BLAZE Forward

  • Published
  • By Col. Barre Seguin
  • 14th Flying Training Wing commander
COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  Team BLAZE, as we start 2012, we pause to reflect on a great year of mission accomplishment and focus on the year ahead. Our wing priority remains accomplishing our mission to Produce Pilots, Advance Airmen, Feed the Fight. As we continue to accomplish our mission, unique opportunities exists to shape our Air Force and base of 2012 and beyond. These opportunities exist due to the uncertain fiscal times our nation faces. Indeed, our Air Force of 2020, and our Columbus Air Force Base, will not be the same Air Force and base we've known for the past 5, 10, or 20 years. Now is our opportunity to play our part in influencing and shaping both. Our focus in approaching this opportunity will be to BLAZE Forward as we continually pursue our vision to be an Innovative Training Environment, Focused on Family, Partnered with Community!

Innovation is essential to shaping our Air Force and base of the future. Innovation like that exhibited by Senior Airman Brandon Smith. Smith incorporated real-world Air Traffic Control scenarios into training simulations, providing increased realism for our ATC Airmen continuation training. For this innovation, Smith was awarded the Air Education and Training Command Innovation Award by the AETC Commander, General Rice. Furthermore, innovators like Dr. Carl James, and Rhett Graves, 14th Civil Engineering Squadron, enhanced mission capability and saved money during the process. They and their team, utilizing common peg-board from a local hardware store, corrected an airflow problem in our aircraft paint barn and, in the process, saved $3.2 million in construction costs and recognized over $160,000 per year in energy and maintenance savings. These are only a couple of examples of our Airmen producing efficiencies through innovation and creativity. In addition to being innovative, we must continue to focus on families as we BLAZE Forward.

Our Air Force recruits Airmen, but retains families. To retain families, we will continue to prioritize our Caring for People initiatives, bolster our Key Spouses, and support and fully resource our Airmen and Family Readiness Center. Where we have the resources within our control to pursue issues you, our Airmen and family members, identified in our local Caring for People forum, we are doing so. Our Key Spouse program has grown from 14 Key Spouses in January 2011 to a robust 33 Key Spouses in December 2011, a whopping 135 percent growth in the program! Our Key Spouses welcome Airmen and families to units, help to meet the needs of families of deployed Airmen, and disseminate essential and nice to have information to unit spouses, to name a few of their duties. Every unit on base now has a Key Spouse (some more than one), to include our Wing Staff Agencies. One of our Key Spouses who has since PCS'ed, Perla Hopkins, was awarded the AETC Key Spouse of the Year by General Rice. These programs, and others that support Team BLAZE, require community support to be fully successful.

In a future which will likely, in part, be defined by decreasing resources, partnering with community is absolutely essential to maintaining services for Airmen and their families. Mutually beneficial partnerships like our pursuit with a local higher education institution to offer a course and certification in Turf Grass Management with our Whispering Pines Golf Course as the classroom. Partnership like our recently established Strategic Advisory Group, which provides your senior BLAZE leadership team advice from Columbus AFB Wingmen on areas we can better team with our community. Our award winning-community was recognized as the recipient of the first-ever Altus Trophy for providing the best base support in all of AETC. We will further this relationship and leverage community support to mutually benefit our Airmen and families and to enrich our community.

As we BLAZE Forward to recognize our vision of an Innovative Training Environment, Focused on Families, Partnered with Community, I ask that we do so with an eye to the future and not a longing for the past. We are at an historic crossroads which will define our Air Force of the future. Positively contribute to what your Air Force will look like. Thank you for your invaluable mission contributions in 2011. Your BLT is justifiably proud in the mission accomplishment of the entire team of military, civilian and contractor Airmen. We are, and will remain, the greatest Air Force the world has ever known. This superlative of superlatives is because of you, our Airmen. Look to the future, Team BLAZE, and play your active role in defining it! Happy New Year. I look forward to proudly being a part of your many and great accomplishments in 2012 as we BLAZE Forward!