Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Flosi, the service’s top enlisted leader, didn’t mince his words in an internal message to top noncommissioned officers last week.
“At a basic level, America’s Air Force exists for [a very simple] capability — ‘to kill people and blow sh– up,'” Flosi wrote in a June 19 message to the enlisted leaders, which was shared with Military.com. “I am not being bold, this is not a soundbite. It is the reality of being an airman in the profession of arms — we must be ready.”
Flosi’s message, sent just days before Air Force pilots and crews bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer, put airmen on notice to be prepared for any global conflict and even teased looming changes to airmen’s long-standing physical fitness testing as a way for them to get ready.
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The top enlisted leader’s rhetoric — some of his strongest to date since taking over the role in early 2024 — and his announcement of stricter fitness testing mirror a notable trend in the service. Air Force Gen. David Allvin, the service’s top officer, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have loudly and proudly preached the importance of having a warrior mentality as well as stronger physical fitness standards in the ranks.
Flosi’s message said that “any day could be the day” and, seemingly, hinted at the looming strike operation in Iran that would be in motion just days later.
“Just a week ago, thousands of airmen were sleeping in their own beds, training and operating from home station — they were not tasked to be traveling anytime soon,” Flosi continued. “Today, they are on the way or ALREADY ARE at contingency operating locations in the [European Command] and [Central Command] AORs … along with the major weapons systems we support, defend, maintain and operate … to deliver AIRPOWER.”
Similar rhetoric has become more normal for Department of the Air Force top brass.
During a speech at the Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium in Colorado earlier this year, Allvin proclaimed in a speech that the Air Force needed to “put ‘warheads on foreheads’ anywhere the president might want,” Military.com previously reported.
Likewise, Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top leader, said Guardians are also “warfighters” who must be ready to achieve “space superiority.”
Retired Chief Master Sgt. Eric Benken, who served as the Air Force’s top enlisted leader from 1996 to 1999, told Military.com in an interview Wednesday that such rhetoric is powerful, but added that, to be effective, it should be used sparingly.
“I don’t think it’s one of those things that you run around saying all the time, that we’re destroyers and killers and all that kind of stuff,” Benken said, clarifying, “I think it’s the right thing to say, I mean, that’s really what we do, and look at what we just did.”
The increased warfighting rhetoric also comes as Allvin has done a servicewide push, unveiled at the start of the year just before Hegseth’s confirmation, on Air Force standards.
Flosi hinted that changes to the Air Force’s physical fitness training would be coming, including that assessments would be “twice a year for all of us;” scoring body composition would be done with height-to-waist ratio charts; and that, instead of the long-standing 1.5-mile run, there could be a new 2-mile run requirement.
The top enlisted leader said the changes were “not as a punishment for our fit airmen” but rather “as an acknowledgment that fitness is a readiness issue and it makes a difference if ‘today is the day,'” he wrote.
An Air Force spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the pre-decisional updates to the physical fitness program, said changes are being finalized following a 10-month review process and that it was also in line with a March memo from Hegseth mandating a probe of all service branches’ standards.
“The Air Force acknowledges that post-COVID changes made in recent years did not effectively prepare airmen to meet the demands of the current and future operational environments and is actively working to reverse that trend,” the spokesperson said. “Updates to the program will be formally released once the guidance is finalized.”
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