402nd Aircraft Maintenance Group Commander shares importance of his unit, C-5 Director praises squadron 

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE — The 402nd Aircraft Maintenance Group plays a pivotal role for Robins Air Force Base and the United States Air Force. 

The group is part of the Warner Robins Air-Logistics Complex, led by Group Commander Colonel Joshua DePaul. 

“We are one of three depots across the entire United States Air Force that acts as part of the organic industrial base,” DePaul said. 

The 402nd works on four weapon systems: the C-5, C-17, C-130 and F-15. 

“Essentially what happens is an aircraft can fly from anywhere from five to eight years before it has to come to a depot to be overhauled,” he said. “When it comes to us, we strip off the paint, get down to the bare metal, take the aircraft apart, we rebuild all the computers, wiring and schematics, put it all back together, do a functional test and then send it back out to the warfighter. That is why we have aircraft availability and that is how we support the mission by doing depot level maintenance for the Air Force.” 

Colonel DePaul started his tenure at Robins and has been the 402nd Group Commander since the end of June this year. 

“I took over for a phenomenal Colonel Dan Cornelius, who was the Group Commander over the last three years and did phenomenal work with the C-5 and with the base,” he said. 

According to DePaul, the 402nd Aircraft Maintenance Group has about 3,250 people across the entire group and said the group is very important to not only Robins Air Force Base but also the entire United States Air Force. 

“Without us, we wouldn’t have safe and reliable aircraft to support the mission, and for C-5s it’s rapid global mobility and the ability to generate aircraft anywhere in the world,” he said. “That happens because Team Robins are able to do depot level maintenance to ensure long term lifespan of the weapon system.” 

Overall, the 402nd’s mission is to produce safe and reliable aircraft for the warfighter through depot-level maintenance. 

C-5 Story and Importance

One thing DePaul focused on was the story of the C-5, what the 402nd has been doing and why they have been so successful. He said there are just 52 C-5s in the United States Air Force inventory. 

“They are a unique weapon system because of their unique size, shape and configuration,” he said. “It allows us as a Department of Defense to transport vital lethal and non-lethal aid to the warfighter across the entire globe.” 

DePaul’s group has worked diligently with mission partners to increase the C-5’s capability as a reliable weapon system and has been producing record numbers recently, but it did not start out that way. 

“Whenever we do a jet and we have a promise to our customer, we say that we are going to produce an aircraft in 391 days, and that has not been the case the last couple of years,” he said. “In 2022 it was taking us 900 days to do depot maintenance on one aircraft.” 

To improve this, DePaul said the group made a recovery effort. 

“Since then we have driven a 38% decrease, where we went from 900 plus days in 2022 to 700 days in 2023 to mid 400s in 2024,” he said. “We just recently produced an aircraft in 391 days, setting a record we have not seen since 2018.”

According to DePaul, there have been five lines of effort: looking at buying down supply chain risk, getting engineering authority, working with pilots, achieving interoperability and enterprise-level solutions.

DePaul mentioned an initiative called ‘Drive to 55’ has helped this recovery effort. 

“We are trying to have a 55% aircraft availability rate for the warfighter, and at any given time, 55% of those 52 aircraft will be ready to support the mission in a moment’s notice,” he said.    

The 402nd was contracted to produce seven aircraft this year and have produced all seven of them. 

“We are a part of a broad effort to increase aircraft availability for the Air Force, and we at Robins are very proud of our partnership with the Program Office, Defense Logistics Agency, supply chain partners and with industry to be able to provide combat capability for the warfighter,” he said.  

DePaul said he is humbled by who the 402nd Aircraft Maintenance Group are. He is also humbled by their commitment and by what they do for the nation. 

“They are our industrial heroes,” he said. “What these men and women do is they’ve dedicated their lives to come in every single day and produce with their hands the  aircraft availability as our industrial heroes for our nation.”

DePaul also thinks the 402nd needs more credit. 

“They are our unsung heroes who work behind the scenes that work in every condition and in any environment indoors or outdoors who work tirelessly to make sure that the mission happens,” he said. “We owe them, as a nation, a debt of gratitude for their hard work and commitment, and I don’t think we can thank them enough for everything that they do for our team and for our Air Force.” 

C-5 Director

John Kieweg has been the C-5 Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) Squadron Director for about four and a half years and in the Air Force for 35 years. 

The PDM as a whole is about 80,000 hours worth of work that is split up. Kieweg said his squadron does about 65,000 hours and has over 530 people right now in his squadron. 

“Every eight years the C-5 comes in, and we get into the places where the home station maintainers don’t get into,” Kieweg said. “We do preventative corrosion, some structural repairs and sometimes we have mods that we do on the aircraft as well.” 

The C-5 is the largest cargo plane in the United States Air Force with about 3,000 parts that come on and off the aircraft. Kieweg said it feels awesome to work on these types of airplanes. 

Before he became C-5 Director in FY 2020, there were talks about divesting the C-5.

“There were questions as it had a reputation of breaking a lot and plus we were having a hard time getting the aircraft out of here, so it was kind of sending a message,” he said. “As our performance increased that talk has gone away, and now they’re talking 2045 and dates past that for this aircraft to keep flying, so it’s pretty awesome that we have this aircraft as old as ours that is flying that long.The best part of it has been seeing the squadron, maybe at its worst when it took us over 900 days to do it to now as the last aircraft we produced took us 391 days.” 

Kieweg also acknowledged General Stacey Hawkins of Tinker Air Force Base for being one of their biggest advocates through triumphs and challenges. 

“General Hawkins is over all the PDM lines, and we were his worst through my first two years here,” he said. “Now I think if you ask General Hawkins what his best PDM line is, he would probably say C-5, so going worst to first is pretty awesome.” 

Kieweg’s particular squadron has been well-regarded recently, he mentioned. The squadron received a coin from the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. Kieweg said in all of his 35 years in the Air Force, there has been nothing that compares to what his squadron has done. 

“For me, as a person, I say thank you as much as I possibly can,” he said. “As a leader, it’s incredible to see what these guys have done.”