Air Force Releases Core Mission Document

The Air Force last week released “Global Vigilance, Global Reach, Global Power for America,” a document articulating the service’s enduring core missions and how they coalesce into providing worldwide vigilance, reach, and power. The five missions are: air and space superiority; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; rapid global mobility; global strike; and command and control. Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told airmen in a video message that these missions have remained essentially unchanged since the Air Force’s creation in 1947, while the manner in which airmen execute them has evolved. “We now fly faster, farther, and higher than ever before using aircraft and spacecraft that no one could have imagined at the time of our service’s creation,” said Welsh. He credited airmen for rising to the challenge. “You do [these missions] better than anybody in the history of warfare,” he said. “Thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you do. And, thank you for how well you do it.” The new document builds upon January’s Air Force vision statement.