The senior enlisted leader of a major Air Force training base was removed from his position after an investigation, officials at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi said Thursday.
Chief Master Sgt. Michael Venning was removed from his position as the command chief of the 81st Training Wing at Keesler on Sept. 23, 2024.
Col. Billy Pope, 81st Training Wing commander, found that results of a command investigation of Venning “warranted the removal,” base officials said in a statement sent to Task & Purpose.
Base officials said they would not release the nature of the investigation except to note that Venning had been temporarily pulled from his role on July 30 as the investigation took place.
Command chiefs are the highest-ranking enlisted personnel in their units, which in Venning’s case was the 81st wing, the host unit for Keesler.
Venning’s official biography was removed from the Keesler website soon after Task & Purpose inquired about his position on Thursday. Before being taken down, the page indicated Venning joined the Air Force in 2000 and received his U.S. citizenship in 2005. Venning is a native of Australia, according to an Air Force news story from 2014 noting he had been named one of that year’s 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year — the service’s top annual service-wide award for enlisted members.
Venning served six years in a combat communications unit as a power production specialist then retrained into contracting in 2006. He later served as the commandant of an NCO Academy and Airman Leadership School and was the command chief for the 100th Air Refueling Wing at Royal Air Force Mildenhall, United Kingdom before assuming his role at Keesler.
Venning deployed four times in support of Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom and OIF’s follow-on operation, New Dawn.
A wing command chief is the senior enlisted advisor to a base or wing commander. They oversee the base’s professional development, readiness issues and health, morale, and welfare of those assigned to the wing. As a base leader, wing and base command chiefs also frequently represent the base with local civilian leaders and events. Keesler has about 12,000 permanent party military members, families and contractors on base.
Major training base
The 81st wing oversees over a dozen training schools at Keesler that take fresh recruits from basic training and teach them their Air Force jobs. About 30,000 troops — mostly Air Force but also from all armed services and allied nations — learn their first military skills at Keesler each year. The training includes positions from personnel and IT specialists to air traffic controllers and special ops airmen.
Located on the Gulf of Mexico in Biloxi, Mississippi, Keesler is also home to the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, better known as the Hurricane Hunters, the Air Force Reserve unit that flies specially equipped WC-130s into tropical storms to collect weather data.
The latest on Task & Purpose
- Marine sergeant major fired from West Coast bootcamp now in brig amid investigation
- Army sends troops, artillery to the Aleutian Islands as Russian planes again fly near Alaska
- Marine who died trying to reach trapped Osprey pilots honored for final bravery
- Former West Point garrison commander cleared of most charges that led to firing
- Navy’s first fully gender-integrated submarine joins the fleet. Here’s what that means