Greetings LOGNATION,
As I write this letter, our community is in motion.
LOA’s four-part WISE Series symposiums — spanning 2025 and into 2026 — were the most sustained investment in logistician development this organization has ever undertaken. I am grateful to every member, chapter leader, volunteer, and industry partner who made them possible. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that I look forward to Spring 2027, when LOA returns to a single national symposium — one week where #LogNation reconvenes with shared purpose and renewed energy.
But before we look too far forward, I want to sit with where we are right now.
We are heavy in Operation EPIC FURY. The Warfighter requires what they require, where they require it, when they require it. That is not a small thing. That is the entire thing, and that is what defines us as logisticians. And that work has not gone unnoticed. CJCS General John D. Caine stood at the DoD’s largest distribution center this July and said what we know: “It comes down to logistics and supply. Professionals really do logistics. It is one of the great areas of exclusivity that the United States of America has.”
Then there is the reminder none of us wanted.
The crash of a 412th Test Wing B-52 at Edwards AFB stopped me cold. It should stop all of us. We are in a serious business, with serious consequences. In 25 years, I have stood on too many flightlines and loaded our fallen brothers and sisters onto aircraft. I have saluted in too many memorials for Airmen gone too soon. I carry those moments — every logistician who has served long enough carries them — and they are the reason I will never allow this profession to be treated as anything less than the life-and-death enterprise it is.
I mean that literally. None of that is abstract. It is experience — and experience must be shared, or it walks out the door with every PCS move.
Think about this. Who do you call when you don’t know the answer? Who has walked the ground you are about to walk? That is what LOA is for. The gap between what the schoolhouse teaches and what the Warfighter demands has always been bridged the same way — not by regulation or technology, but by people who know people.
That network does not build itself. Exceptional Release articles, deliberate mentorship, and engagement in your local chapters build it. These are not administrative checkboxes — they are the connective tissue of a profession that cannot afford to be fragmented.
We are in a serious business, with serious consequences. We only make it through together. We do not have time to learn every lesson alone — we have to learn from others and from the past.
We have been reminded this year — by the pace of operations, by the weight of loss, by the words of our most senior leaders — that what we do is not incidental to American power. It is American power. And power of that magnitude does not sustain itself. It is sustained by communities like this one — by logisticians who stay connected across assignments, share what they know, and refuse to let experience walk out the door with every rotation.
So as we head into the next symposium cycle, I am asking you to carry that weight forward with intention. Write. Mentor. Lead. Show up. Because the Airman behind you is counting on what you know — and they are counting on you to be connected enough to pass it on. That is the work of LOA. That is the work of #LogNation. And there is no better time to get after it than right now.
I look forward to seeing some of you in Las Vegas next week, and to what we will build together on the road to Spring 2027.
Stay connected. Stay engaged. Take care of each other.