This year’s Air, Space and Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, is going to be the biggest in years, according to retired Air Force Gen. Larry Spencer, president of the Air Force Association and a former vice chief of staff.
Along with a big event to celebrate ― the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Air Force as an independent branch of service ― AFA is bringing in some big names for the conference, which kicks off Monday and runs through Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the iconic Marine general, will be the keynote speaker at AFA on the final day of the event.
“There‘s a lot going around the world, so we’re really anxious to get him in and looking forward to his comments,” Spencer said in an Aug. 24 interview.
The AFA conference has featured some unexpected surprises in recent years.
In 2015, Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone showed up a few weeks after he and several friends foiled a terrorist attack on a train in France in 2015. While there, he found out he would be promoted two grades to staff sergeant. And last year, retired Lt. Col. Dick Cole, the 101-year-old Doolittle Raider, took the stage to announce that the Air Force’s next bomber, the B-21, would be called the Raider.
Spencer promised a few such surprises are in the works this year, but wouldn’t spoil them.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the position of chief master sergeant of the Air Force. To mark the occasion, the association is inviting five former top enlisted airmen, Eric Benken, Gerald Murray, Frederick Finch, James Roy and James Cody, to talk about the impacts of that decision.
Multiple challenges
Looking forward, the Air Force faces multiple challenges ― particularly the difficulty of modernizing its force in a time of budget cuts.
“The force is just too old, and the Air Force is too small for the mission it has,” Spencer said. ”You‘ve got B-52s, KC-135s, trainers that are literally 50 years old. The average age of the fleet is 26, 27 years old. Compare that to the average age of a civilian airliner, which is 10 years. The airplanes that we have on the front line to protect the country are more than twice as old as airplanes we fly for pleasure. That doesn‘t make sense to me. It doesn’t compute.”
The amount of innovation and change the Air Force has driven is one of the service’s great accomplishments over the past seven decades, Spencer said. The service has evolved from the largely propeller-driven fighter and bomber force it was during World War II. It helped develop and incorporate jet engines, more advanced bombers, stealth, and space vehicles and satellites that provide global positioning systems, weather info and early warning, he said.
“I can‘t imagine the United States of America getting into a conflict without the Air Force,” Spencer said. ”I don’t know that anybody would want to imagine that.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
