CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. – The Honorable Gilbert Cisneros, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and Honorable Alex Wagner, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs visited Cannon Air Force Base, August 1-2, 2023.
To kick off their visit, Team Cannon hosted a dinner for the distinguished visitors and civic leaders of the local communities, Clovis and Portales, who have been instrumental in addressing the quality-of-life issues here at Cannon AFB.
“We are very excited to host Honorable Cisneros and Honorable Wagner and to introduce them to some of our community partners,” said Col. Brent Greer, 27th Special Operations Wing Deputy Commander. “Cannon relies on our strong community partnerships to get after our unique challenges. I’m confident that this venue will provide a great platform to discuss how, together, we can continue to improve the quality-of-life for our Air Commandos and their families and highlight some of successes.”
As the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Cisneros serves as the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary of Defense, which has direct influence on equal opportunity, morale, welfare, recreation, and quality of life matters. Joining him was the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Wagner, whose role provides overall supervision for matters related to manpower, military and civilian personnel, Air Force Reserve component affairs, and readiness support for the nearly 700,000 Airmen and Guardians.
“Visits like this one help us understand the very real challenges that more remotely located bases deal with,” said Cisneros. “Hearing and seeing first-hand how our policies impact Airmen’s day-to-day life provides us critical data that we need in order to better support our total force.”
During their visit, Cisneros and Wagner met with several organizations across the Wing to gain insight into the unique challenges that our Airmen and their families face like access to quality healthcare, housing, manning, childcare and access to quality education. During several of their engagements, they also heard from parents, young airmen and others directly impacted by the challenges we have here at Cannon.
One of their stops was the Child Development Center, where they toured the facilities and spoke to CDC staff about how they are getting after their hiring challenges, that have historically reduced the number of families that are able to use their childcare services. At the CDC, parents from across the Wing were invited to attend a Parents Council, where (they) raised some of their childcare-related concerns, to include manning, availability, enrollment delays, etc.
Cisneros and Wagner also toured the 27th Special Operations Medical Treatment Facility. During this portion of the tour, members of the 27th Special Operations Medical Group briefed the senior leaders on Cannon’s medical challenges that impacts the Wing’s mission readiness.
Cisneros and Wagner also had lunch with airmen across the wing, where several airmen gave their quality-of-life testimonials. The lunch offered airmen the opportunity to raise important concerns that warrant attention at the Office of Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Air Force level.
Throughout their visit, Cisneros and Wagner recognized and coined 10 high performing Airmen for outstanding performances.
Cisneros and Wagner concluded their visit by sitting down with the Integrated Resilience Optimization Network (IRON), that seeks to provide embedded holistic approach, enhanced SOF Readiness and collaboration with services that seeks to build resilience, normalize help seeking, provide innovative solutions and overall optimize performance. At this time, they also took the opportunity to meet with Wing leadership to discuss the Five & Thrive initiative that aims and has already seen successes in tackling some of the challenges Cannon Airmen and their families currently face, such as education, spouse employment, childcare, access to medical care, and access to safe and affordable housing.
Engagements and discussions with key Air Force and Department of Defense leaders allow us the opportunity to address what is needed to improve our Airmen and families’ quality of life while stationed at Cannon AFB.
For more imagery on the visit, please visit Honorable Cisneros and Honorable Wagner visit Cannon AFB > Cannon Air Force Base > News.
