RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany, March 22, 2006 – Gen. Tom Hobbins, U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander, was honored with a Federal 100 award March 20.

The Federal 100 awards recognize the 100 leaders who have made the largest contributions to the development, acquisition and management of federal information technology during the previous year.

Winners come from all different areas of federal service – for example, the Agriculture Department, State Department, U.S. Postal Service, Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service – and were selected by an independent panel of judges.

Hobbins was nominated for his work in his previous position, chief of Warfighting Integration and chief information officer.

In this position, he oversaw command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) portfolio encompassing 200 program elements valued at $17 billion.  

He was also the senior communications officer for the Air Force, involving 70,000 communications officers, enlisted and civilian personnel in the active duty force.

“This award is a direct result of the excellence of our dedicated communications personnel,” said the general. “I’m honored to be placed among this elite group of federal communicators. The advancements that have been made in the past year in information technology are just astounding.”

Hobbins’ list of accomplishments during his tenure is extensive. He successfully organized his new previous office, when the Air Force Secretary and Air Force Chief of Staff directed the reorganization and consolidation of Warfighting Integration, Communications Logistics, and the Air Force Chief Information Officer organizations.

The newly combined staff improved unity of effort and unity of command by reducing staff action overlap, redundancy and provided a single organization responsible for warfighting integration, information technology and portfolio management. 

The general was instrumental in establishing the Air Force’s first C4ISR roadmap – a strategy and detailed implementation plan that builds high speed information processing-enabled networks transcending ground, air and space domains, including aircraft inventory.

It enables decision makers an understanding of connectivity between targeting tools and joint collaboration with a year-by-year acquisition strategy. This roadmap improves the Air Force’s ability to lead in the communication and information career field.

“It is an operational imperative that our warriors have the connectivity scheme of advanced systems and resources that will lead our future as we become network centric,” he said.

Additionally, Hobbins worked closely with the other services to produce a joint C4ISR roadmap, allowing the services to identify those critical net-centric enablers that must be funded in order for the joint vision of internet protocol routing, shared data, assured delivery and essential technologies to become reality.

The general has said that the constantly changing global environment requires us to adapt and be more interdependent with our sister services.

The general has brought his information knowledge to U.S. Air Force in Europe, stating his intent to lead a command that is instilled with world-class information capabilities during his assumption of command speech.

Hobbins emphasizes that airmen globally engaged on the battlefield need all the connectivity, access, and sophisticated information sharing possible and that “network centric warfare” will be the future method of operating.