FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. -- We are almost seven years into the Global War on Terrorism and members of Team Fairchild have made significant contributions to the fight! These contributions have been made in a variety of ways - flying air refueling missions, maintaining aircraft, protecting resources and providing medical care for the wounded are just some of the many ways you have actively participated in combat and supported the war.

Several of you have deployed to Southwest Asia and many of you have deployed multiple times. Often, because of how professional and talented you are, you have made the very difficult things look easy - even wartime deployments and all of the challenges that go with them.

Sometimes when we do the same things over and over, it is easy for those actions to become routine; even the importance of deploying and being a critical part of a combat effort can begin to lose its meaning, but this is where your leadership comes in and it is absolutely vital! When you are preparing to deploy and when you are in the area of responsibility performing your combat mission, it is absolutely crucial that you lead by keeping yourself and those around you perfectly focused on just how incredibly important our mission is.

The end goal of everything we do at Fairchild is to provide fuel to the aircraft that are protecting the lives of our American warriors and coalition partners. Sometimes, the aircraft we refuel may be involved in a show of force - and this might be enough to dissuade the enemy from attacking our forces. In other cases, we might refuel aircraft executing actual strikes against enemy forces actively attacking our troops.

When we feel that we may be losing focus, if the mission seems to become a little too routine or if we begin to wonder if our efforts are making a difference, always remember this: there is not a single mission that the men and women of the 92nd Air Refueling Wing perform, whether providing life-saving medical care, ensuring persistent and uncompromising 24/7 force protection, enduring the heat and austere environments while performing time-critical aircraft maintenance or flying around-the-clock air refueling missions, that does not directly lead to protecting American lives.

Your leadership makes a difference by ensuring we never forget who it is we are ultimately supporting. That American warrior in contact with the enemy - that precious American we are all trying to save - is someone's mother or father, sister or brother, son or daughter, and they are absolutely counting on us to help them be successful in their mission and then return home safely. Whatever part of our Fairchild mission you are responsible for, let's continue to give our best and let's continue to lead - the troops in harm's way are depending on us!