All roads in the Air Force lead to Dayton.
That was one message Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall brought to Air Force Life Cycle Industry Days at the Dayton Convention Center on Tuesday, delivered along with a message of essential stability for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, at a time when Kendall and his fellow Air Force leaders are readying the service to fight a new kind of war.
New or reoriented organizations will be placed where people already work, although there may be changes “at the margin,” Kendall said. And Wright-Patterson is already home to some 35,000 military and civilian employees, the largest mass of employment in a single location in the state of Ohio.
“People certainly don’t need to be worried about an exodus from Dayton,” Kendall told the Dayton Daily News in an exclusive interview after his LCID keynote address. “On the other hand, I don’t see a mass influx, either. I think it’s going to be fairly stable, as much as you would expect.”
As the Air Force reorganization (or “reoptimization,” as it’s called) to face China and Russia continues, the Air Force Materiel Command, headquartered at Wright-Patterson, will remain the center of acquisition efforts, Kendall said.
“Its role is going to be central to both obtaining the operational capabilities we need and reoptimizing for great power competition,” he said.
His expectation is that the “critical mass of intellectual capital that the Air Force needs” will…
