Maj. Gen. Scott Vander Hamm, 8th Air Force commander, has watched the Force Improvement Program lead to bottom-up changes in 20th Air Force’s ICBM units, and is now seeing FIP teams fan out to his own units for interviews and feedback. Vander Hamm told Air Force Magazine he hopes the process helps articulate both the good aspects of 8th AF culture, and shines light in areas that need further examination. “When I talked to (Air Force Global Strike Command boss Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson) early on, I asked him if I were the Secretary [and Chief of Staff of the Air Force], I would also want to have a validation of my mission,” he said of the aftermath of the ICBM reforms. “When we do find things, and I think we will because of the nature of the bottom-up approach, … we will put heat and light behind it,” Vander Hamm said. (See also Moving the “Big Rocks” Forward.)
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…