A conversation with the chief Published Feb. 24, 2012 15th Wing JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii -- Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James C. Binnicker served as adviser to Secretary of the Air Force Edward C. Aldridge Jr. and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch on matters concerning welfare, effective utilization and progress of the enlisted members of the Air Force. He was the ninth chief master sergeant appointed to this ultimate noncommisioned officer position and served from July 1, 1986 to July 31, 1990. Chief Binnicker was born in Orangeburg, S.C., where he graduated from Aiken High School in 1956. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Senior Noncommissioned Officer Academy in 1973, and the First Sergeant Academy in 1974. He entered the Air Force in August 1957, and received basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. His Air Force career has included tours in base and wing operations and as the senior enlisted adviser for 12th Air Force, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces and Headquarters Tactical Command. He also represented the Air Force as senior enlisted adviser on the President's Commission on Military Compensation. In February 1985, Chief Binnicker was selected for the 33-year extended tenure program. He became chief master sergeant of the Air Force in July 1986 and retired in October 1990. During his tenure as chief master sergeant of the Air Force, he took on the challenges of updating the enlisted performance report and professional military education for enlisted Airmen. He recently sat down with Hickam Airmen to discuss some of those issues. Question: What has this experience, the naming of the Hickam PME Academy in your honor, been like for you? Binnicker: It was a once in a lifetime experience. To have anything named in your honor clearly is a distinctive honor. To have a program that I'm so passionate about, like enlisted PME, and to have a PME center as nice and professional as the one here at Hickam, is truly an honor. Question: Why are you so passionate about PME and Airmen education? Binnicker: I can see the difference. I look at it, and I've examined it over the years and the difference is the professional military education. In 1957, we had only one NCO Academy in the Air Force. Some bases had what we called NCO preparatory school, the front runner for leadership school. I wanted to go but my boss wouldn't let me. The age old come back was, "I can't afford to let you go. I need you here." Not knowing that, yeah it will be a sacrifice to have someone gone for five or six weeks, but the benefit that you derive when they get back is tenfold. I didn't get to go to a leadership school as I progressed in rank, and during the Vietnam War they closed all the NCO academies. When I came home from Vietnam, I was a master sergeant and out of eligibility zone as master sergeants weren't allowed to go to the NCO academy. They also weren't allowed to go to the SNCO academy. So, in that observation, and seeing firsthand the difference between then and now, I came to the conclusion it was professional military education. Now, I can truthfully say the NCO corps is as professional as I've ever seen it. Question: Was making professional military education available for all NCOs at all levels one of your biggest goals or key issues during your tenure as CMSAF? Binnicker: It was. I took with me all the frustrations of 29 years and remembered I wanted to go to the NCO academy when I came home from Vietnam and couldn't. In the interview with General Welch, when he selected me for the job, he asked me something like, "If you're selected, what would be the things you would want to be involved in?" I said, "The first thing I would want to do is fix the APR (Airman Performance Report)." He said, "I agree." I said, "The second thing is I would want is to send master sergeants to the senior academy." If you wait until someone makes senior or chief to send them to school and they retire two years later, you don't get the payback for the investment. They are part of the Top 3, why wouldn't you send them. The reason was, the auditorium wasn't big enough...from that came a new auditorium with a beautiful $17-million campus around it. Question: You come full circle with having the PME center here at Hickam named after you. Are you pleased with the progress PME has made over the years? Binnicker: Absolutely, especially here. As I said in my remarks this morning, when I arrived here in 1978, I went on a trip through the command to see what we had and to access what I was going to be working with for the next three or four years. At the time, we only had one school house at Kadena, and it housed the NCO academy and leadership school. The opportunity rate in PACAF for NCOs to go to a leadership school and/or a NCO academy was 17 percent, the lowest in the Air Force. So, I told the PACAF general that he is now the commander of the major air command that has the lowest opportunity rate. He said, "I don't like that, what do we do to fix it?" I said, "We build more schools." In 1978, we were broke. There was no money. You will see the parallels today. The Vietnam War had consumed a lot of money and everything else was left to go down. Facilities, barracks, quality of life, child care centers and anything like that were neglected, not by choice, but by lack of funds. So for me to say I want four schools at Clark, Kadena, Yokota and Hickam, and someone said it was going to cost $1 million to do that, I knew that it wouldn't get done. So, I told the boss, "If you let me, I can do it for free." And he had just received a briefing from the PME world saying it was going to cost $1 million to do it. They weren't motivated the same way I was. What they wanted was bright and shiny school houses with maximum authorizations for instructors and staff. I understand that, but they didn't see the big picture and the lack of money. I had a plan. The wing chief at those four bases would build a school house with no money and no authorizations. That was the toughest thing because you want people who can teach. I said, "Well, out of the thousands of people at Clark, Kadena, Yokota and Hickam, you can in fact find people who use to be PME instructors. Bring them back into the business. I knew this would not be forever, especially in the temporary fixtures they put the school houses in. Eventually we would work our way out of that and money would be coming and we would improve those facilities. I said you can teach leadership school in a tent, it doesn't have to be in an air conditioned building. The goal was get it started and graduate the first class. And so we did. The most important thing for me was to see senior airmen walk across that stage. Question: I'm sure you got a little push back in the beginning? Binnicker: I did, a lot of push back. But I had the PACAF commander flying top cover for me, and it gives you a great comfort zone. We anticipated the push back. You're never going to have 100 percent agreement and 100 percent buy-in. People have priorities and they weren't bad people. They just had a different view of the world. It would have been easier without the Negative Ned's or the Doubting Thomases. But in the end, it was sweeter, because it was difficult to do. I've always said, "If it was easy to do than anybody can do it." But it takes real professionals to step up and do what those guys did at those bases. Now, I get the credit, I have my name on the building. On one level that's unfair because there were so many people that had a hand in it. I wish their name could be on the sign. Figuratively speaking, my name is on the sign, but if you look close, you'll see thousands of other names who've helped and did the heavy lifting. My job was removing obstacles so people could be successful. Question: You spoke about the similarities to the end of the Vietnam War era and today's Armed Forces fighting on multiple fronts and corresponding money woes. What are some of the similarities you see? Binnicker: Today, we have Afghanistan to worry about as a theater of operation. We are essentially out of Iraq, so now our focus is in Afghanistan. That takes a big chunk of the Department of Defense and national budget. Everybody in America knows the crisis that we are in from a financial standpoint. It's almost global, an unraveling of the financial world. It trickles down to the DoD and the Air Force and PACAF and 15th Wing and all the other wings and units. The president and his team have said we've got to cut the budget...Everything is on the table. Programs are being canceled. From TDYs (Temporary duty assignments) being reduced, cutback to looking at every chip we make and asking, "It is absolutely mission essential that you do that?" An example, we are no longer having graduations in the evenings at the senior academy and the NCO academies around the 48 states...We'll still graduate the students, but we'll do it in the day time. You can still invite your spouse, but it will not be a grand affair it has been in the past. Question: What would you say to Airmen today to help them adapt in this austere fiscal environment and creatively accomplish the mission? Binnicker: I can say that if I were wearing the uniform today, I would tell the Airmen to go find way to work smarter not harder. You can't do more with less. That's a worn out expression. I understand the meaning behind it, but when you tell people who are essentially on their backs, from a budget standpoint, that you have to do more with less, you destroy their enthusiasm. You cast a doubt into your credibility. "What do you want me to do, I'm working my fingers to the bone now?" My way would be to say you've got to work smarter. So, I need all of you to look at ways we can save money and at the same time do the right thing. I guarantee you, if you put your mind to it you can look around and you can find things that make you question "why are we doing this?" and "what would happen if we stop doing it?" Sometimes the rules and regulations that we've been doing so long that we've lost sight of the reason they were instituted. We probably put it into effect 10 years ago, but the reason we put it into effect went away. But the rule didn't. Work smarter. Now. when you talk about the drawdown, it doesn't do any good for me as a dinosaur from history to say to people, "Eh, we've done this before. There's always been a drawdown. We've always had budget problems. You'll get through it." It's not fair because it's the first time they've done it. What we can do is say let me help you find ways to do this smarter. I don't like the EPR (Enlisted Performance Report) and I created it because I didn't like the APR. I thought by giving the people a performance report they can be honest with, life would be better. It didn't happen. Now, the EPR is as bloated, some people use inflated, and it doesn't measure what we want it to measure. General Welch and I were on an airplane and I was having a pity party because I was getting beat up pretty bad about the EPR and the change that was coming. He said, and this is a quote I will never forget. He said "Chief, the problem we have in the Air Force is that we have so few mediocre people. It is difficult to differentiate excellence." If you think about it, he's right. We do have so few mediocre people in the Air Force that it is difficult to differentiate excellence. And I added to his quote my own words, "But differentiate we must." We can't promote everybody to tech sergeant. But if we had a better way to measure the performance, maybe you wouldn't have to take a test. Does the test really measure your potential to be a technical sergeant? It is the only thing we have. A test is never the best measure of your knowledge. It is the only one we have. I want a performance report that tells us who is the best public affairs guy, who's the best fuels guy, not some inflated-blown-up-puffy-fluffy words report that is part of an annual requirement. If you really knew the person you were reporting on, you should be able to write that report in 30 minutes. It's not that big. I know people that will take it home and bust the suspense because they can't get the words on the paper. It's like writer's block. You're not writing about the person, you writing about yourself and my ability to say the things that need to be said. So we make it really, really difficult. Do you need the same promotion system that you had for 800,000 for the little more than 300,000 we will have at the end of the drawdown? Do you need the same assignment system? Those systems haven't changed very much in the last 50 years. Question: Is there anything else you would like to add? Binnicker: Absolutely, publically thank General North for the leadership that he has displayed since he has been here as the PACAF commander. His Order of the Sword certainly is proof positive that he deserves to be inducted in to the sword because of his love for and support of enlisted people and their families. I want to thank Colonel Barrett, the 15th Wing commander, for his hospitality. I want to compliment, as I said in my speech this morning, here I am on the most beautiful installation in the world, all services, all countries; Hickam has to be the most beautiful installation in the world. I applaud all the people that make this a beautiful place. I also want to thank everyone for the honor to have my name on that school and for that school to be in the condition that it is in makes the honor even greater.