New Columbus Air Force Commander - 07/22/20

WCBI's Tara Wheeler introduces you to new CAFB Commander Col. Seth Graham.

It's my pleasure to introduce the community to the new commander at columbus afb, col seth graham.

What a time to take this on in such an unprecedented time.... it's always challenging when you come into a new organization but with the pandemic it's a whole new level of complication but thankfully in my previous assignemnt i was dealing with these exact same things so i've got a little experience navigating these waters.

Aside from that, what are some of the challenges you want to tackle on base.

The air force has been operating at a deficit of pilots for a number of years.

It's our job here to produce pilots for the usaf so we're going to find new and innovative ways to do that and that's something we're going to have to tackle for years to come.

What are some of your goals with your time here... our goals here are building a team that are cohesive in building the best pilots in the usaf.

You just returned from instructor pilot training, what did you gainr from that experience that you can apply to this new role?

I got the exact same training that all the other instructor pilots in the t-38.

And obviously they do t-6 and t-1 training as well, i didn't do that, just the t-38.

I had the same training as all the instructors that come here.

Really all it is learning all the skills of not only how to fly the t-38, something i last did as a student pilot 20 years ago, but now i'm going to be up there flying with students and teaching them how to fly as well.

Learning how to not only do the maneuvers but talk the students through how to do it.

Here at the 14th flying training wing, the mission is to create the best pilots in the world.

What do you want the community to know about what these pilots are going through to earn their wings.

This is probably the toughest thing thes pilots will go through in their entire career.

It's a very intensive year long process that includes academics, testing, flights, simulators, lots of evaluatoins.

So there's an immense amount of stress for them to perform.

Also these are dreams coming true.

For me personally in 1986 i watched top gun and decided as a 12 year old i wanted to be a pilot.

So i would imagine for a lot of students have the same life-long goals so there's a lot of stress to achieve that and fly the plane you've dreamed of flying.

We're merit based here so the better you perform, the more likely you are to get the fly the plane that you desire so there's competition and stress they have to deal with i can tell you a couple of decades after that, my husband watched top gun and now he's here hoping to be one of the best pilots in the air force.

Thank you for your time.

Looking forward to seeing what you'll do here on base.

Thanks for being here i appreciate it.