Col. Terence Green, commander
913th Airlift Group
From the moment Col. Terence Green first saw a C-130 — in childhood, when a neighbor who worked at Lockheed Martin took him on a tour of the local aircraft plant — the Georgia native was hooked.
Through the U.S. Air Force, he has served a career that is blue collar in more ways than the dress uniform. He’s logged hundreds of hours of combat and combat support flying time during multiple deployments and encompassing operations throughout the U.S., Caribbean, Central America, South America, Europe and Asia.
“I went to Valdosta State [in Georgia] in the ROTC program, but I ended up enlisting instead of finishing my degree,” he said. “It was just expensive, and Desert Storm was around the tail end of that time. I just wanted to get in faster, and I didn’t really care about being in school that long.”
Green’s career does not appear to have suffered for his dropping out of college; not only does he today have multiple degrees, but he also commands the 913th Airlift Group that maintains and flies C-130Js supporting airlift, airdrop, aeromedical and humanitarian missions around the world. Since 2006, he has been leading the Air Force Reserves, which he called one of the nation’s most potent secret weapons.
“A lot of folks get to that tenure point, especially if it’s pilots,” he said. “They hit the tenure commitment, and sometimes things have changed in their lives. Maybe they’re married. Maybe they’ve got a child coming. I think the reserve advantage is we’re able to retain that talent that we’ve spent a lot of dollars on by letting them transition off active duty, and they’re able to keep that employment with us on a part-time basis without any additional training.
“The other advantage we have is we have reserve airmen that come up straight through the reserve. They’ve never had any active duty; we hire off the street ever since 9/11, and I would say where we gain our advantage from them is a lot of these citizen airmen are subject matter experts out in their career field on the civilian side. They can actually bridge that gap of knowledge or even have those contacts that we need to be able to get something done in an expeditious manner.”
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