The Air Force Materiel Command held its 2020 Foreign Liaison Officer Recognition Ceremony at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, October 26, 2020. This year’s event theme is “Global Partnerships and Perseverance, Resilience in this Time of Change.” The event is meant to recognize AFMC’s Foreign Liaison Officers and to celebrate the strong bonds and enduring global partnerships built together. (U.S. Air Force video by Ryan Law)
Transcript
On behalf of our host General Arnold W Bunch, Drinker, Commander of Air Force Material Command. Welcome to the 2020 Earth Force Material Command. Foreign Liaison Officer Recognition ceremony. I am Colonel Anthony Walker, senior material leader of the Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate International Division. It is my pleasure to serve as your emcee this afternoon. I would like to welcome our distinguished guests who are in the audience today. Lieutenant General Sean Morris, Commander, Air Force Lifecycle Management Center, Miss Kathy Watt, Earn Executive director, Air Force Lifecycle Management Center and Brigadier General Brian Brooke Bauer, Director, Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate. Thank you all for your attendance today and to all of you who are joining and watching us virtually. We gather today to recognize our foreign liaison officers and celebrate the strong bonds and enduring global partnerships we built together. Our theme here today is global partnerships and perseverance. Resilience in this time of change. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brigadier General Brian, but bar for opening remarks. All right. Thank you, Colonel Walker. All right, So, General Bunch, Lieutenant General Morris, Miss Water in Wing Commander Lewis, Our lead flow our FMC partners and foreign. Lee is an officer’s. Thank you so much for being here today. Also, I’d like Thio give a shout out for those who are watching us on Facebook today as well. We sent this out to our friends back in Washington, D. C. And I know some of you sent the link back to your countries as well. So hello to everybody who’s watching on Facebook. So I definitely want to thank General Bunch, our Air Force material commander who’s hosting the ceremony today. The co vid pandemic obviously prevents us from doing our awesome international ball that everybody knows about. And everybody looks forward to this time of year. But when I spoke to wing Commander Lewis, we wanted to do something. Eso Thank you so much for being here today in General Bunch. Thank you for supporting the event. Um, pretty cool toe have my boss, General Morris and Boss’s boss General Bunch, both both prior Hafsat commanders. So, uh, your chain of command definitely knows the business here of a sack and appreciates the importance of our international partnerships and what you all do here assed partners at Wright Patterson Air Force base. I was watching a recent interview recently with now retired Admiral McRaven. Some of you may recognize that name. Hey, was the prior commander of U. S Special Operations Command and also was in charge at the time of when we found Osama bin Laden and his talk was about leadership. And he said, You know, the one thing I know about leadership is that if you’re gonna lead during challenging times, you have to build alliances. You have to build coalitions, and you must have friends and allies. And I think he pretty much sums up the nature of our business today and how important these relationships are that we have with each and every one of you. All right, and I’d like to end with just some thanks. Events like this obviously don’t happen by accident. So especially in this challenging time that we’re facing, So I’d like to thank um, the leader of our event committee. Miss D Grundy. Can you give us a wave D wherever you are? Thank you. D. Thank you for setting all this up. And maybe the ball happened next year. So hang in there. Also. I’d like to thank Tim Robinson, who serves us our foreign liaison officer Coordinator Mike Tell Ford and Christie Gallagher of our international division and Trish on Smith from our Central Division. I also want to thank Greg Swinger and Gary Young of our facilities team. And finally thank you to the protocol teams who helped out with setting up today from FMC and from L C M C and from the 88th Air Base wing. So thanks. And partners, I look forward toa continuing to serve with you, um, as your sect director. And again, thank you for what you all do in this very important partnership. Thank you. Thank you, General Brooke Power. Now, please welcome wing Commander Tim Lewis, Royal Australian Air Force for remarks on behalf of all FMC for liaison officers. Good afternoon, General Bunch. General Black Power Gentlemen, on behalf of the foreign liaison Officers here, Right. Pedersen, I’d like to say thanks. I’d like to say thanks for the great partnerships that you foster with our nations. This partnership allows us to share skills, knowledge and equipment, all of which contribute to global peace and security. More importantly, I’d like to say thanks for the great friendship all of the staff across A F, M, C A, f, l, C M, C and F sack. Welcome all of the foreign liaison officers here. Our friendships help us work more effectively in achieving our mission. We’ve been accepted into the Wright Patterson community. Our families thrive in the local area, and we enjoy the hospitality of your great country. In times like this in covert was sad that many of our social functions and formal functions haven’t gone ahead. But we’re gracious of the event that you planned for us to die. So once again, on behalf of the flows gathered here today and those who couldn’t make it. Thank you. Thank you. Win. Commander Lewis. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to introduce our host General Arnie Bunch, the commander of Air Force Material Command. He was commissioned in 1984. After graduating from the U. S. Air Force Academy, General Bunch completed undergraduate polit training in 1985 and served in operational assignments as an instructor, evaluator and aircraft commander for the B B 52 Stratofortress, one of which is probably to my right after graduating from the Air Force test pilot school. General Bunch conducted developmental testing in the V two spirit and the B for the two and served as an instructor in each. He commanded at the squadron group, wing and center levels. Prior to his current assignment, he served as a military deputy to the assistant secretary of of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics at the Pentagon. Please welcome General Bunch. So good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for being here. I really appreciate its real honor for me to get a chance to be here. It is nice to be near above, although I would say that one is even older than the ones that I flew. So I can’t say I have any hours in that one. That’s an old D model. Um, when Commander Lewis, thank you very much on all the flows for being here. Um, this is a great event. The partnership and being a knapsack. Just a great thing. And the linkages that you build here will serve you many years to come. So I’m really appreciative for everything that you all are doing here. I do want to say one thing real quickly that Brian kind of touched on how many of you have actually stepped into a job that your boss and your boss’s boss had actually held the job that you now have. He made that sound like that’s a really great thing that both of his bosses have worked in that job. I’m not really sure he’s quite as happy about that all the time as he probably made it sound for you. There’s a little bit of pressure there when we actually think we know what he’s doing on a day to day basis. But he’s doing a great job. He and his team, they’re all indications taking care of you all. I appreciate everybody making the A Grange mints and making this happen. I know there are a lot of people that are out there virtually or some that we’ll see this later, so I want to do a special thank you to the spouses of the foreign lays on officers and their families and all the other families that have come in here from the other countries. We ask you to come here and pick up and move to a country that you may or may not be familiar with. We asked you to come in and blend into this and go to our schools and do all these things. And that can be very, very challenging for you. And quite honestly, it could be a little bit of intimidation. Uh, can be pretty intimidating if you’ve not done that. Now we’re asking you to do it in the middle of a pandemic. So I just want to say to the spouses that are out there thank you for the support you’re giving these foreign liaison officers and representing your countries and for all the great things you do behind the scenes so that they can successfully execute their mission and get those things done. So how about a round of applause for your spouses? So I got to say, the international ball is something I look forward to every year. It’s one of the most fun events we get everybody in their full dress get up and everybody looks fantastic. And we have a lot of fun. How many were here last year? Quick show of hands, if you have. You are. Last year we had dancing. Okay, so if you remember, we had two dancers that came out. The gentleman that came out did not have on the shirt and he was all buffed up, and it made me have to go feel like I needed to go workout in the gym that lasted maybe about a week, and then I gave up on that. But the reality of it is, all of those events are a fun time who went to get We get to be together with your spouses and others from your country and supporting you and celebrate the great partnerships that we have. Last year was our 40th anniversary international ball, and this year, of course, now would have been 41. And it really is sad that because of the situation we’re in, we can’t do that. But when Brian came up and provided up to me something he wanted to do, I felt it was extremely important that we do something to recognize the partnership and get together. So this is in the ball that we had planned. I would hope that that’s what we get to do next year. But this is our way of saying thank you for the partnership. Thank you for everything that we do together. If you read our national defense strategy, which many of you have at least read the unclassified. Some may have read part of the classified, depending on who you are. One of the lines of effort there is supporting and strengthening allies and partners. It is a There are only three lines of effort called out in the national defense strategy. That’s how important the relationships and working together is to our Defense Department leaders and across our services, because we know we’re going to go do things together. We know it this time when technology is changing so rapidly that we need to be able to respond rapidly together. We understand that interoperability from Day one is really critical on while we’re putting so much emphasis into those areas. So what I hope you walk away from with that is just something on behalf of the Department of Defense in the United States. As to how important these relationships are and how important it is to make sure you have the capabilities that you need and that we can partner together should something occur, you only have to look at the world events and do a little bit of imagine, use your imagination just a little bit to understand how rapidly something may happen and we can’t build those coalitions, then it will be too late. Many years ago, we might add time to build up talk and figure out how we’re gonna do things together at the pace that operations were going today and the decision cycle and how quick technologies evolving and how quickly people can take acts against our interests together. We have to be able to do that from Day one, and that’s why the role you play here and what you represent by being here on behalf of your nations. That’s why it’s so important. That’s why there’s such an important day to celebrate those partnerships and look for those of ways that we can strengthen those ties as we look to move forward together. So on behalf of all of the men and women of the life cycle management center, FMC and our Air Force, thank you for what you’re doing each and every day to help us with that, we look forward to continuing the partnership to make sure we’re moving together, going forward, and we look forward to continuing the collaboration and the coalition time so thank you all very, very much. And let’s move on. Thank you, General Bunch. Now it’s time to recognize our foreign liaison officers being honored here today due to social distancing practices. I would individually call each of you to the stage when your name is called. Please come forward to pick up your Air Force Material Command gift from the table. On the right side of the stage, proceed to the center of the stage between General Bunch and General Book Power for four photograph representing the Argentine Republic Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Lahay, Warrant Officer Martine Suhas, representing the Commonwealth of Australia, Wing Commander Timothy Lewis and Sergeant Barry Fang, representing the Federated Republic of Brazil Lieutenant Colonel Nelson Della Monica and Warrant Officer Louise Claudio de Faria representing Canada Lieutenant Colonel Jean Francois Harvey and Warrant Officer Darlene Skinner representing Chile Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Aranguiz and Master Sergeant Claudio Lleva, representing the Hellenic Republic of Greece. Colonel Status Stefan Need US and Lieutenant Colonel Giorgio’s to Gardas representing the Republic of Indonesia Lieutenant Colonel David Cho Kabo representing the State of Israel Lieutenant Colonel Yosi Nah, representing the Italian Republic Major Gildo Franzoni and Captain P. A. tro the policies representing Japan Lieutenant Colonel Takemitsu to veto representing the Republic of Korea Major San Juan June representing the Kingdom of Norway Major Frank Torkildsen are Yeah, representing the Republic of Poland. Colonel, you’re sick. Brzezinski representing the Portuguese Republic Colonel Orazio Santos and Captain Bruno Coimbra, representing the Kingdom of Spain. Captain Oscar Garcia representing Taiwan, the Republic of China Lieutenant Colonel Chang Pan, Shia and Major She G Jiao everyone, you may take your seats as we wind down this afternoon, we extend special thanks to our host General Bunch. Sir, we cannot adequately express our appreciation for your support and for what it means to our foreign liaison officers to have you here. Another special thank you to the staff of the National Museum of the United States Air Force from making this marvelous venue available to us. We express our appreciation to the Air Force Band of Flight for providing today’s music and finally thank you to the Offsite Committee led by Miss D Grundy and FMC Protocol to all of you. Thank you for wonderful ceremony for our international partners and foreign liaison officers. The bag at your seat is yours to take home as a gift from half sack. Please remain in position for the group photograph. General Bunch and General Book. Bauer, please position yourselves off the stage for the group photograph and international partners. Senator Seats. Yes, sir. To all to all of our attendees today, both in person and virtual. Thank you for attending. This Concludes concludes today’s event. Have a wonderful day.