Dyer cut

Vice Adm. Joe Dyer spoke to crowds during a visit to NADEP North Island. Photo by Joe Feliciano

NAVAIR boss visits Depot; thanks Teammates

By Bill Bartkus

“Howdy! I never stand in front of a crowd of (NAVAIR) North Island people without proudly saying thank you. You people are such an important part of everything that happens in naval aviation,” said Commander, Naval Air Systems Command Vice Adm. Joe Dyer during his visit to Naval Air Depot North Island late last month. “You are a key and an essential part of the Naval Air Systems Command. Everyone feels great about the things you do, the contributions you make, the efficiencies you found, and the energy you bring in service to the fleet.”
Adm. Dyer spoke to two large audiences – at Building 94 and in the courtyard at Building 317 – at “mini Tailgates” during which he handed out awards and answered questions.
“We have always, in times of peace, looked for efficiencies. And we have always in times of warfare looked for effectiveness,” Dyer said. “And this is the first time that I have seen us (the Navy) trying to do both at the one time. If it feels a little stressful, that’s because it is.”
The three-star admiral said that NAVAIR is excelling. He told the crowds that NAVAIR has given the fleet ‘a gift of accuracy’. Said Dyer, “We used to have to target 10 airplanes against a single target to confidently destroy it when I started flying for the Navy 30 years ago. In Operation Enduring Freedom, we are confidently destroying two targets with a single airplane, and we’re on our way to being able to take on as many as seven or eight targets with any single airplane. This capability gives the Navy trade space as we call it.”
Dyer said that with this kind of accuracy the Navy could take fewer aircraft and fewer ships and perform the same job. “You can take our current number of ships and airplanes and that increased capability and go from being a holding force – a force that’s present and able to hold the line until the other services can reach the area – to being a major contributor as a decisive force and a much stronger player in the joint arena,” said Dyer, who has headed NAVAIR for two years.
“Naval aviation has performed well in Afghanistan,” Dyer said.
In answering a question about whether or not employees need to worry about their jobs during the next Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), Dyer said, “I don’t think so. Predicting the future is always a dangerous game. Naval aviation did the hard work of downsizing during the last rounds of BRAC.” He said that the number of depots went down by 50 percent, down to three from six sites. “Across all of NAVAIR, we have gone down from 18 sites to eight.”
He said that in the last rounds of BRAC, the Navy was three and four times more aggressive than the Army and the Air Force. “So my position is that we don’t need to do it again. I like to tell people that three depots are doing the work of six. BRAC bears watching, but it isn’t keeping me awake at night.” He said that NAVAIR civil service employees have come down from a 1989 peak of 57,000 to 27,000 in 2002.