General Mannon thanks wing for UCI efforts

  • Published
  • By Brig. Gen. O.G. Mannon
  • 82nd Training Wing commander
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  I want to start off by saying thank you for all the hard work you all have put in over the past year. It's been a long 15 months, and a lot of you have put in long days and nights and weekends to get us where we are. So thank you for that.

If you know me, you know I bleed blue--I love the Air Force and it's my honor to serve. Like many of you, I believe in our core values--they're not just words. So if you believe in "Excellence in All We Do," it's hard to be satisfied with a "Satisfactory". Integrity means we take responsibility for those areas where we fell short, and fix them. That's what we're going to do. My intent is to get these issues fixed, or at least have a good plan in place, before my tenure as commander is up--we owe it to the next wing commander to turn over a clean slate, and we're going to put Service Before Self and make that happen.
I don't want to talk any more about the negatives, because there are an awful lot of positives we can take from this.

To our "Outstanding" performers--Wing Safety and the 367th Training Squadron--congratulations and thank you. Having spent a lot of time this past 10 days with the IG, I can tell you they looked really hard and deep, so an "Outstanding" is something to be very, very proud of. Great, great job.

Congratulations also to those areas who received "Excellent" ratings. Again, this was a tough inspection, so an "Excellent" is a big accomplishment. Thank you for the hard work it took to get there.

Finally, thanks to the teams and individuals whose above-and-beyond attitudes and work ethic serve as an example to us all.

The most important positive we can all take from this inspection is that we are solid in terms of our core mission. Given the number and variety of courses we teach, we did really, really well.

The young Airmen we train every day are our Pink Cadillacs--they're our product and the focus of everything we do. We're all part of that effort, and we can all be proud of the quality of the training we provide and the quality of Airmen we deliver to the field.

So, now we all need to take a deep breath, hitch up our britches and move forward. It's going to be another busy year, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us. It will take a couple of days to regroup and reset, and we can all look forward to a long weekend to rest and relax.

The last thing I want to say is be safe this weekend. We all need to blow off some steam, I get that. But be smart about it. Have a plan. Be a wingman. Don't drink and drive. We need every one of you back on Tuesday. Thank you again for all of your hard work, and have a great day and a great weekend.