally get the warfighter thing Except there's a dozen organizations for war fighters Okay, I got all that so I'm just providing a counterpoint to you that says I'm not I don't really care how big the dailies is whether it's a thousand two thousand five thousand eight thousand I want it to be true to who it is Okay And by the way the one chart that you threw up that you need to throw out is that line that says we're gonna die You can't tell me what's happening tomorrow Much less in 15 years Every one of you is a member of other organizations that advocate for air and space power I go to to a dailies meeting. Sorry. I can't say it easily so that I can talk to an old guy about what it was like fly p51 Okay, that's the difference and I'm sorry. I just I'm frustrated that by packaging this all together You have effectively squashed debate About it because I can I can sit here and argue Effectively, I think to myself That I share so much with that, uh, wizzo who sat five six feet behind me Because we went to war together and put our lives at risk together I won't argue the same for rpa pilots, which doesn't mean I don't totally respect what they do And as a friend of a bunch of astronauts, I totally respect what they do Okay, but they're not going to let me into their astronaut organization by the way Because I'm not an astronaut Anyways, I'm rambling on I'm providing a counterpoint respectfully to you that says by packaging all this together You've made very hard choices for me for one I cannot support this because I don't share In this organization, I don't share the background with all those folks I do in other organizations, which is why I'm a member of those organizations I'll leave it at that. I know I'm now the unpopular person in the room But uh, but I think we ought to have a good discussion on it. Thank you. Thank you anybody else like to Had a comment This is I I welcome I'm not upset. I welcome what you what you say. I like you. I respectfully disagree with you Because I because my as I mentioned to you when I came in the organization and I've been a member for a long time I thought I knew what we were about What I found was this is not a manhood issue There's nothing about this the the organization. That's a manhood issue This is about and it's rude about celebrating The and honoring the world war one flyers. This is not about me. It was never about me And I think the folks that were on my committee would tend to share They share my my sense of this And I learned something through this whole process as I mentioned At the outset of this I was not I did not come into this discussion and start this with the intent of making this proposal This fell out of a very Very logical approach to all of us So I I stand behind it. I stand behind the packaging of it It is what it is and the fact whether it I am happy to entertain Discussion on this but my intent make no mistake When I came in here It was to answer the questions before they were asked If I'd not done my homework and all of this that I would have stand up here and just taken potshots from everybody. So I'm I'm okay with where I stand on this and you get a vote Or not don't vote Yes, sir, let's get a microphone back, please. I'm jack cremin and and uh, I'm not with any flight because I'm too far away I live in hunt But yesterday I had lunch with a friend who's a naval aviator Who's not eligible because he was enlisted in world war two is a as enlisted in naval aviator And he's got a lot of combat missions as an enlisted guy So he can't come but if you were to change officer warrant officer to enlisted you might get some more people that way What about the guys and awacs that are in the back of the back of the bus? They're not rated, but they're up there flying their advocates for For aviation also actually the air battle managers are the ones that are in the in the back of the bus That's what that's what they're called. Yeah, okay the officers We're about the enlisted guys. They're back there, too Our our intent with this was to keep This an officer based organization Our intent was to put bounds on it so we could remain um a top notch organization Based on the criteria that at least part of the criteria that the that the founders laid out So we were deliberate in keeping the officer piece of this. We could open this up the the river rats Took their Took their requirements and basically open them up to anybody that just said we believe We we chose not to do that but to maintain the maintain the The officer requirement of this and and to create boundaries the way we did so we could defend it We didn't want to just become an also ran organization other comments Hang on Let me get a mic Is this one on This is just an administrative question when we go to vote. It's going to read exactly like it's all or nothing All or nothing. Okay, so there'll be no amendments or anything No, because if we do that then this becomes arbitrary Sir, yes My name is david sheets and um, I'm I'm really humbled by being in this meeting. I'm probably The newest member here And I want to share because I want to respond to your comment And if you will allow me to give you a new guy perspective With a fresh set of eyes First of all, sir, thank you for your comprehensive and intelligent presentation here Because I think you've laid out all the facts But I would like to come back To the chart where you showed the bell curve And I think most of us have taken a management 101 course and no that is the life cycle of every single organization It doesn't matter if it's a business doesn't matter if it's a social organization a church you name it It will rise plateau and if it's not redefined It will die So I would submit to you That everything you've laid out, sir Is redefining this organization and as a new guy I'd like to see it last So the bottom line for me is in the words that came to mind as I was listening to the questions was If you vote no On these propositions You're signing the death certificate for this organization About yes gives this organization life And I would submit that it really gives this is the direction from a new person's perspective That needs to be going forward Thank you other comments Alan I'm from uh flight 30 and you heard from my rpa rep here Um, he's not your art. He's your vice flight captain by my vice flight captain. Absolutely Uh, I had the fortune of having general owens owens visit our flight Back on veterans day because we do a very special ceremony And at that time I got an inkling of what was coming This discussion that we're having today Last month at our monthly flight meeting I thought it might be wise knowing I was coming here that I sort of take an informal poll Of my membership who were there at the meeting just to kind of get You know, which way the wind was blowing and I didn't know About all the additional what I am particularly interested in because where we are at march. We have so many rpa So I was just looking at that one side of it So we passed the microphone around just as we're doing today here with that membership All but one of the comments were positive Relating to yes, we're going to have to change or we're going to die And that one really Was not that bad rip, but he did realize that his stand meant that he might be the last man standing I've had a few other email remarks the ratio is about the same. It's about 10 to 1 Thanks, Alan I No, go ahead David I'll be quick. It's just on rpa's RPAs are not in uh created equal a global hawk flies totally different from a predator reaper And so there is room for dissent What looking at rpa pilots, but I also think there's room there to advocate for companion trainers so that these guys Fly something they actually get in the air and fly something And that's what I asked if there's a companion trainer for some of the operations and there is one here Flying a cirrus, but I think then again is an organization to be true to our values cones I think We we say that that's part of what we want to see we want to see these people get get in the air and Well risk their lives is not a necessity But you know develop the stick and rudder skills in the air sense that comes with it Just a quick story. I did get to fly a reaper Had great view and the day before I flew the simulator And then the next day I flew the real plane and I had to keep kicking myself The second day to say this is a real airplane if it crashes, there'll be an feb It'll be held to pay do not let it crash do not let it crash do not let it crash Because the day before I did and so It is a different world And it's it's foreign to most of us, but that's where again I think there's room for us to advocate for a better world and better national Uh resources available, you know for for aviation. Thank you Ron Butler from uh flight 38 up the road at at austin I was a upt instructor 68 through 72 at enid and and uh columbus We were turning out 110 to 120 pilots every six weeks Nine ATC bases were doing that They're not doing that anymore Two weeks ago Several of the commuter airlines had to cancel flights because they do not have pilots available to fly the airplanes Pilots are a dying breed Because the air force and avian marines are not training an army are not training pilots like we did during uh during vietnam A lot because the rpa's and that sort of thing But there are not going to be many pilots around 20 years from now 15 years ago I started telling young kids you want a good career? Go to the airlines because they're going to be needing pilots when the vietnam pilots are retiring which they are doing now so Thanks ron Nick go ahead I'd like to make just one comment One of the most important things about this are the two most important things are one that maintains a linkage to our heritage And he explained that and you can agree to disagree You can agree or disagree on the uh Platforms or the positions up here that will be part of it Remember, this is not about numbers one And two there's a rationale behind what the proposal is And that's that's important and I'd like to Uh when when I was a national commander I picked up on the Uh somewhat descent related to rpa's so I took the time to visit magnums uh 558 squadron the training squadron at uh hollaman where they go through their weapons training and then uh to go out I was also went to beal Yesterday I met with the uh former commander of creche Um All of them are very positive about this and those pilots do get stick and rudder skills To a minimal extent at pueblo before they go into the rpa training And I think you'll find this afternoon if you take time to go through that 558 squadron that um There are a whole out of I think it's five to six months all but the last month or so Uh is related to thinking like a pilot How do you go through that airspace Uh And talk to the same people that you would as a traditional pilot and Uh and how you employ the airplane you in and having that same Reservations about I can't crash this thing because it's going to be an feb or whatever it may be So there is a rationale there. I'm going to share a paper later on on on uh rpa's but You'll see that in that squadron this afternoon possibly that They make they train them to think like pilots and They don't even touch an rpv or an rpa until they get to the last month or so and they Start of introducing them to it because of where they're going to go out at hollamann um I anticipated that that piece of this Proposal may be one of the more controversial Uh, I've come to believe that it's a reasonable Rationale to include them as part of it and a lot of it goes to just how the service define Rated people rated people in the air and that's kind of the Uniqueness that we would want to maintain as it as well as how well Our national commander described the Continued linkage to those first people who flew when there were there probably only were pilots, right? There weren't a lot of other positions that uh in the in the first world war. So anyway, thank you I hope you'll uh think of it when you go back. I think it's so important to be constructive to You can have your own view on whether this is the right thing to do or not But but I the worst thing I think it happened would be if if people Try to coerce big groups To think and they're not going to be as educated as you are on it Because of this briefing you got they may see it today on the web You're going to be taking back. Please take one of those thumb drives up there because that's got it That's got the briefing you saw on it also and then we're tax I and and General Owens go around to the flights It'll only be a limited number of flights before the vote starts But we're going to try to explain it In a more abbreviated fashion and open the questions just like this Those are tough questions for us to be able to feel but it's important that we do be able to feel that And try to understand help people understand why we're doing what we're doing Thanks, we have one question I have two questions from those that are watching on the web 25th flight would like to know if there's any intention to become political or lobby And the second question would be from one or second flight asking about If there's a way that we can build some passion and we can also Talk to some of those members that are not active and how are there some ways that we can reach out to them? To the first question about becoming political and lobbying Right now that is not Not an intent But I also won't say that it will never happen We need to work through this to figure out how we want this advocacy To manifest itself over time, but that is not the intent about this right now We've not done that up to this point But that does not mean we can't take a stand on on issues that matter to to us as an organization to the other point about About passion toward those that aren't active in the flights Our best opportunity with with this is is the reaching out through the through the website through the magazine And through the different mailings that that we send out the newsletter The Daedalus flyer all well read. They're they're they're good publications. They're periodical So we reach out as best we can with them The truth is unless flights have an active effort to reach Members that are inactive in their particular geographical location unless they have an effort to do that This becomes more difficult. We can only do so much from from the headquarters here But we are taking that on whatever we can do. We're going to take it on So I hope that answers that question We are at 12 15 We have lunch waiting on us and then a 130 deal over with the 558 I do not want to stop the discussion with all of this But I am happy to carry this on into into lunch I will end this the way that I started ending it the other day And I'm not going to go continue going around the room. So it's a couple of you are off the hook I asked for your support in all of this. This is not a perfect plan But it is it is a good plan And it is something that we can sink our teeth into as a national organization and you as a as a flight organization Where you're located and help to make this work There are no guarantees with success But the alternative here is nothing So this is our plan the board of directors and trustees are on board And my expectation as you represent us To your flights that you represent what I'm What I'm portraying to you today. That's my expectation out of all of us And then let the flight members make up their own mind We're going to end this with a video This video will be online tonight All right or this afternoon and this video Is one of the efforts And in good sos squadron officer school format I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you and then I'm going to tell you what I told you This is the last part of that There's going to be on the website This is all filmed so you'll be able to watch this in in its entirety if you want to do it again The letter out of the data list article which will explain all of this. It's a good article Good magazine. It'll come out this week This video is on there An endorsement letter out of text and Nick is is in there about all of us This is about getting the word out when you go to our website from here on out this afternoon You're going to see an f-35 that says make us relevant Airpower advocates past present and future. That's what this is about So I encourage you if you want to be passionate join us in this and and let's let's get on with it Okay, are we in a position to roll the video? Let's do it, please and then after this is over with let me Tell you thank you up front and we'll go to lunch and we'll proceed after that Order of the Dalians has a long and proud history Like you we are committed to preserving its legacy And ensuring that its mission of service to nation Continues long into the future since its founding in 1934 The membership of the Order of the Danes has varied in size But it has always remained a top flight military aviation fraternity and we intend to keep it that way Nevertheless as the nature of air power changes We in the dadaean leadership feel it's very important to take a strong look at ourselves in the mirror To ensure that membership eligibility, which had its last major update in 1953 Keeps up with new realities and does not keep worthy flyers from joining our ranks to put it simply If the dadaeans want to continue what it's been doing for the last 82 years, it's time to act We need the dadaean membership to better reflect military air power today To be specific We want to broaden the eligibility pool of serving members at a time of decreased pilot production and growth of other air power By acting now we also create an opportunity for ourselves By presenting the dadaeans as a relevant organization to the serving senior leadership and to the public Both of which will allow us to advocate better for air power today and to meet our mission objectives To see why we need to act. It's important to look at where we've been and where we're going When we looked at the future of the organization and how we would maintain and grow as an elite group We first asked ourselves. What do we want the organization to stand for today? And what is our purpose? The answer to both of these questions demonstrated to us that we need to act now As you can see from this graph total membership history 1969 to 2015 We saw a steady growth in membership until the late 1980s after which we've seen a steady decline This next graph shows that we are losing four to 500 members per year And barring any changes now what some of the key decisions will be as we wind down the organization Left unchecked this means we will close our doors somewhere around 2033 That's just 17 years away The breakdown of services in age graphic shows that more than 65 percent of our members are over 65 years old Unless in 15 percent or under 50 Far fewer than that our active duty In addition despite the implementation of the new pilot initiative program It is not leading to permanent participating members As time passes and our world war two and vietnam vets leave us our overall membership numbers will decline greatly After 25 years of continuous combat operations this decline may be caused by generational preferences Lower pilot production rates and a perceived lack of relevance This membership distribution trend represents an existential threat to our organization and must be curved We are not meeting all member expectations Nor attracting new members and we need to take action now to halt this trend And focus on our purpose objectives relevance and marketing while ensuring the quality of our membership We were at a pivotal point in our history much like 1953 When the founders voted to expand eligibility to include pilots beyond world war one flyers only So what do we need to do? With our tenants and objectives as a guide we identified five action items to address the challenge Action one create a mission statement to provide a clear committed and stated purpose The new mission statement should read Advocate for air and space power and honor those who flew and fly in defense of our nation Action two amend our objectives for relevance Delete the current objective one since it was elevated to the new mission statement and add a new objective one Which should read support air powers current total force active guard reserve and civil air patrol Then amend objective six by replacing the word pilot with aviator The precedent was set for this change in may 2015 when the order presented its exceptional performance award To an f-15e crew The new objective six should read recognize exceptional performance by military aviators action three Market the value of the didians to the following six target groups To include current members non-members active duty senior leadership And external audiences and donors We must show these groups individually why they need to either stay join support or give Action four establish a committee to review and make recommendations for changes And relaunch of the new pilot initiative to ensure its long-term effectiveness action five expand membership eligibility and change the bylaw to read quote Named member a commission slash warrant officer a wasp in any component of the united states armed forces who is a pilot navigator combat systems officer naval flight officer Air battle manager astronaut rpa pilot or flight surgeon who is accepted as a member to perpetuate the membership of a founder member Only two named members are authorized for any one founder member The basis of this change reflects the seven rated categories found in afi 11-402 citing title 10 authority And again the basic justification for the change is to have the didarian membership better reflect military air power today While continuing to honor the names of those who first flew in defense of our nation The board of directors has already approved action items one through four in accordance with our bylaws And now we seek your approval and a vote of yes on action item five to expand our membership eligibility to sum up We're a great organization with a proud history and a bright future ahead if We do now what must be done and when it comes to membership We're an organization in rapid decline. So actions must be taken Now, so what do we need from you? We need your support and your vote of yes to expand the membership eligibility for this great organization in 2015 Your didalian foundation awarded more than 100 scholarships to college rotc cadets We taught 25 young men and women to fly and we presented didalian medals to over 1300 exemplary junior rotc cadets To continue this great work. I urge you to vote yes to expand our membership eligibility Our founders made the decision to take action to perpetuate the order over 60 years ago Our duty today is to take action to continue their efforts as stewards of this great organization We know you are proud today yes, and you will do everything you can to support our nation's defense our military services and other aerospace activities The order will always honor our founding members and perpetuate their memory by naming our current members for those founders Our founding members always had the intent to develop and support air power and we hope to do the same The times are changing but the core tenets of what it means to be a didalian will not We always have and we always will place the nation above self And remain worthy of the trust and confidence of our fellow didalians It's every everything that you everything you have seen today will be available online Friends thank you. Thank you for this for for listening to us today Please engage your flights Everybody gets a vote Vote yes And let's move on and with that I will call the 2016 annual meeting to a close With one exception we got to get to the 558 at 130. Do we know how to do that? Okay, we'll put up the directions to the 558 flying training squadron That tour will get at 130 and that's in an hour and five minutes from now. Enjoy lunch. Thank you very much and travel safe