From sunrise to sunset, the backbone of the aviation community works through the scorching summer heat; tactical aircraft maintainers are the gears that keep the mission going and allow aircraft to deploy at a moment’s notice.

As a crew chief, straight out of tech school, they come here, to the AMU. But, they’re entrusted with a huge responsibility. There’s a pilot in that seat with a family: wife, kids. If they don’t take care of that aircraft, if they don’t take care of what they need to do, there’s someone’s life at stake every day. We entrust 18, 19-year-old airmen to take care of this. We have that much faith in our training, in our airmen, that they can handle what they need to do. A very challenging job, being a crew chief, from the beginning to end, they work 10, 12 hours a day out there, rain, shine, sleet, snow, doesn’t matter. Whether it’s home station or deployed, these guys here, they put their reputation, their name on the line. I tell ’em every day, I’m like, “Hey, you’re signing for that,” “you need to take care of it.” And they take that to heart.