Eric Fanning
acting United States Secretary of the Air Force
Eric Kenneth Fanning (born July 2, 1968) is the president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association industry trade group. He served as the 22nd Secretary of the Army from May 18, 2016, to January 20, 2017, the first openly gay leader of a U.S. military service. Before that, Fanning was the 24th United States Under Secretary of the Air Force.
Fanning has held a wide variety of roles in Congress, at the Department of Defense, in the White House, and as a consultant. He is only person to have held senior civilian appointments in the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Early life
Born on July 2, 1968, and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he attended Cranbrook Schools in Michigan for two years and graduated from Centerville High School in Ohio in 1986. He received his B.A. in history from Dartmouth College in 1990. His interest in government and politics began when he became involved in the 1988 New Hampshire primary contest.
Career
In the 1990s, Fanning served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and later as a special assistant in the Immediate Office of the Secretary of Defense. He later served as associate director of political affairs at the White House.
“Eric Fanning” enters the record as acting United States Secretary of the Air Force. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Eric, Fanning and acting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13534694. VIAF identifies the subject as 308769126. The Library of Congress control number is no2014074993. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2016, 2017 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eric Fanning” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.