T. Michael Moseley

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T. Michael Moseley is a retired general and former Chief of Staff of the Air Force. His early and midcareer background is as an F-15 Eagle fighter pilot, instructor, and unit commander, and then in prestigious training and joint forces assignments. [1] He was asked to resign by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,[2] and retired in 2008. He had been promoted from Vice Chief of Staff in 2005, a position to which he was named in 2003.

Two factors went into Moseley's firing. The better-known is an August 2007 incident in which live nuclear weapons were unknowingly and inappropriately transferred from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.[3] According to Foreign Policy, however, the real reason was his lack of urgency in deploying unmanned aerial vehicles. "Gates replaced him with Gen. Norton Schwartz, head of the Air Force's (sic) unglamorous Transportation Command. He picked Schwartz because he had tirelessly worked out a way, at Gates's request, to speed the air delivery of MRAPs to Iraq; that is, he'd acted as if a war was going on. (Schwartz's promotion made him the first Air Force chief of staff to come up through the ranks as neither a bomber pilot nor a fighter pilot; the move marked the beginning of a huge cultural shift in that branch of the military.) "[2] The suggested cultural shift may not be as great when it is realized that much of Schwartz's career was with Air Force Special Operations Command, including combat.

He has commanded the F-15 Division of the USAF Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, the 33rd Operations Group at Eglin Air Force Base, and the 57th Wing, the Air Force's largest, most diverse flying wing, also at Nellis. The general has served as the combat Director of Operations for Joint Task Force-Southwest Asia. General Moseley also commanded Ninth Air Force and the air component of United States Central Command, enforcing the "no-fly" zones over Iraq, and then in the Iraq War.

General Moseley's staff assignments have been a mix of operational, joint and personnel duties. These include serving in Washington, D.C., as Director for Legislative Liaison for the Secretary of the Air Force; Deputy Director for Politico-Military Affairs for Asia/Pacific and Middle East, the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Chief of the Air Force General Officer Matters Office; Chief of Staff of the Air Force Chair and Professor of Joint and Combined Warfare at the National War College; and Chief of the Tactical Fighter Branch, Tactical Forces Division, Directorate of Plans, Headquarters U.S. Air Force.[1]

Education

  • Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, Texas A&M University, 1971
  • Master of Arts degree in political science, Texas A&M University, 1972
  • U.S. Air Force Squadron Officer School, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1977
  • Fighter Weapons Instructor Course, U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School, 1981
  • Air Command and Staff College, 1984
  • U.S. Air Force Joint Senior Battle Commander's Course, Hurlburt Field, Fla., 1988
  • National War College, 1990
  • Combined Force Air Component Commander Course, Maxwell AFB, Ala., and Hurlburt Field, Fla., 2000
  • Member, Council on Foreign Relations

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 General T. Michael Moseley, United States Air Force
  2. 2.0 2.1 Fred Kaplan (Sept-Oct 2010), "The Transformer", Foreign Policy (magazine)
  3. Fred W. Baker III (19 October 2007), Air Force Relieves Commanders Involved in Nuclear Weapons Incident, American Forces Press Service, U.S. Department of Defense