COMMENTARY: Our Airmen are amazing ... let them innovate

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Tyler Morton
  • 488th Intelligence Squadron commander
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  I command the 488th Intelligence Squadron here at RAF Mildenhall. It is a unit with a history of unmitigated success and unrivaled accomplishment.

During the Cold War, our predecessors conducted airborne sensitive reconnaissance operations missions onboard the variants of the RC-135. These missions were often dangerous, but the intelligence collected allowed the U.S. to stay one step ahead of our adversaries and to ultimately win the Cold War.

For more than 60 years, the squadron has produced some of the greatest Airmen the Air Force has seen. Names that are probably not known to many ... Regan McClurkin (the first female RC-135 Airborne Mission Supervisor), Perry Eisenhower, David Blazel, Jimmy Meyer, and Ward Hobby to name a few.

Though these Airmen were not known to many outside of the secretive airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance community, their contributions to our freedom cannot be measured; all contributed mightily in their own ways. While these Airmen were great tacticians, what they also had in common was the spirit of innovation. Each created unique solutions to the myriad of problems that aircrew face on any given sortie or they developed new tactics, techniques, and procedures that allowed the squadron to do things more efficiently.

In today's environment of constrained budgets, creative innovation is ever more important. Just like our predecessors, we must find creative ways to improve the day-to-day processes around us. As innovation is most often simply improving already existing TTPs, we as leaders must allow our Airmen's ideas to become reality.

Our Airmen are the ones conducting the mission everyday; they know the TTPs best and are the most likely to develop fresh ideas on how to make improvements.

Creating an environment in which innovation is allowed to flourish can be difficult. To do this, we must foster a willingness to embrace change, to think about "what if," to challenge the status quo, and probably most importantly, to accept that some of these ideas will fail. Successful innovations require both empowered individuals and leadership that is willing to take risk.

Here in the 488th IS we have embraced this culture of innovation. From Airmen writing their own computer scripts to improve processes on board the RC-135 to other Airmen creating new ways to ensure we only maintain the absolute necessary supply inventory; we have continued the legacy of our predecessors. Every Airman in the squadron understands that we need and want to hear their ideas. We are maximizing our limited resources by taking full advantage of the innovative spirit of our Airmen. To ensure we remain the greatest Air Force the world has ever seen, we must continue to be "powered by Airmen, fueled by innovation."

The men and women of the 488th IS are proud members of Team Mildenhall and are doing their part.