You are listening to the War and the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War in the Rocks, and in this episode I sat down with the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall.

We talked about the reorganization of the Department of the Air Force that he is leading as well as modernization issues.

Enjoy the episode.

So how does one become Secretary of the Air Force?

Is there going to be like a job opening soon? Is this something I might be eligible for?

As far as I know, there won't be a job opening soon, but you never know. It was not a job that I

had anticipated I would have. I'll put it that way. I'm a technocrat basically. I'm a program

management, engineering, intersection of technology and operations, a technical person basically, and had spent most of my time working in research and development of new

products for the Defense Department either in government or in industry.

The last position in government before this one was Under Secretary for Acquisition Technology and Logistics, which really fit well with my background.

But I had an opportunity to come back and if I was going to get one of the service military department roles, this was the one I wanted.

I'm an aerospace engineer. I'm an army officer, but I'm also an aerospace engineer and spent my career working on a lot of both space and air programs and I

felt I could make the greatest contribution here by some miracle I guess that's how I

ended up here. Let's go back to the beginning. Where'd you grow up?

Grew up in Western Massachusetts on a small apple

farm. Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, Ethan Fromm Country, if you're familiar with that.

Small town of a thousand people, one of four children. My father passed away when I was ten.

And we had a half built house. We had sold the farm and we were moving into about, kept about ten acres.

And my father was in a process of building the

the house we were going to live in when he died and the people from the town came

and finished the house for us it was a really example of New England tight community, but

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