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AF outstanding unit award—you’ve earned it!

  • Published
  • By Col. Mike Hornitschek
  • 375th Air Mobility Wing commander
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --  From fighting our nation's wars to shining in the command's most difficult inspection, the mighty 375th Air Mobility Wing has earned the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award for the period from Sept. 1, 2009 to Aug. 31, 2011!

Our mission here-to enable combat power--is vast in purpose and broad in scope as we provide superior support for four major commands, 149 Geographically Separated Units, 31 tenants and three wings. And as noted by our recent Consolidated Unit Inspection, we set the standard with an "Excellent" rating with 32 team awards and 27 people personally recognized by the Inspector General Team. You all are doing a lot of things right!

Our vision has been to provide award-winning combat capability to the warfighter--always, and we've done that as evidenced by several achievements that include: two Air Force winners of the 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year; the best Logistics Readiness Squadron (non-flying) in the Air Force; the best Civil Engineer Squadron in Air Mobility Command; and the best library and childcare programs in the Air Force just to name a few of the awards.

That warfighting capability was also showcased during the 2010 Operational Readiness Inspection - again, another "Excellent" rating where the lead IG members said it was "one of the best inspections seen in the past four years." Along with that, we have outstanding teammates in all areas of support that include our medical personnel who earned AMC's Clinic of the Year and the No. 1 Clinic Patient Safety Program, surpassed the DoD's dental readiness goal, earned the area's rating as the No. 1 disabled employer in the Midwest, and earned "Excellent" in their Health Services Inspection. Those are just a few of the award-winning areas on our base.

Keeping our base beautiful and functioning efficiently has always been a priority for us, and if we can generate some cost savings along the way, we pursue that course of action. For instance, we completed one of the largest base construction programs in 30 years and held five ribbon cuttings in 2010 alone. The new Base Defense Operations Center, or BDOC, for our security forces personnel combined our active duty and Air National Guard counterparts, thus capitalizing on our assets to maximize reduced manpower and funding. A new operations building is also home to our active duty and Reserve command post functional areas, and shortly we'll be opening a new AES building.

In keeping with our conservation efforts, we benchmarked a recycling initiative that saves the wing $20,000 a year and AMC more than $2.5 million a year. Our contracting and funding programs were audited and found to be "Outstanding," and we continue to exceed expectations in managing our purchase card program that has more than 1,000 accounts!

Customer service has been a priority for our wing, and so it's not surprising that our Airmen's dining facility is rated No. 1 for customer service, as well as our household goods personnel rated 98% in customer satisfaction. Our Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron personnel were angels in the sky as they transported more than 16,000 wounded warriors and coalition members throughout this time period. Two of our AE specialists received AF-level awards for their outstanding mission support, leadership and management--that's truly "Help From Above."

Our DV mission execution also earned high points for the way they transported more than 7,500 DoD senior leaders throughout the globe. Our Air Traffic Control simulator training program is the AMC model and adopted as the Air Force standard. We are writing the book on how operations should be conducted with our Total Force Integration partners--the 126th Air Refueling Wing (ANG) and the 932nd Airlift Wing (Reserve). The blend of active duty members with these units provided seamless integration and success in the maintenance, flying and nuclear surety areas for our nation.

From maintaining our dorms to the highest standards to improving cyber security to executing swift justice with our legal teams - you all outshined, outserved and outperformed like true Showcase Performers.

We've revamped, set records, instituted paradigm shifts, led workflows, re-engineered, expedited, designed and developed, all while supporting numerous contingency and humanitarian missions. I couldn't be more proud of the 375th AMW and your contributions to our AMC and Air Force missions.

As a reminder, members assigned to the units during the award period are authorized wear of the AFOUA ribbon or appropriate cluster. Civilians are authorized wear of the AFOUA lapel pin, and our military personnel folks are working to ensure everyone's records reflect the award.

Again, "Team 3-7-5", thanks for all of your hard work from all the corners of this country we call home. I am constantly humbled to be a part of such a high performing organization.