For Burt Field one thing rang true in his tour of Minot Air Force Base, the two nuclear missions “are manned by young people, and neither of the missions leave any room for error.”
And in just the short time Field was here, arriving on a Wednesday the 8th of April and leaving on the 10th, a Wednesday to Friday, he was able to experience the unique relationship between the city of Minot and Minot Air Force Base. “The relationship here is different than other bases” according to Field “and when I say it’s different, it’s a two way street in the relationship. The Minot Air Force Base talks about their great relationship with the city of Minot. The citizens of Minot are proud of their relationship with Minot Air Force Base. Everybody’s fired up about the other part of the partnership. You talk to the Airmen they talk about how good it is to be here in Minot. You talk to people in Minot who say they were stationed here for five years and all of a sudden they are here for another 25 years after that. There’s not a lot of people that stay for the weather. They stay here because of the people and the community.”
Part of the education and the advocacy of the Air and Space Forces Association is to let citizens, and government officials know about concerns like the shrinking size of the airplane inventory in the Air Force. “In the next five years, if it stays the way it is planned out, we will retire more planes than we purchase” says Field “it’s important to right size our Air Force, and although the Air Force is doing a good job working with and maintaining the legacy systems that it has today, we need to look forward. It’s pretty obvious that they (Air Force officials) need to ask for what they need, because if they don’t, they just won’t get what they need.” Field is also concerned about the age of the Air Force inventory. “Right now, we are going to fight battles in the 21st century with 20th century equipment. Our men and women in the military are really well trained, but they find themselves working with legacy systems, and we need to advocate for the best for them.” In reference to the Air Force requests for airplanes like the B-21, F-35 and the Pegasus tankers. “I would say that you always ask for more, or you end up living with the benchmark, the number that you requested the year before.”In reference to Minot Air Force Base Field feels “that this base is going to be important through the turn of the next century, and hopefully there will be B 21’s here eventually replacing the B 52’s. And that your current missiles will be replaced by the new Sentinel.”
Field, like many others, feels that there needs to be a way to more quickly bridge the gap between the weapon systems we have today, and the weapon systems of the future. “The challenge is production capability. As a country we are just not able to produce the new weapons systems fast enough, and that is something we need to work on.”
The tours and of course the Commanders Choice Awards banquet gave Lt. Gen. Burt Fields (AF retired) a look into one of the United States’ most important bases. We thank him for his visit, and hope that he and his wife Lisa will return again, which they promised the would.
