From: Gen Norton A. Schwartz, USAF AF/CC

To: Keith Guller; Chief Executive Officer, Essex Industries

Date: 26 September 2011

Keith, please convey my warm regards to the Retired U.S. Air Force Aircrew Life Support and Aircrew Flight Equipment Group. Our Battlefield Airmen-special tactics officers, combat rescue officers, combat controllers, pararescuemen, tactical air control party personnel, and combat weathermen-are unrivalled in their mission effectiveness. Answering the call to meet our Nation’s wide-ranging and ever-expanding operational requirements, wherever our sons and daughters are in harm’s way, our Battlefield Airmen take to the furthest reaches of the world, often to operate in the most isolated, most austere, and most hazardous of conditions. “These things [they] do,” as the pararescue motto espouses, so “that others may live.” 

As you all know, there is no substitute for intensely training and exercising our Nation’s best in order to prepare them for the full range of mission requirements. Equally important is properly equipping them with the best, most appropriate technology and combat systems that our Nation can provide. Training and equipping work hand-in-hand to give our Battlefield Airmen every advantage that they need and deserve.

It is fitting, then, that the ALS/AFE group motto, “Your Life is Our Business,” harmonizes with the pararescue motto so well, because it reflects the complementary nature of our efforts to prepare PJs and all of our Battlefield Airmen toward maximum effectiveness. On behalf of our special operations and personnel recovery Airmen and their fellow service members whom they have extracted from danger, I thank you for your service and your ongoing contributions to national security. Suzie and I wish you the very best for your reunion.