HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – Dozens of trainees entered the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center workforce following a graduation ceremony here Dec. 8.
After completing their respective programs, the 58 civilian graduates received promotions and began their careers as program managers, logisticians, contracting officers, and engineers supporting various roles within AFLCMC and AFNWC.
Keynote speaker Scott Hardiman, Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center director for Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) Integration and Air Force program executive officer for NC3, shared some advice with the new employees.
“When it comes to program execution, we are a team,” he said. “The engineers are important, as are the logisticians, contracting officers, and program managers. Everyone must come together to execute a program to deliver a capability for the warfighter. No one functional is more important than the other; we have to work together.”
During two- and three-year training programs, graduates received a combination of virtual and in-person training, said William Alter, program management trainee lead. In addition to gaining on-the-job experience supporting a variety of AFLCMC and AFNWC missions, the trainees were also able to work toward obtaining critical certifications needed for supporting Air Force acquisitions, he continued.
Joe Bradley, director of the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapons Systems, and associate director of Engineering and Technical Management here, welcomed the new employees to civil service by challenging them to look for innovative ways to shorten the acquisition timeline.
“Find a way to question what we’re doing and discover different methods of doing things,” he said. “We need your voices, so use them to make our processes more responsive so we can get capability to the user faster.”
During his remarks, Hardiman also discussed the importance of industry to the Air Force’s acquisition mission.
“We can’t accomplish anything without our industry partners,” he said. “They build what we deliver to the field, so it’s absolutely critical that we work together so both the Air Force and industry can be successful.”
Upon completion of their training programs, the graduates received promotions to the grade of GS-12. They will continue supporting programs in AFLCMC’s Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks Directorate, the Digital Directorate, the Acquisition Excellence and Program Execution Directorate, the Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate, and AFNWC’s NC3 Integration Directorate, both at Hanscom and other operating locations, said Alter.
The Functional Trainee Programs were supported by the Hanscom operating location of the various AFLCMC acquisition functional offices.