HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- As part of a four-day tour to review mission-critical operations across the state, the Air Force’s top enlisted leader, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Wolfe, held a May 1 all-call at Hill Air Force Base.
Speaking to a crowded hangar of Total Force personnel, he addressed the realities of combat readiness, the importance of innovation, and the urgent need to take care of one another. During his remarks, Wolfe connected the daily efforts of Hill’s military and civilian workforce directly to the nation's ability to fight and win—highlighting everything from ongoing Middle East operations to the complex transition of the ground-based nuclear enterprise.
Acknowledging the base's heavy operational tempo in recent years, Wolfe praised Hill Airmen for their direct contributions to ongoing global operations. He noted that local efforts to rapidly generate and deploy combat power directly have provided national leaders with the crucial diplomatic leverage necessary to maintain stability in contested regions.
“You're providing deterrence from right here,” Wolfe said. “And you should be very, very proud of what you've been able to accomplish.”
While recognizing the success of recent deployments, Wolfe delivered a blunt assessment of the evolving threat landscape. Shifting his focus to potential conflicts in the Pacific, he challenged the formation to increase the intensity of home-station exercises, stressing that the next fight will demand immediate readiness across every career field.
He said that the Air Force's ability to modernize relies entirely on leaders empowering their Airmen to solve problems at the tactical level.
“Modernization comes through innovation. You can't make things better across time if you're not innovating,” Wolfe said. “And innovation is based on trust. If we don't trust our people to make decisions at their level and we don't then give them the resources to kind of let them run, they'll probably just quit asking.”
If an Airman’s idea isn't illegal, immoral, or dangerous, Wolfe urged front-line supervisors to default to saying, “Let’s try it.”
Addressing quality-of-life, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force confirmed that the department is tracking $1.5 billion in infrastructure projects. He said that while past budgets heavily prioritized weapons modernization, current efforts are bringing a renewed focus to child development centers, dormitories, and housing.
“Just for context, we've spent a lot of time trying to make the modernization thing happen, and we've kind of mortgaged the infrastructure and the upkeep of the things that we already own,” Wolfe said. “That's changing folks. When we talk about priorities, it's not readiness or modernization. It's both. And that readiness for today includes our infrastructure.”
Before opening the floor to an unfiltered question-and-answer session, Wolfe issued a call to action to the military and civilians in attendance regarding mental health and suicide prevention.
Wolfe shared that the possibility of a service member suffering in silence is what keeps him up at night. He explained that when analyzing past tragedies, leaders often discover that warning signs were fragmented across a unit, preventing anyone from seeing the full picture in time to intervene.
He urged the audience to think of someone who might be struggling or whom they haven't spoken to recently, noting that names were likely already coming to mind.
“If you take nothing else away from this time…I just want you to go find somebody to help. That's it,” Wolfe said. “Send them a text, a Facebook message... however you're communicating, and check on them. If everybody does that, I'll be a lot less fearful that we'll have [an Airman] suffering in our formations.”