November Chief's Concerns Published Oct. 30, 2012 By Chief Master Sgt. Dennis Burton 169th Maintenance Squadron MCENTIRE JOINT NATIONAL GUARD BASE, South Carolina -- First and foremost I want to take this opportunity to welcome back everyone who deployed in support of the 169th Fighter Wing 2012 Air Expeditionary Force. What an intriguing experience to see all the different AFSC's and skill levels merge together and perform such an enormous and challenging task with outstanding results! As usual the Swamp Fox family pulled together in the most adverse and hostile environment to overcome any obstacle bestowed upon them. GOOD ON YOU! Many of the supervisory positions were not filled by the normal section NCOs. This afforded the opportunity for new and upcoming NCOs to manage and direct their duty sections, which they did flawlessly. As I have stated before, we are in good hands in the future with such motivated and professional leadership in the making. Obviously a leader is only as good as the people that he or she manages. To be a great leader you need to have great people. These type of Airmen are the reason the mission was completed in such an exceptional manner given the amount of three-level qualified personnel that deployed. The considerable long hours and hard work was a cooperative effort by the most ambitious group of Airmen in the United States Air Force. This was evident by the number of munitions expended, combat missions and sorties flown. Not to overlook all the hard work and support by the select group of individuals who manned the home front back at KMMT, what an extraordinary effort given by all. Their dedication was instrumental in carrying on the daily task to support flying, alert, drill, and the painstaking swap-out of deploying personnel. Moving on, we are faced with another task which will be the 169th Fighter Wing 2013 Operational Readiness Inspection. The plans are being coordinated, classes scheduled and equipment prepped. This is the easy part. Working to get each and everyone's skill development at their peak performance level will take an enormous amount of hours with training and exercises. Mindset with a positive attitude is the first major contributor for a successful grade. And as always sustained commitment and strong perseverance will carry you thru with a genuine sense of accomplishment. As if you have never heard this before: 'WE WILL NOT FALTER AND WE WILL NOT FAIL'. "Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." ~Vincent Lombardi ~