Courtesy Photo | The 96th Communications Squadron earned the Maj. Gen. Harold M. McClelland Award,...... read more read more
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EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. – Commzilla always has a way of making itself known.
A network goes down. A computer refuses to cooperate. Something that worked fine yesterday suddenly doesn’t. Now, the giant green reptile has everyone’s attention.
Across Eglin’s 726 square miles, a team of Airmen, better known as the 96th Communications Squadron, works to keep Commzilla at bay.
That work earned them the Maj. Gen. Harold M. McClelland Award and recognized the 96th CS as the Air Force’s Best Large Communications Squadron.
While Team Eglin’s missions kept moving, the 96th CS spent the past year doing much more behind the scenes. The squadron’s Airmen laid five miles of fiber in a week to support a major counter-unmanned aircraft systems demonstration, helped modernize millions of dollars in network infrastructure and supported missions and partners stretching beyond the base’s boundaries.
Senior Master Sgt. Sydney Sullivan, 96th CS plans and resources superintendent, and Paul Hentrich, 96th CS operations flight director, spoke about what went into the win and confronting Commizilla each day.
When the announcement came down that the 96th CS was officially named the best in the Air Force, where were you, and what was the immediate reaction in the squadron?
Hentrich: “There was a lot of disbelief that we had run the table on all of the awards. Once we looked it [McClellan Award] up and somebody explained it — best large comm squadron in the entire Air Force — wow. It was so cool and so humbling at the same time.”
Sullivan: “When we unveiled it to the unit, we brought everybody together for an all-hands. Some people didn’t really know how to take it. We have 350 members across the unit and when we’re talking globally, being the best large comm squadron … it just showed we had reached the peak. We had hit Everest, in a sense.”
Eglin is one of the largest and busiest installations in the Air Force. How does the sheer scale of Eglin’s mission make running comms here harder than anywhere else?
Sullivan: “Our spectrum folks are the architects of the invisible.”
Sullivan described a mission that stretches from managing cellular, command and control, GPS, telemetry and other sensitive frequencies not just across the installation but across the Gulf of America and beyond to joint services and geographic combatant commands.
Hentrich: “Most comm squadrons handle a base, a small city. We handle almost a state. Our guys just don’t get in a car and go do something real quick. There are times when it’s an hour for them to drive out to where they’re going."
What was the single biggest project or operational hurdle the team tackled this year that you think secured this win?
Sullivan: “I think it was achieving a lot of the Air Force and Department of War’s firsts and challenging the norms.”
The past year marked a series of firsts, including supporting Falcon Peak, The Air Force’s first Chief Initial Mission Command Training event and supporting Space Force missions. The willingness to take on new challenges brought other organizations to the installation to learn from its Airmen and civilians.
Hentrich: “We’re getting Airmen from the pipeline we’re seeing could be better. There are additional skills we didn’t just wait for the schoolhouse to get better. We engaged with the schoolhouse.”
Sullivan helped with that effort, taking the squadron’s feedback directly to the schoolhouse and later bringing representatives here to see firsthand the skills and demands Eglin’s communications team encounter in an operational environment.
What is the most critical, behind-the-scenes thing the 96th CS does for Eglin’s weapons testing and flight line that the average person doesn’t see?
Hentrich: “That connective material, that networking infrastructure, is so highly watched and highly maintained. In the last year and a half, two years, we’ve put over $4 million worth of new equipment in there. The connective material and network infrastructure are highly maintained. This team keeps the network so clean that the 38th Engineering Squadron said they’ve never seen a cleaner network.”
Sullivan: “The fact that everyone’s not screaming on the busiest flight line in the United States Air Force is a testament to the caliber of the men and women that are doing it.”
Can you share a specific story or a “make-or-break” moment from this past year where the squadron had to come together to solve a crisis?
Hentrich: “For one of our drone demonstrations, we had two weeks’ notice to deal with all of the new requirements, getting parts of our range ready to show off all these new capabilities. We had to extend some of our communications abilities into parts of the range that are very austere.”
What does this win say about the culture and morale of the 96th CS?
Sullivan: “We have a common ethos. We’re all pointed in the same direction. We want to develop mastery, but we also want to bring people to the table.”
Sullivan said the goal is not only to build technical experts, but to create an environment where knowledge is shared and the next generation is prepared to take the mission further.
Hentrich: “They never stop being brilliant at the basics that keep the base going.”
Now that you’ve been crowned the best in the Air Force, what’s next, and how do you keep that momentum going?
Hentrich: “We’re going to continue to spread our wings, let people around the Air Force and around the base know what we’re capable of, and look for those additional partnerships, especially the total force.”
Sullivan: “I think we’re just moving at a pace where we’re going to be unapologetically exceptional at what we do. We’ve abandoned the fire-and-forget mindset. We follow up with our customers and stakeholders because we see the end in mind.”
| Date Taken: | 09.15.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 09.15.2026 15:07 |
| Story ID: | 574792 |
| Location: | DESTIN, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 16 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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