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In March, The Gazette sat down with Lt. Gen. Michael Gould, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, to learn about the 36-year Air Force veteran as well as the school he commands.
Gould has a long history with the academy.
He graduated from the academy in 1976. He has also served there as a graduate assistant football coach, physical education instructor, assistant men’s golf coach and an instructor pilot.
Gould spent most of his career flying transport and refueling planes.
He took over as the academy’s top general in 2009.
This is the third installment in a periodic series of question-and-answer articles with top Pikes Peak region military commanders.
Gazette: What are some of the ways cadets are positively contributing to the community?
Gould: The biggest way they contribute to this community is their willingness to serve our country in a time of war. That benefits a lot more than just Colorado Springs. The fact that these young men and women, many of whom have had the opportunity to go to college anywhere in the country or world, choose to serve through this avenue — that’s the real contribution they make.
There are a lot of other more practical ways. Last year, we put in over 30,000 man hours of support to the community. Cadets are mentoring young kids in schools. Of course there’s the work they did in Mountain Shadows after the Waldo Canyon fire, cleaning up debris and helping folks get their lives back on track. They’re involved with Habitat for Humanity, with feeding the poor and underprivileged in the soup kitchens — a whole laundry list of things. This is all part of their development, learning how to lead with character.
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Gazette: What are some of the ways the Air Force Academy is keeping up with the times and preparing cadets for modern and future warfare?
Gould: Our mission in the Air Force is to fly, fight and win in air, space and cyber. On the air side, our airmanship programs at the academy are second to none. Our soaring program, our parachute program, our free-fall, our powered-flight program and our unmanned aerial systems programs are all very rigorous and actually a lot of fun. They directly prepare cadets for conducting our mission in the air arena.
You look at space and talk about cutting edge — we are the only undergraduate institution in the country that has an astronautics department, a space program where the cadets design, build, launch and operate satellites. Right now we have a satellite the cadets control on a daily basis. That’s doing some real-world scientific missions. …
The third domain in which we operate is cyber. Our cyber education is growing by leaps and bounds. The cadets have gotten into a lot of the national and international cyber competitions. Their performance is unbelievable. Just recently the cadet cyber club participated in a national-level exercise where there were 752 teams, and we were in the top 15. This is competing against others in industry, graduate students and undergraduates.
We have the healthiest funding stream for undergraduate research of any institution in the country — between $60 million and $70 million comes in the academy per year for research activities. Most of these are grants or various companies that know we have a gold mine right here. We have 18 different research centers at the academy and two institutes. Whether it’s in space or energy or cyber or political science, we have cadets who are constantly looking for research projects that will have real-world applications.
Gazette: This month brought the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. Looking back, what are your thoughts on the war?
Gould: I’ve lost a bunch of friends. On 9/11, I was here in Colorado Springs as the commander of the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. We were at the hub of all that activity of that fateful day.
Having been involved at that level, I can tell you that every day of my personal life since 9/11, my professional efforts have gone into what we were calling the “War on Terror.” Every job I’ve had as a general officer since then has focused on that.
When I came to the academy, one of my emphasis areas was to make sure that what we were doing in our military training and academic experience and even in our athletic endurance training, that everything was focused on preparing cadets to go out and serve in that environment. That is our reality in the world today.
I think about all the cadets who have graduated from this academy and their first, second, third assignments have been directly contributing to the effort, including our two sons.
Paula and I have a son, Bart, a 2004 (academy) graduate, who spent time deployed in Baghdad, and our son Brandon, a 2007 (academy) graduate, who has flown in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq and surrounding areas in
C-17s. That’s just a snapshot of two young men we happen to be really close to. In the last 10 years, over 10,000 academy graduates have jumped right into that.
Gazette: How does the academy contribute to the identity of Colorado Springs?
Gould: Think back to April 1, 1954. That’s the day President Eisenhower signed the executive order creating the Air Force Academy. Washington had to go through a selection process. Where was the academy going to be? There were upwards of 700 different locations. Everybody put their hand up and said, “We’d like to have it in our community.”
That process whittled it down to three locations: Lake Geneva, Wis.; Alton, Ill.; and Colorado Springs. We can show you the newspaper headlines … huge, bold headlines: “Springs wins Air Force Academy.” And this was a huge deal across the country.
In this community, we have a national treasure in our backyard, and it’s really not even the backyard anymore. It was initially, because the academy was several miles north of what was then a small town. Now we see the community moving north, and it’s really the front porch of Colorado Springs and El Paso County.
Gazette: What impact is sequestration (automatic budget cuts carving $46 billion from the Pentagon) having on the academy?
Gould: Our country faces a huge challenge with ironing out the budget and stimulating the economy. Sequestration is having an impact for sure. The biggest impact is on our people.
There will be some furloughs. Our job is to continue the core mission that involves the education and training. We keep our eye on that ball.
What we have to look at is how we can achieve our goal but look for things we can stop doing. We are going to do less with fewer resources. There are some things that won’t get done. Our travel funds, we’ve reeled them back. … We’ll also have to forgo some purchases — supplies, computer refresh efforts. We’ll have to put some construction projects on hold in the near term. It’s deferred maintenance, if you will.
We’ll save by not doing some things so we’ll still have the resources to go back into the classroom, into the military training, into our airmanship program and our athletics. Right now, it looks like we’ll be able to keep our flying hour program at the academy. Across the Air Force, we have had to cut back on flying hours.
The Thunderbirds team will likely have to stand down at graduation. You can’t just crank them up for one more show on May 29 at Falcon Stadium for graduation. It’s extremely emotional. It’s become such a tradition. But if given a choice — you can fly combat missions over Afghanistan or you can do something as important as our ambassadors of goodwill are on the Thunderbirds team — we need to put our resources and focus on the combat mission.
Gazette: How is the academy combating sexual assault?
Gould: One sex assault is one too many. We’ll continue to strive toward driving that number down to zero. But human nature is what it is. We have worked extremely hard at prevention. We’ve worked equally as diligently to make sure that victims of sexual assault have outlets. We encourage them to come forward and report.
Our statistics show that our victims are very comfortable reporting. We will investigate to the full extent of what the law will allow to get to the facts and severely punish those found guilty.
I know the facts will bear out that we’ve attacked this extremely hard. … We simply cannot do our mission if our people are living in fear of any kind of assault or disrespect.
Photo by Air Force photo
Lt. Gen. Mike Gould presents Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera with a copy of “Spirit and Flight: A photographic salute to the United States Air Force Academy” during a Hispanic Heritage Month luncheon at the Air Force Academy’s Falcon Club Oct. 14, 20 Photo by USAFA/PAV
Carolyn Clark Miller receives a flag from Air Force Academy Supt. Mike Gould at the graveside service for her father, Lt. Gen. Albert P. Clark, on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. Clark was a prisoner of war in World War II and a decorated veteran. He was a for Photo by JERILEE BENNETT, THE GAZETTE