The Air Boss, 2025

Fighter Pilot Podcast

E. Vincent "Jell-O" Aiello, Retired U.S. Navy Fighter Pilot

History, Personal Journals, Technology, Society & Culture, Government, Leisure, Aviation

4.9 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The U.S. Navy has one of the largest air forces in the world comprised of a wide variety of aircraft from helicopters to strike fighters to patrol planes. While squadrons, air wings, and type wings have a well-established chain of command, ultimately they all fall under the purview of a single person. Known formally as the Commander, Naval Air Forces, the position is known better as simply, the Air Boss.

On this episode, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral and air boss Dan “Undra” Cheever, joins us to discuss the current state and future of naval aviation. We touch on numerous high-level strategic issues and spend several minutes answering listener questions.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-fighter-pilot-podcast/donations

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the fighter pilot podcast.
0:08.3	I am your host Vincent Aiello Call Sign Jello.
0:11.4	October 2025 marks the United States Navy's 250th anniversary,
0:16.0	and as part of our month-long celebration, this week I am pleased to be joined by the Commander Naval Air Forces, better known as the Air Boss. Vice Admiral Dan Cheever, welcome to the show. Thanks very much. I didn't know your first name was Vincent. I only knew his Jello for all these years. Well, it's actually my middle name, but yes. Ah, there you go. There you go. Well, thanks for taking the time to join us on the show. And you're not the first. Listeners may recall from episode 16 way back in 2018 that Vice Admiral Mike Shoemaker, one of your predecessors, came on the show. And we learned all about the Air Boss on that episode, although the 2002 release of Top Gun Maverick may have muddied the role a little bit. But please, remind us who and what
0:56.0	the Airbus is. So the Airbus is in charge of the 11 aircraft carriers and the thousands of
1:01.3	aircraft and helicopters that comprise Naval Aviation Enterprise, if you will. And then the Airbus
1:07.2	specifically is in charge of Naval Air Force's Pacific Fleet, the West Coast,
1:11.2	and there's the East Coast side of that.
1:13.8	And then we're also charged a policy for everybody under Air Force's terminology.
1:18.6	But basically, about 100,000 folks, really good folks, both active, enlisted, and government
1:25.2	servants and that kind of stuff in contractors.
1:27.2	It's really exciting.
1:28.6	You know, we see the Blue Angels at occasional air shows. We might see a headline on the news
1:33.5	about a red stripe, as you would call it, but you know, a grounding of a fleet or a mishap.
1:38.4	What really keeps you busy day to day?
1:40.9	What gives me busy is manning, training, and equipping these fine young sailors to go out
1:45.9	and do the country's bidding. That's it. Get the right manning to the right assets, carriers,
1:50.7	squadrons, wings, all that kind of stuff, and then train them correctly. Training's probably
1:55.4	you and I grew up in the training world. That's probably the biggest thing, making sure we debrief
2:00.0	right, our self-critical,
2:01.7	all those kind of things, which is inherent in naval aviation. And then the equipage, making
2:07.3	sure they have everything that the country needs them to have to go out there and globally project
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from E. Vincent "Jell-O" Aiello, Retired U.S. Navy Fighter Pilot, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of E. Vincent "Jell-O" Aiello, Retired U.S. Navy Fighter Pilot and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.