As of Monday, the Air Force had not yet responded to public questions about the four-star command status of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, expressed in a letter sent earlier this month by Ohio's senators and U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, and in an earlier letter Turner quietly sent last month.
Turner sent a letter to Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink on June 20 stating his conviction that the command needs and deserves the leadership of a four-star general, the highest rank an officer can attain in the Air Force.
That letter, shared recently with the Dayton Daily News by Turner's office, was not initially publicized.
A later letter from Turner and Ohio's two senators restates those concerns.
The Air Force has not yet responded to either letter, a representative of Turner's office told the Dayton Daily News Monday.
The more recent letter, released last week, urges Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not to strip Wright-Patterson Air Force Base of its four-star command status, as Hegseth and the Trump administration move to reduce the numbers of the military's top officers.
Sens Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, with Turner, sought to make the case to Hegseth that a four-star general should lead AFMC, the command responsible for researching, acquiring and maintaining Air Force planes and armaments.
All three politicians are Republicans. Wright-Patterson, with some 35,000 military and civilian employees, has long been seen as Ohio's largest concentration of employment in a single location. Protecting the base has been a principal concern for Ohio elected officials.
"While I applaud Secretary Hegseth's steps to streamline leadership, the loss of a four-star position at AFMC would significantly impact U.S. national security," Turner wrote in his June 20 letter to Meink.
Turner penned that letter before the official retirement of Gen. Duke Z. Richardson earlier in July. Richardson's deputy, Lt. Gen. Linda Hurry, a three-star general, assumed the duties of commander.
"AFMC touches nearly every aspect of the service, providing airmen with everything they need from uniforms to spare parts to nuclear-capable B-2 bombers. Its scope and responsibilities are vast, complex, and critical to supporting our warfighters and maintaining lethality throughout the Air Force," the senators wrote with Turner in their more recent letter, echoing themes Turner struck earlier.
Headquartered at Wright-Patterson, AFMC manages an $81 billion annual budget and a global workforce of 89,000 people who research, equip and sustain Air Force planes, weapons and equipment. That figure represents more than a third of the Air Force budget, dispersed across multiple installations.
As Turner noted in his earlier letter, AFMC is the Air Force's largest command by budget and its second largest by number of Air Force personnel.
A spokeswoman for the Department of the Air Force said senior leaders will respond directly to members of Congress. "I don't have any information to share at this time," spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said.
The Air Force does not make public its congressional correspondence, she added.
© 2025 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio).
Visit www.daytondailynews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
