Farewell to the Chief -- retiring command chief speaks on wing's past, future

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. William Huntington
  • 442nd Fighter Wing public affairs
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. --  The 442nd Fighter Wing's command chief master sergeant, Chief David Isaacson, will retire from the Air Force Reserve at the end of December. 

Chief Isaacson, or "Ike," as he is known in the wing, joined the 442nd in 1989 after an almost 18 year break in service from the active-duty Air Force. His time in the Air Force stretches back to 1968 when he enlisted. 

Chief Isaacson sat down for one last interview with the 442nd FW's monthly magazine, The Mohawk, to talk about the wing's past, present and future.

Mohawk: What do you see as the difference in the enlisted force today from what it was when you first joined the Air Force?

Chief Isaacson: Good question. Well, I joined back in 1968 and things were quite different at that time.

The two "super" grades (of senior master sergeant and chief master sergeant) had only been around for nine years and part of the reason for bringing those two grades was for management purposes.

Most everyone on active-duty was promoted by the Weighted Airman Promotion System which was the skill, knowledge and Promotion Fitness Examination - customs, courtesies, that sort of thing - and very little time was given to management.

Essentially if they scored well on the test and knew their job, they were being promoted and into positions they had no competency for. They weren't managers, they were technicians.

One of the most significant changes I've seen in the enlisted corps the Air Force is now teaching NCOs at the mid-level how to be managers so these NCOS are prepared for the time they assume greater responsibilities as senior NCOs. Of course, what happened on active-duty was soon brought into the Reserve system.

One other thing is the mentoring of junior enlisted Airmen by both mid-level and senior NCOs. I know we have a formal program, which obviously didn't exist in the beginning of my Air Force career. My recollection of the enlisted Air Force was not of NCOs taking Airmen under their wing and showing them the ropes. But I believe we've come a long way with esprit de corps and NCOs showing concern and caring about the people they are leading. It goes to how to manage people and how to know what their needs are and to provide them with the tools that they need to succeed. That wasn't going on when I came in.

You were kind of on your own. One example is when I was a staff sergeant, and no one was helping me get to a seven-level. I got out of the Air Force at four years as a staff sergeant, at a five-level, I didn't even know there was a seven-level. Nobody was encouraging me and helping me get there.

Mohawk: What are your thoughts on where the 442nd has come from, how we are doing as a Wing now and your perspective on our future?

Chief Isaacson: I started in this wing in 1989. When we would come to duty at (the 442nd's former home of) Richards-Gebaur (AFB), Mo., - specifically within the civil engineer squadron - we would come to (unit training assemblies) and we would accomplish very little training. That was just the nature of the beast. When we would come out, we would have to find busy-work to do. It was not an opportunity to do real training for our Air Force specialty codes because we had no tools to do that.

I know the aviators and the aircraft maintenance folks had a mission, but as far as the support side of the house, there wasn't a lot that we could do at Richards-Gebaur as far as training. Now, you look at what has happened in 18 years, and with the operations tempo where people are participating in Air Expeditionary Forces around the world and the training that we are able to have on an active-duty base with our counterparts and the interaction that we have with them. Our training has gone, way, way up. We are a better-trained, better-educated, better-equipped force than were 18 years ago at Richards-Gebaur.

That's where we've come. Where we are going? Well that's more uncertain.

I've made trips to the Pentagon and I get these briefings where they look out five, 10, 20 years into the future. The folks up there are living in a different place than we are. They are looking at things way down the road. We're too busy working on our piece of the puzzle right here day-to-day and we can't even think that far in advance. So things are continuing to change.

There's a possibility of the (Air Reserve Technician) program going away and being replaced with an Active-Guard and Reserve program.

As far as the operations tempo and working the Aerospace Expeditionary Force through volunteerism - it's working so far, but what happens when that volunteer pool runs out in the future? What changes will have to happen? I mean we started with a 90-day AEF, now we're at 120 and they're talking about 180. What will it be? What if it's a one year tour? What about changes in benefits for reservists? Now that we've been around 60 years as the Reserve and our role has changed so dramatically.

Before, we really were an in-reserve force. Now we're the A-team. We're not just back-filling active-duty personnel who are deploying; we're actually deploying and, in some cases, more than they are. I can say that the Reserve program as we know it - as it has been for the last 60 years - is going to change dramatically within the next 10 years in ways that it will not even look, sound and act like the Reserve we have known in our lifetime. There will be big, big changes along the way.

Mohawk: You've touched on part of this already. Air Force Reserve Command has been using a volunteer system to fill deployments in the Global War on Terror. How has this affected our enlisted wing members and how have they responded?

Chief Isaacson: Well shortly after 9-11, of course, you know we were activated. We had Security Forces activated for a year. We had firefighters activated for a year. We had maintainers who went to Afghanistan in 2002. As soon as they got back they were activated in 2003 and took the war to Iraq. They were the first folks since World War II to be operating out of an enemy air field. That's pretty amazing.

But, it took its toll on people because we went to Afghanistan and Iraq and then right back to Afghanistan in 2006 and now we're looking at another AEF in 2008.

Volunteerism is starting to dwindle. It's not that people aren't patriotic and supportive, but it's just that we're giving and giving and giving and we're still giving while, it seems, we are fighting for every scrap of anything because we are "just the Reserve."

Wherever we go we bring something to the table to make the mission better than it would be if we weren't there and we're still being treated almost like second-class citizens. That's not right, that's not fair. Our benefits are different from those on active-duty. It seems like little things but our benefits are not the same even though what we're doing is the same and sometimes better.

Mohawk: You've deployed to war with the men and women of the 442nd Fighter Wing and seen them in action around the world. Compare and contrast our enlisted force with that of any given active-duty counterparts.

Chief Isaacson: Number one, for the most part, we are more mature, more experienced.

What I consider to be the apex of my military experience was deploying with the aircraft maintenance folks, the flyers and the A-10s to Kirkuk Air Base, (Iraq). While we were there we would go out and scrub the planes down. People would visit the base and say those planes looked as good as they looked right back here in the states. Other planes would fly in there just dirty, grungy or broken and we'd have the best mission capable rates of any aircraft in the area of responsibility.

We have people (crew chiefs), just a few now, but they actually went to look at our A-10s before they were originally delivered to Richards-Gebaur (in 1982), then they were assigned a plane and they've been working on that same aircraft ever since. There is no possible way anywhere you are going to find anybody on active-duty that has the level of experience that our folks have.

Part of it is psychological - we work harder to be accepted where the active-duty folks are moved around and don't have the cohesive unit that we do have. We have people that have worked side-by-side for ten, 15, 20 years. That's a team you just can't build in two years or three years like on active duty. You can't do it.

Wherever the 442nd goes, they stand out. I've seen that on the support side of the house and I've seen that on the maintenance side of the house. Just like the Security Forces right now in Iraq. They swept the monthly awards. They're just doing an outstanding job. It's like what our folks did when they landed at Tallil (Airbase, Iraq) in the middle of the night and they were told to go find a place to sleep. There were no facilities. There were no latrines. No security support. No civil engineer support. There were mines and all of that kind of stuff. (Shortly) they were flying missions out of there. Maintainers walked out onto that air base and did it themselves. That's amazing.

I've been to a lot of places; I've been to 25 countries; I've been to a lot of bases; I've deployed with a lot of people; been to the desert twice. There is no wing like ours. I can say that with assurance and I'm not being biased.

Mohawk: Let's get a little more personal. How do you feel about completing your Air Force career and passing the baton to soon-to-be-Chief Al Sturges?

Chief Isaacson: Bittersweet. It's gone by too quickly and that's for sure. But that's life, you know.

I always thought I would stay until I was 60 but this is the right time to go, it's the right time for new blood, for somebody else to take a shot at it. I personally feel that it's the wrong thing for me to do to even stay in the wing in some other capacity, which was offered to me. I feel that this is the position that someone should retire out of and to be going and to leave the reins to somebody else.

Now from a personal standpoint, it has just gone by way too quickly. It'll be very odd to take all of the personal things out of this office, put it in the trunk of my car and drive off base for the last time. It will certainly take some adjustment.

You look around the wing and you see the young people that are coming up and like I said earlier they are better educated, better trained, better equipped than any force we've ever had in the Air Force. They are going to do just fine, you know, they are going to do better, in fact, than we did. If the mentoring and if the PME works, and if the NCOs and senior NCOs are leading and managing the way they should be, then the young people will be prepared to take over when we go. There should be no reason to worry that they won't, because they are going to do a fine job. They are going to do a better job than we did.