Gates, who served in the Air Force in the 1960s as a young officer before he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, urged the officers in his audience to dedicate themselves to thinking creatively.
"I'm asking you to be part of the solution and part of the future," he said.
He said the Air Force and the other branches of the military need to protect those in their ranks who are maverick thinkers, who defy convention and push for creative solutions to hard problems. He said he intended to make a similar point about the value of dissent in the military in remarks later Monday at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
"Dissent is a sign of health in an organization, and particularly if it's done in the right way," Gates said.
Gates made no direct mention of a series of mistakes and missteps involving the Air Force in recent months, beginning with an episode last August when a B-52 bomber flew from an Air Force base in North Dakota to another in Louisiana with the crew unaware that it was carrying nuclear weapons.