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5th MRS major wins AF support award

  • Published
  • By John Stuart
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  It is perhaps an Air Force job that you don't hear about very often. But when it comes down to it, the work the Air Force's five Manpower Requirement Squadrons do affects tens of thousands.

At Tinker there's one man at the helm of the 5th Manpower Requirement Squadron. He oversees a highly devoted corps of about 40 personnel, comprising civilians and military. His name is Maj. Paul Burger, and he was named the Air Force's Operational Level Force Support Field Grade Officer of the Year for 2009.

"It's definitely an honor, the highlight of my career," Major Burger said. "I feel like most of the credit goes to these folks working here. I don't think anybody's ever done anything in the history of the Air Force without the support of an awful lot of people. The dedication that I have in these 40 people is tremendous."

Major Burger was named the top field grade officer while competing against about 130 fellow Force Support Officers Air Force wide. He has many accolades attached to his name from last year, among them a six-month tour in Afghanistan and 89,000 manpower authorizations worth $5.9 billion under study by his squadron. Major Burger volunteered for the Afghanistan tour, where he served under a Polish one-star general in the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan. It was this general who called Major Burger "the best executive officer I have seen in 36 years of military service."

In condensed form, the job is all about judicious use of funds, and it's a job Major Burger and his staff take very seriously.

"We go into an organization and we figure out how many people it takes to do a job," Major Burger said. "It just comes down to being really good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars."

The 5th MRS has had distinct challenges in the almost two and a half years since Major Burger assumed command. Where many manpower squadrons will do short-term projects assessing resources and personnel needs, the squadron at Tinker has had several long-term projects to maintain.

"We have these long-term studies and it's a bit of a motivation challenge sometimes," Major Burger said. "When you can click off multiple studies in a year it's a little easier to keep motivation up, but when you're just working one milestone to the next with a multi-year study it does provide some challenges."

In the end it's these colleagues that motivate him each day, Major Burger said.

"I think it comes down to the people I work with," Major Burger said. "I learn so much from these guys every day about what they do. They're the experts."