Arlington, Virginia | June 6, 2024
The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies is pleased to announce that Col John “JV” Venable, USAF (Ret.), has joined our team as a Senior Resident Fellow for Airpower Studies. He is a highly experienced fighter pilot who served in three combat operations. He was most recently a Senior Research Fellow for Defense Policy at The Heritage Foundation focused on plans, programs, and operational capabilities related to air and space matters.
Venable retired in June 2007 as a Command Pilot with more than 4,400 total hours of flying time and more than 300 hours of combat time over Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. During his 25-year career in the Air Force, he served at 16 locations around the world as a forward air controller, fighter pilot, staff officer, and commander. He flew the F-16 fighter jet throughout the United States, Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East and served as the F-16 wing weapons officer for the Air-Land Composite Wing experiment. He is also a former commander of the Thunderbirds. Additionally, Venable served as Staff Officer for Nuclear Policy for Headquarters Air Northwest and as an Operations Officer of the Air Warrior Program. In 2004, Venable took command of the 379th Air Expeditionary Group, Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and in his last assignment, he served as a principal adviser and briefer to the Air Force’s Chief of Staff and Director of Operations in their roles on the President’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Lt Gen David Deptula, USAF (Ret.), Dean of the Mitchell Institute, shared, “JV brings a wealth of operational knowledge and experience that will further enhance our mission to inform defense choices about the value of the nation’s air and space power.”