Gen. Mike Minihan needed people to listen.
In 2021, fresh off his previous role as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Minihan knew that a massive overhaul of the world order was potentially underway. Air Mobility Command, his new post, needed to prepare to beat China.
The 6-foot-5 four-star burst onto the national scene in September 2022 with a fiery speech he hoped would inspire mobility airmen to see themselves as active players in America’s military legacy despite not flying flashy fighter jets.
“When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better; your marriage is stronger,” he roared to thousands of airmen and other attendees at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual conference outside Washington.
“Why is the mobility guy talking about lethality?” he asked. “Everybody’s role is critical, but Air Mobility Command is the maneuver for the joint force. If we don’t have our act together, nobody wins. Nobody’s lethal.”
He again grabbed the global spotlight with an early 2023 memo that urged airmen to be “unrepentantly lethal” in preparation for a war with China he believed could come in 2025. That timeline is comparable to the predictions of other top brass, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, who have cited U.S. intelligence in estimating that China aims to strengthen its military to be able to attack and seize Taiwan by 2027.
Nearly two years later, Minihan said the directive was “never about predicting” when war might erupt.
“It was about driving [the] readiness that this force needs to deliver on [a] mission that everybody else is expecting us to do,” he told Military.com in an Aug. 7 interview.
His approach — publicly calling out another world power with very direct language about threats — wasn’t always well received at the Pentagon.
Then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown — now the Joint Chiefs chairman — told Military.com in March 2023 he was “disappointed in” aspects of the memo and that the phrasing “detracted from the key message of the sense of urgency that is required.”
But some of those under Minihan’s command say that the bucket of cold water was needed.
“[His] leadership style, candor and his credibility changed the way AMC operates — in a good way,” said Carlos Berdecía, a recently retired colonel who worked under Minihan. “He was the right leader to make everyone know that AMC needs to be at the table. No one is successful without us.”
Minihan is aware that his style is very specific.
“I realize that, for some, it’s an acquired taste,” he said. “But I think that the transparency and the genuineness are essential factors of creating that unity of effort, creating a force that understands what’s at stake, creating a force that can take the battlefield and not only be ready, but deliver that decisive victory or that deterrent … that our civilian leaders demand.”
Now, with less than a month left running Air Mobility Command, Minihan, 57, is set to hand the reins to a new commander and retire from military service in early September. It will serve as the end of 34 years in uniform. He wonders whether he’s done enough.
“You can’t command and be fully invested and think that you got everything done that you wanted to get done,” he said. “There is always more work to do, and there’s always things to improve, and there [are] always more people to take care of.”
Aggressive Change
Minihan arrived at AMC headquarters at Scott Air Force Base — a military hub about 25 miles outside St. Louis in southwest Illinois — in October 2021, weeks after the command played a critical role in orchestrating the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and four months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would throw America’s efforts to ship weapons to its beleaguered partner into overdrive.
The realization that this command would require more of him hit home on a trip to visit his parents in early 2022. Minihan had been on the job for a few months, and the command’s focus had shifted to supporting NATO forces as the war in Ukraine began to unfold. The responsibility of the role and the magnitude of his plans for the years ahead weighed heavily on his mind.
“It was clear to me that I had to change some personal things to drive the stamina and the judgment and not have it come at the expense of me,” he said. “I quit drinking, I quit caffeine, I doubled down on my physical training, and I vowed in March ’22 to come out … stronger than when I entered.”
As he underwent a personal transformation, he pushed the limits of the nearly 107,000 uniformed and civilian employees under his command to see what tactics and techniques may be possible in an emergency.
He’s tried to introduce new communications tools across the fleet to ensure airmen aren’t flying blind into potentially dangerous areas. Those kits can make airmen more flexible — and safer — during missions where they wouldn’t otherwise be able to contact ground forces, particularly in areas like the vast Pacific.
And he’s encouraged airmen to embrace unusual ideas, like cutting aircrews to a single pilot and a loadmaster, refueling jets around the globe during nonstop flights lasting dozens of hours, and launching air-to-ground cruise missiles from cargo jets.
Some of those operations have drawn criticism from service members who contend they’re gambling with an unsafe level of risk and pushing troops too hard. But Minihan views the flexibility as necessary and says that the command often leans on its Guard and Reserve forces to fill in when active-duty units need time to recover.
His experiments converged at Mobility Guardian, a massive biennial training exercise in the summer of 2023 that rushed around 3,000 troops from seven countries to the Pacific to practice using the so-called “Second Island Chain” — stretching from Japan to Indonesia — as a logistics hub in case of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
The command saw firsthand where bureaucratic miscommunication can leave troops stranded; where letting go of America’s penchant for process can make the military more effective; which long-neglected Pacific airfields hold promise as future forward bases, and more — lessons it hopes will lead to success in a crisis.
Together, the preparations have strengthened AMC’s units and built trust with commanders around the globe who are interacting with more responsive, flexible mobility forces, Minihan believes.
“He’s accomplished some very aggressive culture shifts within the command,” Chief Master Sergeant Jamie Newman, AMC’s senior enlisted leader, told Military.com.
He’s gotten airmen to run at a tempo that “probably hasn’t been seen in 30 years,” Newman said. “His personality did that.”
But airmen haven’t had the luxury of focusing on training alone. After Minihan spearheaded Air Mobility Command’s after-action report on the Afghanistan withdrawal in the early weeks of his tenure, attention soon turned to supporting NATO forces and shipping weapons to Ukraine in 2022. Then followed Mobility Guardian, the start of the war in Gaza, humanitarian aid and security missions in Haiti, and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Chad and Niger — among the Air Force’s other responsibilities for routine training and transport missions.
That pace of operations has further strained a group that’s already among the U.S. military’s most relied-upon forces.
The mission-capable rate — a metric that shows what percentage of aircraft are ready to fly and support troops at any given moment — has dropped on most of the cargo and tanker aircraft that AMC relies on.
For instance, the C-130H Hercules airlifter fell from 69% in fiscal 2021, the year encompassing the Afghanistan withdrawal, to 44% in fiscal 2023, which ended days before the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
The figure has become a key metric for measuring the state of the military, though some leaders argue it doesn’t show a holistic picture of whether a unit is prepared for action.
As a result of Minihan’s work to break down barriers within the force and make troops more responsive, Newman said, airmen now collaborate more closely at the tactical and strategic levels, and have a better understanding of air mobility’s role working with troops from all of the services and why it matters.
Handing over the Baton
Minihan will spend his final days in command smoothing the path for his successor, Gen. John Lamontagne, to hit the ground running.
Lamontagne, now the deputy commander of the Air Force’s Europe and Africa operations, will take over the push to outpace China, the jet-connectivity initiative, Minihan’s efforts to encourage airmen to prioritize mental health, and plans to bring new tanker and transport airframes into the inventory.
Lamontagne will also inherit the troubled KC-46 tanker program, which has been plagued by several major manufacturing failures that have kept airmen from being able to clearly see the aircraft the jet is refueling and limiting what cargo it can carry, among other problems.
Minihan believes the tankers will be fully operational, without flight restrictions in place, by 2028 — 13 years after the KC-46 made its first flight.
“I trust American industry,” he said of Pegasus manufacturer Boeing, which has so far lost more than $7 billion on what was launched as a $4.9 billion program due to the jet’s flaws.
Minihan will cede command to Lamontagne in a Sept. 9 ceremony.
Has his brash approach helped or hurt his cause?
“I don’t wake up and try to be me,” Minihan said with a chuckle. “I realize that my style is different and that perhaps it stands out. But if you boil down my style to just urgency and action, then I’ve been consistent over my career.”
Newman argued Minihan’s “persona of a general from the 1940s,” his passion for service and his small kindnesses toward airmen and their families have won him support as he tries to take the command to a new level.
After Minihan hangs up his uniform for the last time, he’ll move into a house two blocks from his parents in St. Petersburg, Florida, and look for ways to continue supporting the mobility world from the outside.
He doubts he’ll sport a post-service beard or a man bun. But he plans to grow his hair long enough to touch his ears and to see whether he can sleep past 4:30 a.m.
“I’m looking forward to attending football games with my son,” he said. “I’m looking forward to flying with my youngest daughter. I’m looking forward to working with my oldest daughter. I’m looking forward to growing old with my wife. And … I’m looking forward to a healthy, sustainable rhythm.”
Related: Some Air Force Leaders ‘Disappointed’ in General’s Prediction of 2025 War with China