Driessnack Distinguished Service Award

Lieutenant General Hans H. “Whitey” Driessnack

Lieutenant General Hans H. “Whitey” Driessnack was assistant vice chief of staff,
Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C. He also served as senior Air Force
representative, U.S. Delegation to the Military Staff! Committee, United Nations.
Gen. Driessnack started his career by serving a year in the Navy before entering
Syracuse University. Commissioned into the Air Force, he became a fighter pilot and
flight commander during the Korean War, flying 25 combat missions. He worked at the
Headquarters Systems Command at Andrews Air Force Base and worked his way up to
become comptroller of the Air Force in 1978. He was named assistant vice chief of sta! in
1981 and also served as the senior Air Force representative to the United Nations.

In July 1963 General Driessnack transferred to Headquarters Air Force Systems
Command, Andrews Air Force Base, and was assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief
of Staff, Comptroller, as a research and development officer in the Management Systems
Development Division. From May 1964 to June 1968, he was a management system
specialist in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Financial Management).
He then returned to Air Force Systems Command headquarters as chief, Cost Information
and Management System Division, in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Comptroller.

Although demonstrating a life-long commitment to learning and increasing responsibility
and leadership, it was in the 1970s in particular that “Whitey” Driessnack had the
opportunity to build on the seminal EVM work pioneered by A Ernest “Ernie” Fitzgerald.
Until then the use of PERT/Cost was predominant in government project control, involving
a continually revised Estimate to Complete (ETC) that was proving unreliable. “Whitey”,
initially an advocate of PERT/Cost, was introduced to an alternate concept created to
redress the unreliability of the ETC, called Earned Value. This was embodied by Fitzgerald
into the original Airforce Cost/Schedule Planning and Control Specification (CSpec).
Driessnack went on to champion this into becoming adopted by the US Department of
Defense in 1967 as the Cost/Schedule Control System Criteria (C/SCSC), the foundation
upon which Earned Value Management is based today.

General Driessnack’s accolades include:
• Graduated from Charles E. Gorton High School in 1945; and received a bachelor of science
degree in civil engineering from Syracuse (N.Y.) University in 1951;
• Received a master’s degree in business administration from the Air Force Institute of
Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in 1959; graduated from Squadron
Officer School in 1956; graduated from Air Command and Staff College in 1963; graduated
from the Naval War College, Newport, R.I., in 1970; and graduated from the advanced
management program of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1971;
• Promoted to lieutenant general Aug. 22, 1978, with same date of rank;
• Military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal with oak leaf cluster, Air
Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters, Presidential Unit Citation emblem,
Air Force Outstanding Unit Award ribbon, Air Force Organizational Excellence Award
ribbon and the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation emblem.

After his military retirement, he worked for six years for a defense contractor, United
Technologies, and then retired a second time in 1989. Even then his commitment to his
community continued with his involvement in building an Air Force retirement community
(Falcons Landing) in the Washington DC area. He formed the Air Force retired officers
community board and served as its chairman.
He was considered a leader in project management, so much so that shortly after his second
retirement the College of Performance Management named its highest award in his honor.