In this special edition of Air Force Gradcast, Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind ’91, USAFA’s 22nd superintendent, shares an inside look into cadet development and answers graduate questions. Hosted by Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz ’99, this episode dives into the Academy’s mission and how it is preparing our nation’s future warfighters. SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS AT THE COLORADO SPRINGS AIRPORT! Air Force Gradcast is a presentation of the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation in partnership with the Colorado Springs Airport VISIT FLYCOS.COM HERE FALL IN LOVE WITH COLORADO SPRINGS' SMALL AIRPORT FULL TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS Guest: Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind ’91 | Host: Lt. Col. (Ret.)Navire Walkewicz ’99 Naviere Walkewicz This special edition of the Air Force Gradcast is a production of the Long Blue Line Podcast Network, presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation. I'm your host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz, Class of ’99. We're honored to feature the superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy, Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, Class of ’91. In this presentation, Gen. Bauernfeind will share important updates on current initiatives and developments at our Air Force Academy. Following his remarks, he and I will sit down for a conversation, during which he'll respond to questions submitted by graduates in our alumni community. So now, without further ado, Gen. Bauernfeind. Thank you for being here, sir. Gen. Bauernfeind Well, Naviere, thank you so much for allowing us to come and share our story of our wonderful Air Force Academy. And thank you as well to the Association of Graduates and the Foundation for all of the incredible support that we receive to develop our future leaders into the warrior leaders that we need on Day 1 in our Air Force and Space Force. Naviere Walkewicz Yes, sir, we are grateful you're here, and we can't wait to hear what you're able to share with us today, sir, so we can jump ahead if you're ready. Gen. Bauernfeind Wonderful. So I would like to share with you an updated mission brief of where we are going at the United States Air Force Academy. And during this time, I'd like to share not only our leadership team that's taking on the transformation that has been mandated, but also to update our alumni on our mission, our vision, our priorities and our mission sets, as well as talk about how we are creating warfighters, leaders of character and quality, and critical thinkers, and provide an update of how we are transforming this amazing institution to develop those warrior leaders that we need to keep our adversaries at bay. So as always, I'd like to start all briefings with a little video that highlights what our cadets are doing and our incredible public affairs team and video team put together the following video that shows what our cadets have been doing over the last six months... ...So you can see that our cadets have been absolutely busy over the last few months, and I can attest that this summer is they brought the problems up even more and are bringing even more energy to their training, their education, their development. But let me first talk about the amazing team at the senior leadership levels at the United States Air Force Academy, because we cannot do what we're doing without this incredible team. So first, we're welcoming reader Gen. Nicholas Evans as our new vice superintendent, coming out as the 18th Wing commander at Kadena Air Base, bringing a wonderful operational experience to bear, as well as academic bona fides to be our vice superintendent. Our command chief remains Command Chief John Alsvig and our commandant remains to be Brig. Gen. Marks and Col. Steve Hasstedt is our acting dean as we work to bring a new dean into bear. Ms. Gail Colvin is our stalwart chief of staff, with her wisdom from the Class of ’80 that keeps us moving forward. Ms. Jen Block is our executive athletic director. Mr. Nate Pine is our director of athletics, and our brand new wing commander, the 10th Air Base Wing, Col. Ahave Brown. And we all know that nothing happens at USAFA without the 10th Air Base wing providing the foundational support. But also Col. Taylor from the 306 Flying Training Wing, and Col. Silva is our space detachment commander, and it's important that we have all those leaders that are helping us transform USAFA. And to that transformation, we talk about our updated mission statement that was approved last fall. And that updated mission statement is that “USAFA’s mission is to forge leaders of character motivated to a lifetime of service and developed to lead our Air Force and Space Force as we fight and win our nation's wars.” And for the alumni, as we went through this mission statement development, we realized that there are many activities we take on at the United States Air Force Academy. There's education, there's training, there's motivation, inspiration, development. And we realized that we are taking the most amazing women and men from all four corners of this United States, and we're bringing them here as raw materials, and we are taking them through high-stress military, academic and athletic programs to forge them into something stronger than what they were when they showed up. And those are the leaders of character. We also wanted to make sure that we highlighted that it's about delivering a lifetime of service to our nation. It doesn't mean that every graduate needs to do 34-plus years in active duty like I'm currently doing, but continue to give back, whether that's in active duty, the Guard the Reserve, to your community in the defense industry, as an elected official or as a key supporter in our alumni networks — keep serving our nation. And then finally, an acknowledgement that we, alongside our teammates at West Point and Annapolis, have a very special mandate that we are developing those warrior leaders that will fight and win our nation's wars. While we hope that we will achieve peace through strength and deter our adversaries, we must always be ready when the nation calls and we will go forward and deliver victory for our nation. So it's important in our mission, but a mission will only take us so far. And the next step is acknowledging that we must have a vision. What is our North Star? And our North Star is we will remain and continue to be the nation's premier service academy. That we're bringing in rigorous, adversary-focused military training, military training that achieves a standard, that achieves a requirement, and not just training for training sake. But also maintain our level as a nationally recognized academic program with highly competitive athletics, and acknowledging that for us to deliver on those four, we must continue to sustain a world-class installation. But more importantly, continue to bring in professional and dedicated permanent party into our faculty. Our coaches, our headquarters, our installation support requires our outstanding permanent party. And so our vision moves us forward. And from our mission and our vision, we have established three key priorities, and those priorities will guide our decision making. But let me take your attention to the bottom first. The bottom is our foundational aspect, that we build all of our aspects upon our service core values of our Air Force and our Space Force of integrity first, service before self, excellence in all we do, courage, character, connection and commitment. And those we build upon further foundationally to acknowledge that we are in the military and all aspects of military operations activities require a strict adherence to standard. What is the task that we are executing? What are the conditions on which we will execute those tasks? And what standards do we expect, especially in high end warfare, where our standards are so tight. We also acknowledge that what is special about us is our Honor Code. It is foundational to our character, and we'll talk more about that as we build upon this. But realizing that the Class of ’59 that established our Honor Code. It has been foundational to the development of our leaders of character and quality as a board, and then adding into the fact that leaders who built lethal warfighting teams — they do it from a position of respect and teamwork, that they take their team and they support them, they hold them accountable, but they push them to rise above what they could think they could personally achieve. And how do we build those future leaders that are going to take teammates from all four corners of this United States and make sure every single teammate is seen, heard and valued and can give everything possible to the mission at hand? And that leads us to our priorities. That our priorities are we are here to forge warfighters to win, to inspire leaders of character and quality, and finally, to motivate critical thinkers to adapt, because all three are important. And that takes us to our mission sets, because those three priorities span across everything we do in a cadet’s journey at the United States Air Force Academy. And the first is acknowledging the military training aspect. That military training goes beyond just learning how to put a uniform on, just how to march correctly, but also understanding how to operate inside of Air Force and Space Force norms and take on those military training activities that our Air Force and Space Force are taking on right now with Ready Airmen Training and the ability to execute agile combat deployment. And that's activities like being able to shoot, move, communicate, medicate and automate, but also acknowledging that we also must have that world-class academic program that challenges our future leaders not what to think, but how to think, and to do that from a warfighting-focused curriculum that is very STEM focused, but also leans in hard to how we can leverage
