VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Col. J. Christopher Moss, 30th Space Wing commander, held two separate sessions of a base-wide All Call, here, Dec. 20.
Of the many topics discussed, the main theme of the All Call was Moss’ wing priority of posturing the 30th SW for success moving forward.
“I want to talk today about posturing the 30th Space Wing for the future,” said Moss. “If we’re going to continue the excellence we’ve demonstrated to date, we have to understand and prepare for the changes coming. In other words, we have to embrace new ideas. There are going to be new ideas coming and new ideas required in all elements of our mission. Posturing our Wing for the future requires creativity, deliberate effort, and close cooperation with our mission partners. There are ideas that are out there that can help bring us from where we are today to get us ready for these changes that are coming tomorrow. But they’ll only be successful if we embrace those ideas.”
Moss also provided a timeline of the recent wildland fires and an update of where the 30th SW currently stands in its recovery and restoration efforts.
“Once the fires finally settled down we established a Recovery Working Group and they built a nine-phase plan to get us from where we were, in the midst of all those fires, to restoring the range to the capability it had before the first fire,” said Moss. “Where we are today is that we have successfully completed the first five of these phases and are squarely into our sixth phase – which is bolstering the range’s basic operational capabilities.”
Chief Master Sgt. Robert Bedell, 30th SW command chief, emphasized the importance of the new enlisted evaluation and promotion system.
“The ‘Promote’ is the old ‘five’”, said Bedell. “The majority of folks will be ‘Promote’ and only the select few who have truly gone above and beyond are now afforded a higher recommendation for promotion. When you look at the numbers, they are very positive and we’re headed in the right direction. Just understand that as you continue as supervisors to set a good, solid expectation, hold your subordinates to that as they achieve and excel in our Air Force and make sure that they get recognized when they go above and beyond. That’s really what our new system is doing for us. Be diligent, make sure you’re studying, and you’ll be on the promote list next time.”
Additionally, with the Inspector General team’s inspection of the 30th SW finally completed, Moss shared the results with Team V.
“After rolling all of our assessment graded areas together, the 30th Space Wing was given an overall grade of ‘Effective’,” said Moss. “But there’s more to the story than that. Our assessment from the IG team was a ‘very, very strong assessment’. We received the lowest number of deficiencies that they’ve seen to date, we had 22 professional performers and 14 professional teams. Being able to do that while dealing with the extended range downtime, the significant leadership turnover we had this summer, and also the historic fires, was really a remarkable thing. So the bottom line for us is this was a very good assessment, and it’s really one we should all be very proud of.”