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

My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of Warren the Rocks.

In this episode, I sat down with Lieutenant General Brian Robinson, the commander of Air Education and Training Command, and Lieutenant General

Andrea Tullis, the commander and president of Air University.

We had a fascinating conversation on the intersection of training and readiness, and I hope you enjoy listening to the conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.

You two both run major institutions in the Air Force charge with training and education.

And that obviously has a big tie-in with readiness.

Something we're thinking a lot about, especially as we gear up for great power competition,

we're seeing what's happening in Ukraine, we're getting ready for a possible scenario with China that we all hope doesn't happen.

But what's the role in it for training and education on all of this?

I think the role for Air Education Training Command writ large as a whole, we also call ourselves the first

command because we have the formal responsibility to attract, recruit, train, and educate all the airmen

for the United States Air Force.

So in that way in what you talked about,

in addition to attracting and recruiting

and finding the right quality and capable people

that have the potentiality to serve and develop into airmen,

it's the formal education and training of those airmen

in those ways that they are ready to go out to the great power

competition and serve in the ways that the history is shown that they can.

At every university, we really just have a slice

of General Robinson's enterprise,

...