In every other branch of the military, the officer sends people out to do the mission. In the Air Force, everyone else sends the officer out to do the mission. The Air Force officer is the one who goes to war. Almost everywhere else, the officer is mostly a paper pusher. In the Air Force, the officer is the decision-maker with everyone's future in his hands, including his own. That makes Air Force officer culture unlike any other branch and unlike any law enforcement culture. It is much closer to a company owner.
Standardization and Evaluation, and Chief of Training, are the officers who make sure the rest of the officers survive. Survival depends on the quality of everyone on the team. Mistakes cost lives. Always. It is only a matter of time.
We are not shy about it: Air Force officers are the best officers in the world. Eric was the best of the best, selected for those roles by other officers whose careers depended on him doing his job well. He was also the top lieutenant selected for captain at the base from which GPS and the nation's highest-level military satellites were controlled. An accounting major who had to learn rocket science. He stopped working full-time at 27.
He is not shy about the accolades. What he did not understand was litigation. He understands it now, and for the time being he is willing to put that to work for family businesses.
Eric is willing to take on other Air Force officers who are interested in consulting, or in doing their own family business.
Thirteen years in the U.S. Air Force running training and evaluation programs for GPS satellite operators. The stakeholders were commanders and instructors in military operations, and the standard was the military one: the public mission does not fail.
Captain · 50th Operations Group Stan/Eval, GPS satellite operations · Jun 2009 – May 2014
Senior Evaluator: recommendations to commanders on operator qualification for the team controlling active GPS satellites. Chief of Training: commander's representative for training standards, overseeing 30+ full-time satellite operations instructors across multiple systems. Performance records, trend reviews, deficiency correction, and a pipeline that had to produce qualified operators with finite hours.
Major · Jun 2014 – Aug 2022
Advanced instructor for satellite operations, electronic warfare, and space-focused exercise support. Documented what was off and fixed it before it became a mission failure.
Compliance inspections · systematic checks, gap detection, clear reporting chains
Ran the Self-Inspection Programs (SIP) that kept commanders on the right side of regulations: systematic checks, gap detection, clear reporting chains.
B.S., Accounting and Aerospace Studies, Purdue University, 2004–2009.
(219) 241-3354 · linkedin.com/in/ericzosso · eric@zoseco.org