The head of Air Mobility Command has been nominated to be the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, and the Oklahoma Air National Guard commander to be the service’s top judge advocate general—nearly 300 days after the previous ones were fired with little to no explanation.
Gen. John Lamontagne was nominated Monday, according to a Congressional notice. Since 1992, he has accumulated more than 4,000 flight hours as a command pilot in the C-12 aircraft, KC-135 tanker, and C-17 transport. He has served as deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and as U.S. European Command’s chief of staff.
Brig. Gen. Christopher Eason is the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s commander and chief of staff. He has served as the Oklahoma ANG’s assistant adjutant general and a state staff judge advocate. He entered the Air Force after graduating from the University of Oklahoma’s law school in 2004. As a civilian, he works as a federal prosecutor.
Neither Air Mobility Command or the Air Force headquarters provided comment on the nomination by publication time.
If confirmed, Lamontagne will serve under Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who was sworn in last month after Gen. David Allvin announced his sudden retirement in August.
He would take office at a time of change for the service. Wilsbach and Air Force Troy Meink have been unraveling Biden-era changes intended to help prepare for a war with China, while keeping intact programs to develop various weapons, including the Sentinel ICBM, the B-21 bomber, the F-47 fighter jet, and drone wingmen.
Mike Minihan, a retired general and former head of Air Mobility Command, told Defense One that Lamontagne’s nomination is a positive sign for much-needed upgrades to the service’s refueling and tanker programs. Minihan has pushed for the Next-Generation Air Refueling System, NGAS, or Next-Generation Air Lift, dubbed NGAL, both in, and out of uniform.
“Johnny Lamontagne becoming the vice chief of staff of the Air Force is exactly the kind of credibility this moment demands,” Minihan said. “I am optimistic the chief and the vice chief can win the resourcing conversations now to secure connectivity, NGAS, NGAL, and the lethality required to deter and decisively defeat China and any other potential adversary.”
Lamontagne is not the first person the Trump administration has nominated to replace the previous vice chief. This summer, the White House nominated Gen. Thomas Bussiere, then-head of Air Force Global Strike Command, but later withdrew the nomination. In September, Bussiere announced his retirement.
“Johnny is an amazing person and will do a great job as the vice,” Bussiere told Defense One in a message on Tuesday.
The Air Force vice chief position has been vacant since Feb. 21, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth purged Gen. James Slife, along with the Joint Chiefs chairman, chief of naval operations, and the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Hegseth has not publicly explained why he fired Slife, a helicopter pilot and special operations commander.
But other Republicans had criticized Slife for expressing mild concern about racism while leading Air Force Special Operations Command. In a since-deleted memo in May 2020, Slife wrote “we’d be naive to think issues of institutional racism and unconscious bias don’t affect us.”
Hegseth had also purged Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, the Air Force’s judge advocate general, and his Army and Air Force counterparts. The defense secretary said they were not “well-suited” to their jobs and that he wanted top lawyers who would not act as “roadblocks” to his preferred policies. The purge led Congress to add to the 2026 defense policy act a section requiring an explanation should future JAGs be fired. Maj. Gen. Rebecca Vernon, who had served as the service’s deputy JAG, became acting TJAG earlier this year but stepped away from the job in October and is set to retire by Jan. 1.
