US Airmen stationed in UK participate in squadron revitalization effort

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Abby Finkel
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  A team gathering information for the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff’s revitalizing Air Force squadrons effort met with Airmen at RAF Lakenheath, England, and RAF Mildenhall, England, July 31 to August 1.

The project, aimed at identifying both on-going challenges as well as best practices in order to revitalize squadrons, is built on information gathered from a diverse group of Airmen about what works, what doesn’t and what needs to be improved.

In a letter to Airmen from August 2016, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein discussed his vision for the revitalization. “It is time to revitalize the squadron as the warfighting core of our Air Force,” Goldfein said. “Our vision demands that “squadrons be highly capable, expeditionary teams who can successfully defend our Nation’s interests in both today’s and tomorrow’s complex operating environments.”

In order to accomplish this goal, teams gathered data in three phases. The first two phases included data collection from a variety of surveys, and the third phase, which just took place at RAF Lakenheath, was comprised of in-person interviews.

"The idea here is that we're trying to drill down and get closer and closer to the root cause,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen L. Davis, special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff for Squadron Revitalization, “or come up with some hypotheses and then offer those to the people we're interviewing to see if those are accurate or not. In essence, we're digging deeper with each phase and we've been digging deeper with each visit."

The interview teams visited 25 bases around the Air Force throughout the first half of 2017, visiting each major command headquarters base as well as one additional base in each command.

Active-duty, Air National Guard and Reserve Airmen as well as civilians and spouses participated in one-on-one interviews, focus groups and large group sessions. For each session, participants were interviewed by a peer of the same rank to facilitate honest and open discussion.

Over 200 RAF Lakenheath Airmen, civilians and spouses were selected to participate in the interviews.

In addition to the surveys and interviews, there is also a web-based, crowd-sourced idea site available to Airmen who were unable to participate in the interviews. Ideas and suggestions on how to improve our squadrons can be submitted at https://www.milsuite.mil/revitalize. The site also allows users to comment and vote on ideas submitted by other Airman.

"The squadron is the brick and mortar of the Air Force,” said Maj. Daniel Connors, 48th Munitions Squadron commander and lead coordinator for the RAF Lakenheath visit. “Squadron command teams need to be able to tailor their efforts, innovate, and bring resources to bear to ensure missions are accomplished and families and Airmen are cared for."

After the completion of the information gathering phase of the project, the information will be analyzed to identify both best practices and challenges and to determine the best way to address Gen. Goldfein’s number 1 priority.