Command Corner: April 11

  • Published
  • By Col. Steven Harrison
  • 436th Airlift Wing
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  There's nothing like watching an organization rise to a challenge! What a thrill to see the Kansas Jayhawks win the men's basketball NCAA National Championship in overtime over an outstanding Memphis team. The next evening, the Tennessee Volunteers trounced Stanford to win the women's championship. Make no mistake about it, both teams' victories were founded on teamwork, a sound game plan, and plenty of hard work and selfless dedication ... and they won because they settled for nothing less than world-class performance.

That same winning mindset is alive and well at Dover Air Force Base as well. Each week we strive for world-class excellence by carefully tracking and measuring several performance indicators related to our mission, the health and wellness of our Airmen, mobility readiness and process improvement.

One year ago, we established a collective goal to be the No. 1 wing in Air Mobility Command in terms of fitness, because fitness affects mission, long term health and wellness, mobility readiness and it challenges our processes ... and because being the best is important! I'm happy to report that Dover is now leading AMC in virtually every aspect of fitness.

In less than one year, we have raised the number of Airmen passing the test to 98.2 percent ... more than two percent better than the next best wing, and we've done it while improving our wing's currency rate from 93 to 99.1 percent ... smashing our initial goal of 97 percent. The result is more than 170 additional Airmen who meet the Air Force's "fit to fight" standard!

Very impressive ... and we are still improving! Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be rolling out Dover's paradigm-busting "Fit Camp." Individuals struggling with fitness, including those aggravated by injuries, will be offered healthy living assistance as well as a personally-tailored fitness prescription from a qualified trainer five days per week. They'll also be given practice tests biweekly until they can meet Air Force standards.

After they are in compliance, they'll receive a tailored "maintenance dosage" of fitness three days per week until they've demonstrated a "fit to fight" standard for one year. Achieving excellence is tough, and this is a difficult program, but our critical mission, our Airmen's long-term health and our expeditionary posture demand we be ready.

Likewise, Team Dover continues to aggressively prepare and execute our game plan for operational readiness inspection excellence! Thank you to all who worked so hard to make last week's "Elephant Walk" such a terrific training event. Exercise results indicate that we've come a very long way and, though we have much work remaining, we are on a glide path to water the AMC Inspector General's eyes in July. Next test, the fly-away exercise scheduled for April 21 - 25 in Alpena, Mich. This is a great opportunity to test all facets of the ORI from initial response, to employment to redeployment. Get up for it!

As we strive for excellence, we also need to celebrate those areas in which success is already a part of the Dover legacy. So while we patiently await the pending results from the Commander-in-Chief's Installation Excellence competition, we'll take a few minutes to take a breath, eat a hamburger and thank the entire Dover Team for the terrific performance in earning distinction as an Air Force finalist for the first time in Dover AFB history! The burger burn goes from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. today at The Landings and it's free! Just another benefit of being a card-carrying member of "America's Preeminent Expeditionary Airlift Team!"