Ryan’s Expeditionary Airpower

It had been eight years since Iraq invaded Kuwait, but stressed-out USAF units were still in the Gulf and top leaders struggled to deal with global contingencies. Something had to be done, and Gen. Michael E. Ryan, Chief of Staff, stepped before reporters to declare what it was—the Expeditionary Aerospace Force.

Ryan’s announcement (made jointly with Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters) capped a long EAF gestation period. A first test case was Vigilant Warrior in October 1994, when US air units rushed to the Gulf in response to Iraqi threats. The return of forces presented sobering challenges. Early in his term, Ryan commissioned a small advisory group to devise a new framework for airpower. The product was the EAF, based on 10 “air expeditionary forces,” each available for a 90-day deployment every 15 months.

Now, nearly 10 years later, the expeditionary view is ingrained in the Air Force—so much so that it is hard to recall the days when USAF was a “garrison” force. But it was.

We think a real paradigm shift has occurred. … We are away from a Cold War kind of strategy where we had … collocated operating bases where we deployed into fixed structures ready to go. We have moved away from that, from a containment strategy to one of global engagement. … We’ll be operating from bases that have limited infrastructure, as we have seen occur over the past nine years. This requires an expeditionary approach. …

We are engaged in all manner of expeditionary missions today. Since Desert Storm we have increased our optempo four-fold in these kinds of activities. Lots is happening across the globe, different kinds of demands on our forces, and we need to be responsive. … We think it’s going to be that way in the future. …

We are capable of a rapid response with trained and ready forces that are capable, lean, agile, and structured so that they fit very rapidly into a situation, in a command and control structure, that makes them effective.

We know we’re going to have to do this in a fiscally limited capacity. We know the optempo demands will still be there. We have to take care of our folks … quality of life, and we think we will continue to have readiness challenges in the future. So we’re starting right now to work on this better way to utilize the aerospace forces of this nation.

What is it? It’s a systematic way to be able to present rapidly responsive forces that are light and lean, tailored to the needs of the CINC. It’s an integration of our Total Air Force, … using all of our capabilities across the spectrum in an effective way. It’s institutionalizing in our force this expeditionary culture. …

It addresses our capability to respond up through small-scale contingencies. If we default to a major theater war, that is a different construct. …

If you look at where we’ve responded over the last few years, you’ll find that we have stood up a group of expeditionary bases: Tuzla, Taszar, Brindisi, many bases in the Southwest Asia region. We’ve gone and opened, episodically, bases at hot spots around the world. We’ve taken our support forces and bedded them down to open up those bases to assure that we have good force protection and take care of our troops. … Yet we have never … upped our support structure to take care of that.

What has happened to us is that at our home bases we have had units deployed forward that are working 12 hours; and then the units that stay at home, if it’s a security police force, it has to go on 12 hour shifts. Then we’ve rotated these forces in a way that we have put a great burden on our support forces across the United States Air Force. … That’s not right. …

The AEF concept would take units from across MAJCOMs and virtually link them into approximately 10 air expeditionary forces. … Those forces would be on alert or forward deployed, depending on the situation. … Our concept has two AEFs at any one time on the bubble—that is ready to go, on alert. …

We would have a forward deployed piece … that would be available, trained-to-task, have habitual relationships before they go, to be able to take care of those kinds of requirements such as Bosnia and Southwest Asia.We would have an on-call force that’s capable of responding to any contingencies that may be out there, in addition to the knowns. …

About 75 airplanes would be able to meet, notionally, the capabilities that we have bedded down right now in Southwest Asia, along with our high-demand/low-density assets. … About 75 forward deployed aircraft. About 100 on call. About 175 total. …

Let’s say [forces would deploy] on a 90-day schedule—we are still not sure that that’s the right number, … and a 15-month rotation….

We would select some lead bases—the most likely ones to be the command wing for that particular deployment. We would bulk up those bases … with those kinds of large team tasks such as security police and medical. … [There are] about 29 bases in this total concept. We would add about 5,000-plus folks to those support bases. …

I think we thought that sometime in the future this kind of activity would go away. We’d go to Desert Storm and we’d come home, or we’d go to Bosnia and we’d come home. The realities of the world say that we’ll probably stay for awhile. When we do that, we need to make sure that we resource what we have put forward, and this is our attempt to do that, take care of our folks. … Our folks … will do anything for us. What they look for, though, on a day-to-day basis, is some stability in their lives so they can plan on what happens next month or next year.