Maj James Jamie
Cotton
Major James “Jamie” Cotton is currently assigned to AFIT/LS, scheduled to teach LOG399/Strategic Logistics. He looks forward to employing the academic skills learned at AFIT to help shape the next generation of military scholars.
Jamie spent his Company Grade Officer years at Pope Field, North Carolina, during which he oversaw the 43d Logistics Readiness Squadron’s fuels and supply operations. He was Flight Commander for Petroleum, Oils, and Lubricants (POL) where his flight provided fuel to support the 82nd Airborne’s jump operations. He then rotated to Materiel Management, overseeing the C-130 parts store, deployment gear, and mobility bag assembly. In 2013, 1LT Cotton underwent Air Advisor training in Fort Polk, LA, and then deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan in support of the NATO Training Mission. He served as the executive officer to a British O-6, performing convoy operations outside the wire driving NTM-A officials to meet with local leaders.
After completing Squadron Officer School in summer 2014, Jamie’s next assignment was to AFIT for the Masters in Logistics program. Working with Dr. Kenneth Schulz as his thesis advisor, Jamie successfully completed his Masters with the “Antecedents of Fuel Efficiency” project to create and pilot test a survey intended to test active duty USAF cargo pilots’ attitudes and intentions towards fuel efficiency while flying their missions. This project combined logistics, sustainability, and psychometric survey analysis under the Theory of Planned Behavior first developed by Icek Azjen.
Jamie was selected as a candidate for the AFIT PhD program and spent the next three years working to fulfill the original design intent of his “Antecedents of Fuel Efficiency” program, matching surveyed pilots’ results with their scores on a metric developed by Dr. Adam Reiman, ENS, designed to control for the major fuel consumption factors outside a pilot’s control. Working under his dissertation chair, Dr. Seong-Jong Joo (AFIT ENS), Maj. Cotton used structural equation modeling to analyze pilots’ results and evaluate the degree to which attitudes and intentions influence real-world fuel consumption, the data indicating a small but statistically significant impact.
After graduating from AFIT with his Masters and PhD, Jamie was assigned as the Director of Operations at the 23d Logistics Readiness Squadron, Moody AFB, GA. He oversaw the daily operations of a busy ACC squadron providing support to the A-10, HC-130, and HH-60 operations, including the HH-60W model changeover.
Between 2021-2022, Maj. Cotton was selected to deploy twice in support of humanitarian relief projects, the first of which was in 2021 to Houston, Texas, as part of the COVID-19 Task Force. The facility in Houston was the largest mass vaccination center in the nation, and as the only LRO assigned to the project, Jamie was tasked with optimizing patient flow through the drive-through vaccination center. He employed Theory of Constraints and process flow optimization learned at AFIT and was able to reduce patient flow time from 1.5 hours to a record of under 8 minutes. The facility was lauded by guests including President Biden, Lt. Gen. Hogg (USAF SG), and Lt. Gen Richardson (ARNORTH/CC) for administering nearly 350K vaccinations across 206K patients, with a daily maximum of 7,035 vaccinations and an hourly maximum of 1,078 vaccinations.
In 2022, Jamie deployed in support of Operation Allies Welcome, managing the logistical support to thousands of Afghan allies arriving at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. Although the mission was cut short due to the Feb 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Maj. Cotton nevertheless contributed to the safe shelter, protection, and new citizenship of thousands of Afghans displaced by the 2021 Taliban takeover.
In May of 2022, Maj. Cotton PCS’d to Naval Support Activity Bahrain to work for DLA-Energy Middle East, the USCENTCOM arm of DLA Energy tasked with providing $9B in bulk petroleum and quality assurance support across 49 sites in 12 nations in USCENTCOM/USSOCOM. In this capacity, he served as the Chief of Operations, the Chief of Supplier Operations managing capitalized fuel, and the Chief of Customer Operations managing uncapitalized fuel and direct delivery. He worked with military and civilians from partner nations within the Gulf Countries Coalition (GCC) to fulfill USCENTCOM/USSOCOM requirements, enable exercises throughout the theater, and provide fuel and humanitarian support to thousands of displaced Palestinians.