Colonel Patrick Kolesiak is the commander of the 55th Mission Support Group located at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. In this capacity he leads a diverse 1,600 person group consisting of five squadrons that support Air Combat Command's largest wing and over 50 associate units, including Headquarters, United States Strategic Command and the 557th Weather Wing. He manages a 4,006 acre base complex with over six million square feet of facilities and one of the largest privatized housing portfolios in the Department of Defense. His group provides base defense, mobility processing which deploys over 3,000 personnel per year, a $5 billion contracting portfolio, manpower and personnel services, infrastructure maintenance, emergency services and community support to 57,000 active duty, dependent, and retired personnel.
Colonel Kolesiak is a career civil engineer officer who entered the Air Force in 2001 after receiving his commission through the ROTC program at the University of Notre Dame. His previous experience includes headquarters tours and deployments at the Air Staff, Air Force major command, joint/coalition task force, and theater support component command levels. Colonel Kolesiak has numerous deployments to
Afghanistan in support of Provincial Reconstruction Teams and special operations-led Village Stability Operations. He was a member of the initial cohort of the Afghanistan Pakistan Hands program, providing subject matter expertise to Operation ENDURING FREEDOM task force commanders. Furthermore, he was part of the initial entry team into Liberia to combat the 2014 Ebola crisis, and later served as the Air Expeditionary Group Deputy Commander for Hurricanes Harvey and Maria response and recovery. Colonel Kolesiak previously served as the squadron commander for the 99th Civil Engineer Squadron, 8th Civil Engineer Squadron, and the 52d Contracting Squadron.
EDUCATION:
2001 Bachelor of Architecture, School of Architecture, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
2001 Aerospace Basic Course, Maxwell AFB, Alabama
2006 Master of Architectural Design and Urbanism, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
2006 Squadron Officer School, Maxwell AFB, Alabama
2011 Air Command and Staff College (correspondence)
2014 Master of Military Art and Science, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
2015 U.S. Air Force Fire Marshal School, Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas
2020 National Defense Fellow, International Security Program, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Massachusetts
ASSIGNMENTS:
- Aug 2001 - Jun 2002, Operations Liaison Officer, 393rd Bomb Squadron, Whiteman AFB, Missouri
- Jun 2002 - Aug 2004, Architect Contract Manager and Readiness Flight Commander, 509th Civil Engineer Squadron, Whiteman AFB, Missouri
- Aug 2004 - Jun 2006, Graduate Student, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
- Jun 2006 - Nov 2009, Instructor and Course Director, Civil Engineer and Services School, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio with additional duty as Provincial Reconstruction Team Deputy Commander, Forward Operating Base Lion, Panjshir, Afghanistan
- Nov 2009 - May 2011, Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Engineer, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio with additional duty as Reconstruction Engineer, Camp Julien, Kabul and District Augmentation Team Leader, Khakrez Strongpoint, Kandahar, Afghanistan
- May 2011 - Jun 2013, Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Operations Officer, Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command, Hurlburt Field, Florida with additional duty as Lead Advisor to the Afghan National Army General Staff Engineer, Camp Eggers, Afghanistan
- Jun 2013 – Jun 2014, Student, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
- Jul 2014 – Apr 2015 and Dec 2015 – May 2016, Operations Flight Commander, 52d Civil Engineer Squadron, Spangdahlem AB, Germany
- Apr 2015 – Sep 2015, Director of Staff, 52d Fighter Wing, Spangdahlem AB, Germany
- Sep 2015 – Dec 2015, Commander, 52d Contracting Squadron, Spangdahlem AB, Germany
- Jun 2016 – Jun 2017, Commander, 8th Civil Engineer Squadron, Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea
- Jul 2017 – Jul 2019, Commander, 99th Civil Engineer Squadron, Nellis AFB, Nevada
- Aug 2019 – Jun 2020, National Defense Fellow, International Security Program, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Jul 2020 – Jul 2022, Deputy Chief and Chief, Facilities Division, Directorate of Civil Engineers, Headquarters Air Force, Pentagon, Washington DC.
- Aug 2022 – June 2023, Commander, Detachment 7, Air Force Research Laboratory; and Chief, Site Support Division, Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, Edwards AFB, California
- July 2023 – present, Commander, 55th Mission Support Group, Offutt AFB, Nebraska
MAJOR AWARDS AND DECORATIONS
- Bronze Star Medal with one oak leaf cluster
- Meritorious Service Medal with seven oak leaf clusters
- Air Force Commendation Medal
- Army Commendation Medal
- Air Force Achievement Medal
- Army Achievement Medal
OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS
2015 Air Force Lance P. Sijan Award, Field Grade Officer Category
2015 Air Force Major General Dean Fox Award
2015 52d Fighter Wing Field Grade Officer of the Year
2015 USAFE Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs Grateful Nation Award
2015 DoD Installation Excellence Award Special Recognition Winner
2014 Command and General Staff School Valedictorian and Top Air Force Graduate
2011 AFSOC Field Grade Officer of the Year
2008 Ezra Kotcher Award for Curriculum Development, Air Force Institute of Technology
2006 University of Notre Dame, School of Architecture Graduate School Valedictorian
2001 University of Notre Dame, School of Architecture Undergraduate Valedictorian
THESES:
- Architecture as a Diplomatic Tool: A Proposal for the New American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. University of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, Indiana, 2006.
- Simplified Facility Design. Air Force Institute of Technology: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, 2008.
- Building Military Diplomacy: Sociospatial Effects of Overseas U.S. Military Base Design (FOUO). Command and General Staff College: Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2014.
- “What’s Called Nation-Building”: Strategic Failures, Faulty Assumptions, and Six Critical Mistakes in Afghanistan. Harvard Kennedy School of Government: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2020.
(Current as of Oct 2023)