PACAF commander addresses looming fiscal constraints during Hickam base visit

by Capt. Ben Sakrisson
15th Wing Public Affairs

12/19/2012 - JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii -- The Air Force is likely to face more budgetary cuts and will have to make some difficult choices over the coming years said Gen. Herbert J. Carlisle, the Pacific Air Forces commander, while speaking to Airmen here Monday.

His central theme was that the continual push to do more with less has reached its limit of sustainability and from the ground up the Air Force will need to look in a new direction towards task prioritization.

"We can no longer do more with less; we already have more missions than we have people," said Carlisle. "We need to do less with less, but the things that we do not do need to be the least important."

Carlisle spoke of choosing the tasks that we do not do intelligently rather than simply ignoring the last into the inbox.

"We need to rack-and-stack our tasks in terms of priority, and when we run out of time, manpower, and money, we stop doing the things below that line," he said. "We need to look at the things that the Air Force brings to the joint fight and then do those things well ... and I will tell you right now, our first priority is to fight and win our nation's wars."

Earlier in the day, Carlisle addressed local commanders about the importance of the mission in Hawaii and the intricacies of working on an installation that is both a joint partnership between the Air Force and Navy and a Total Force Integration partnership between Active Duty and Guard components of the Air Force.

"You operate arguably the three most important assets in the theater. The C-17 enables theater air mobility, you can never have enough KC-135 tankers, and the F-22 is the greatest fighter in the world," said Carlisle. "If we can do TFI well here, we can set the benchmark for the Air Force."

Likewise, learning to operate smoothly with the Navy has been challenging at times since the advent of joint basing, but it does provide for long-term gains.

"The primary benefit of joint-basing is that we get to know our sister service better," said Carlisle. "Suffice to say, that by the time you move on, you will have a much better understanding of how the Navy operates."

In the end, Carlisle voiced his thanks repeatedly to the Airmen and emphatically stated that the work they do changes people's lives every day.