In person, Brown is private, thoughtful and deliberate. The campaign very much has China in mind, pushing the service to shed legacy warplanes and speed its efforts to counter hypersonics, drones and space weapons, where the military’s lingering Cold War-era inventory does not match up.
He was widely viewed within military circles as the frontrunner for the chairmanship, with the right commands and a track record of driving institutional change, attributes seen as needed to push the Pentagon onto a more modern footing to meet China’s rise.įor the past two years Brown has pressed “Accelerate, Change or Lose” within the Air Force. His nomination caps a four-decade military career that spans his commission as a distinguished ROTC graduate from Texas Tech University in 1984 to his White House nomination this week. Brown grew up on several military bases and states, which helped instill in him a sense of mission. His grandfather led a segregated Army unit in World War II and his father was an artillery officer and Vietnam War veteran. Born in San Antonio, he is from a family of Army soldiers. Colin Powell.īrown, 60, has commanded the nation's air power at all levels. Brown would not be the first African American to be chairman, the Pentagon's top military post that distinction went to the late Army Gen. If confirmed, he would be part of another first - the first time the Pentagon's top two posts were held by African Americans, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin the top civilian leader. He's been many firsts, including the Air Force's first Black commander of the Pacific Air Forces, and most recently its first Black chief of staff, making him the first African American to lead any of the military branches. If I’m in, I’m in to win - I do not play to lose.” To this day, his core tenets are to “execute at a high standard, personally and professionally,” Brown said this month at an Air Force Association conference in Colorado. He's spent much of his career being one of the Air Force's top aviators, one of its few Black pilots and often one of the only African Americans in his squadron. The call sign reveal was a rare inner look into Brown, who keeps his cards close to his chest.
Biden is scheduled to unveil Brown as his pick during a Rose Garden event on Thursday afternoon.
If confirmed, Brown would replace Army Gen. He landed in the muck, which coated his body and got “in his boots and everything." Which is how the nominee to be the country's next top military officer got his call sign: “Swamp Thing.”īrown, now a four-star general and the Air Force chief, will be nominated by President Joe Biden on Thursday. “Hope there's nothing down there,” Brown said in an interview at the Aspen Security Forum last year. had just enough time in his parachute above alligator-full wetlands for a thought to pop into his head. WASHINGTON - The Air Force fighter pilot about to be nominated as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got his call sign by ejecting from a burning F-16 fighter jet high above the Florida Everglades and falling into the watery sludge below.
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