And when they must deploy, we must do all we can to ensure their families are secure and well cared for. And we will. Our Air Force family deserves a quality of life commensurate with that of the nation they are sworn to defend. But the quality of the Air Force, whether in 1947 or 1997, is not measured in terms of new fighters, bombers, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles or the weapons they carry. It's in the people who together have built the greatest air and space power team in the world.
People are the strength of our past and the foundation of our future.