Please join us on 13 August 2019 in congratulating Lieutenant General (LTG) Ansgar Rieks, PhD., Vice Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, who will be awarded the distinguished graduate award. Prior to the award ceremony, he will give a talk to students titled "Security Challenges in a Developing World - a German Air Force View." 

LTG Ansgar Rieks has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Bundeswehr University in Hamburg as well as a MA in national security affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School. He graduated the Naval Postgraduate School with honors in the summer of 1996, writing an exemplary thesis on trans-Atlantic security relations. From 2000–2002, LTG Rieks served in a prestigious role as a personal aid to Under Secretary of Defense Walter Kolbow. LTG Dr. Rieks additional service brought him to the Directorate for Planning and Future Forces of the German Armed Forces (Fuehrungsstab VI) where he expanded his expertise in the fields of resource management, armed forces future plans, and the adaptation of the forces to the information age in conflict amid limited resources. In 2008, then Brigadier General Rieks, PhD., assumed command for sub directorate in the Defense Ministry for armed forces modernization and operations. In 2012, he became head of the Ministerial Directorate for Planning of the Future Force of the German Armed Forces within the across the board reorganization of the German Ministry of Defense. Later that year, he became chief of staff of the Air Staff in Cologne where he remained until 2013, when he then became commander of a newly created Air Force Support Command as part of the general reorganization of the German Armed Forces in the year 2011. In 2014, a procurement crisis arose relative to new UAVs in service, and the Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen entrusted LTG Rieks with the creation of a new joint, combined air materiel command to surmount these challenges of aerospace platforms and weapons. With the successful leadership of this innovative command in the years 2014–2017, in that latter year, LTG Rieks became Vice Chief of Staff of the German Air Force.