Allvin: Drones, New Technology Driving ‘Reinvention’ of Airpower and USAF

Feb. 13, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David W. Allvin told thousands of Airmen gathered here that the service is facing a hinge in history, less than 24 hours after unveiling the biggest changes to the Air Force in decades.

While the Air Force is introducing new commands, new ranks, and more, Allvin said a deeper, fundamental shift in airpower is occurring worldwide, as drones and other cheap weapons systems proliferate. In turn, the U.S. Air Force must assess how many bedrock concepts fit into modern conflict against China in the Pacific, militia groups in the Middle East, or elsewhere.

“The changing character of war is coming upon us,” Allvin said in his State of the Air Force address at the AFA Warfare Symposium on Feb. 13. “The theater of war is going to require us to fight different.”

Drones and human-machine teaming of unmanned systems will force a rethink of airpower, Allvin said.

“This will be part of the reinvention of our Air Force and airpower into the future,” he said.

The evolving use of unmanned systems is not new. But a conflict based heavily on denied airspace in which no side has air superiority has forced Ukraine into an ugly, artillery-heavy conflict in an attempt to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion, which is about to enter its third year. The war in Ukraine has also led to new electronic warfare solutions developed on the fly to counter drones and even a new acoustic detection system. And it has been a wake-up call and proving ground for what modern conflict is—with pitfalls and opportunities.

“You’ll see this proliferate more and more, which makes the importance of coming up with a low-cost solution to taking these things down … so we’re not taking $700,000 missiles and shooting down a $5,000 drone,” Gen. James B. Hecker, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and NATO Allied Air Command, told reporters Feb. 12. “But we want to inflict that cost maybe on our enemy should we be able to deter so I think you’ll see that we’ll be getting some of those capabilities as well.”

The Pentagon and the other parts of the force have taken notice as well—led by younger Airmen, Allvin said.

Airmen are “not ignoring what’s happening underneath our noses right now,” Allvin said. “Some of the changes are being played out in combat. Our Airmen are looking at that. And you can see it in pockets across our Air Force, whether it be in Spark Cells or within our components.”

The Air Force has its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, meant to produce autonomous drones to pair with manned aircraft. But there are also smaller-scale, bottom-up efforts from Airmen through units such as Air Forces Central’s Task Force 99, which is adapting relatively cheap commercial, off-the-shelf, and 3D-printed drones into what the unit hopes is into useful and evolving operational capabilities.

“They’re looking at what’s happening: the crackling of life that’s happening in the electromagnetic spectrum that had been largely taken for granted; the asymmetric advantage that can happen with low-cost solutions that may not be enduring, but they’re enough to get you an advantage today,” Allvin said.

But rather than replacing airpower, new solutions can enhance the manned platforms the Air Force also has planned—especially as many young Airmen are familiar with rapidly adapting new technology into their existing lives.

“These Airmen are doing all of this,” Allvin said. “And this is why we should be so proud that they’re upholding the legacy of airpower, where we assuring that we will continue to reinvent ourselves into the future, to be the most dominant air force in the world. That’s what our Airmen are doing.”

CSO: Why the Space Force Won’t Be Introducing Warrant Officers

Feb. 13, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force has no plans to follow the Air Force in introducing a warrant officer corps to its ranks, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said Feb. 13.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin first announced Feb. 12 at the AFA Warfare Symposium that the service will be rolling out a warrant officer program for its cyber and IT career fields. Warrant officers fill top technical, rather than leadership, functions and can earn more than enlisted personnel.

The move was met with excitement among Airmen at the conference and on social media, raising questions as to whether the Space Force would follow suit or stand alone as the only service not to have warrant officers.

In a media roundtable, Saltzman said factors unique to the Space Force made the warrant officer idea a non-starter for now.

“We don’t see a need to have warrant officers at this point. Because of the way we were designed, all of our enlisted personnel have very technical paths,” Saltzman said. “And so we feel like there’s other avenues to provide them the compensation they need.

“And at some point, how small can a career field or a rank be before it’s too hard, it’s too onerous to manage administratively? So we’re not pursuing that right now.”

The Space Force has only a few career fields, all within space operations, intelligence, cyber, engineering, and acquisition, and relies on the Air Force for service support functions. It is also far smaller than any other service—Saltzman noted during his keynote address at the conference that the Space Force accounts for just one percent of the Department of Defense’s active-duty personnel, at fewer than 9,000 uniformed Guardians.

SCHRIEVER SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo. — Members of Space Delta 9 participated in a retreat ceremony at Schriever SFB, CO, in front of building 210 on November 29, 2023. (U.S. Space Force Photo by Dalton Prejeant)

Proponents of warrant officers say the option helps to retain service members with valuable experience and knowledge in technical fields who don’t want to deal with the traditional leadership functions of officers but could make substantially more in the private sector than they could in the enlisted ranks.

For example, the DOD’s 2024 pay scale offers $5,792 in basic pay per month to warrant officers in the W-2 grade with 10 years of service, compared to $4,886 for an E-7 with the same level of experience.

However, the Space Force is planning to expand certain bonus programs like retention bonuses and assignment incentive pay. According to fiscal 2024 budget documents, the Space Force plans on paying out $8.3 million in special pays for its enlisted corps this year, compared to $4 million in fiscal 2023.

But while the Space Force is spurning warrant officers for now, it is moving forward with a new personnel management system that will be unique within the military in allowing Guardians to shift between full-time and part-time status.

“The ability, over the course of your career, to move between full-time and part-time work is there, and we want to pursue those kinds of flexible career paths options,” Saltzman said.

Such an arrangement could offer Guardians the ability to have jobs outside the military where they can put their specialized skills and knowledge to use. But it will take several years to finalize the administrative policies and systems necessary to make the new personnel management system work, Saltzman said.

“We have to be able to pull them over, put them in part-time status, and make sure we are giving them credit for part time work, accumulating towards retirement,” he said. “We need to understand how to pay part time people with what their pay structure looks like. Is this how many hours a week, or is it by position, etc.?”

In the meantime, Saltzman indicated he wants to aggressively pursue ideas for getting Guardians out into the private sector to stay abreast of the latest technological developments, whether it be through academic fellowships, job exchanges, or some other mechanism. Such moves, he said, will increase job satisfaction while ensuring service members don’t feel that they are falling behind their peers in technical knowledge.

How Tension Between New Integrated Capabilities Command and Office May Benefit Air Force

Feb. 13, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—The Department of the Air Force leadership expects its new Integrated Capabilities Command and Integrated Capabilities Office to offer competing approaches to answer emerging service needs, senior Department officials said Feb. 12 in rolling out new service organizations at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

The new Integrated Capabilities Command will be similar to other Major Commands like Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command in that it will be led by a three-star general who reports directly to the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff. While those MAJCOMS provide forces, there are also “institutional” commands like Air Education and Training Command that carry out development, and Integrated Capabilities Command will be created in that model, Chief of Staff Gen. David C. Allvin said.

MAJCOMs like ACC will continue to provide forces—already a “big job,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said—and will now offload much of the requirements process to the new Integrated Capabilities Command. This will ensure that good ideas are have a chance to rise to the attention of top-level Department leaders and are not stymied at a lower level.

There will also be an Integrated Capabilities Office, headed by Tim Grayson, special assistant to Kendall, who led the effort to organize Kendall’s Operational Imperatives, the seven capabilities areas the Air Force needs to be competitive with China. The Integrated Capabilities Office, about a 10-person shop, will have the job of finding the synergies and connective tissue between systems like the F-35 and KC-46, for example.

Asked if the two Integrated Capabilities organizations won’t butt heads, Kendall told Air & Space Forces Magazine, “They will. That’s intentional. That’s how you identify the biggest issues and bring them directly up to the top leadership for resolution.”

Acting Air Force undersecretary Kristyn E. Jones, in a keynote panel to open the conference, said these and other changes are part of what the DAF needs for Great Power Competition, and specifically, to deter China.

After analyzing “our processes, our systems, our structure and so on, against the outcomes needed, we identified several areas for improvement,” she said.

“We realized that we needed more enterprise solutions, deliberate integration,” and to “prioritize mission success over function. … And to make sure we were doing that for one Department with two services.”

The Operational Imperatives “are not going away,” Jones said. “We’re building on those efforts, but in establishing the Operational Imperatives, the need for integration was clear … across programs, across [program executive offices], across major commands, across our services.”

While separating the MAJCOMs from the top requirements-setting job, there won’t be a separation of operators from requirements, Allvin told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“That’s the integration. That’s where that comes in,” he said, and the new organizations will also have a heightened participation from technologists and industry.

“We needed to pair operators with technical professionals,” Jones said in her keynote.

“When the Secretary wanted to focus on closing the gaps for these Operational Imperatives, there was no organization that existed.” she said. “We created a pickup team in order to move forward in these initiatives. And we’ve had great success,” but the new organizations promise to build further on the “huge leaps” the Air Force has made in communicating requirements to the Pentagon leadership and Capitol Hill.

The Integrated Capabilities Office will “be looking at capabilities across our services, not in stovepipes, enabling end-to-end creation of effects. This organization will help us to prioritize our investments and will be responsible for working with us to determine the next iteration of Operational Imperatives,” Jones said.

Another new outfit will be the Integration Development Office, which will look at capabilities put forth by industry to assess how they could be inserted into existing or emerging systems. That office will be located under Air Force Materiel Command.

Yet another new organization will be the Office of Competing Activities, which will specifically look at ways to “increase our competitive advantage” versus China and other threats, “and align our efforts with the rest of DOD,” Jones said.

It will be a “single organization focused on maintaining competitive advantage across the continuum of operations,” she added.

The Air Force also plans to share what these organizations learn with partners and allies, to aid deterrence but still protect sensitive information.

The budgetary priorities of the Air and Space Forces will also be harmonized by a new Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, Jones said.

“We need to be able to better integrate and prioritize across two services and have one departmental narrative,” she said.

“We need to consistently improve our ability to resource our strategy through improving our programming and our budget process. We need to be able to better integrate and prioritize across two services and have one departmental narrative,” she said, and the new PA&E Shop will do that.

“The goal of this office is to enable us to better see ourselves, using analytically-based approaches. … We need to fully define the full burden cost of our capabilities,” she said; not just the platforms or acquisition programs, “but everything that’s needed to provide those capabilities across the entire spectrum,” Jones explained.

The Life Cycle Management Center, under AFMC, will shift to become the Air Dominance Systems Center. More on that transition is expected to be explained in Feb. 13 sessions.

Collectively, these changes will “lay out the next set of steps we need to do that are focused on the current force,” Kendall said in answering questions after his keynote.

“These are things we’re going to do quickly. They’re going to reorient us towards better preparation, if you will, for a conflict that just might happen, and we need to be ready for. We owe it to our men and women in uniform to get them as ready as possible in case a conflict happens.”

Air Force Warrant Officer Program to Focus on IT, Cyber Career Fields

Feb. 12, 2024 | By David Roza

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force plan to bring back warrant officers will be limited to Airmen in the information technology and cyber career fields for the foreseeable future as the service evaluates the outcomes of the effort, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said Feb. 12.

“We are going to be cautious before we broaden this beyond these particular career fields, because we want to make sure what we’re doing is fit for purpose, specific to the need that we have,” Allvin said in a keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Allvin officially confirmed news first leaked last week on social media: the Air Force will try out bringing back warrant officers in a bid to retain highly-skilled technical specialists, 45 years after the last Air Force warrant officer retired in 1980. The Air Force and Space Force are the only military services not to include warrant officers, who fill technical rather than leadership functions in the other military branches.

“We are in a competition for talent, and we understand that technical talent is going to be so critical to our success as an Air Force in the future,” Allvin said. The warrant officer track could allow Airmen “to pursue the technical path without having to choose between that and the leadership path.”

Some people “just want to code for their country,” he added. “But everybody needs to see themselves in the future, beyond just this assignment or the next. So developing the warrant officer track for this narrow career field, we anticipate will help us drive that talent in and help us to keep that talent.”

Warrant officers could be important in cyber and software, where technology moves particularly fast, he explained.

A document posted anonymously on the unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page and the Air Force subreddit directs Air University to develop a concept of operations for establishing a training pipeline at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. The initial cohort, according to the document, would consist of 30 prior-service personnel, but a separate planning document obtained by Air & Space Forces Magazine says the pipeline could scale up to 200 junior warrant officers and 50 senior warrant officers a year.

Success may involve measuring how long warrant officers stay in the service, what level of talent they develop as warrant officers, and how much they increase productivity and effectiveness in the IT and cyber arenas. Those metrics may take years to collect, but Allvin cautioned against expanding the program too quickly.

“We’re still a force that develops leaders, so we’re not going to relegate the entire force to warrant officers,” he said. The same goes for the enlisted force, which he described as “the envy of the world and it scares the [bejesus] out of the adversary. We need to make sure we maintain that.”

The warrant officer program was one of several new personnel changes announced in the keynote panel, where Allvin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, acting undersecretary Kristyn Jones, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman laid out 24 steps the service is taking to “reshape, refocus, and re-optimize” the Air Force and Space Force to prepare for possible conflict against a near-peer adversary such as China.

In that vein, the warrant officer program was just one of several “pathways” to sustaining technical expertise, according to an Air Force document that accompanied the announcements. Others include expanding technical tracks for officers, creating technical tracks for enlisted Airmen, and “tailored career categories” for “critical technical areas, notably cyber and IT.”

Other changes on the personnel side include:

Expanding Air Education and Training Command and renaming it Airman Development Command. The move is meant to better align education and training efforts across the service to ensure “a more standardized Airman experience and development with a shared understanding of the threat environment,” and the “development of the right Airmen for the right place and time” according to the Air Force.

Emphasize “Mission Ready Airmen,” by aligning Basic Military Training, tech school, doctorate and fellowship programs, and more with the current and future threats that the Air Force is preparing for, including how to work in small groups on difficult problems under contested conditions.

“Mission Ready Airmen” would also apply to commissioning programs, where Allvin hopes to develop leaders who graduate those programs prepared to solve complex problems in small units cut off from higher levels of command.

Saltzman Announces Fourth Space Force Field Command: Space Futures Command

Feb. 12, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

AURORA, Colo.—While the Air Force is undergoing sweeping changes as part of its re-optimization for Great Power Competition, the Space Force’s to-do list is shorter—but still with some major changes driven by the need to adjust to a changing domain, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“That shift to an operational phase where we have to now build and then maintain space superiority in order to continue to provide the services that the force has come to count on is what the real transformation is,” Saltzman said during the conference’s opening session Feb. 12.

Saltzman compared the transformation to that of converting a Merchant Marine to a Navy—preparing the Space Force to operate in a contested domain.

Space Futures Command

Perhaps the biggest change is the planned establishment of Space Futures Command, meant to answer long-term questions such as “Are we developing capabilities for the long term to continue to have advantages and maintain those advantages for years to come in the future? Are we evaluating the future operating environment? Are we evaluating the missions that we’re going to be asked to take on? Do we know how we’re going to accomplish that?” Saltzman said.

This new field command—similar to Army Futures Command—will include three centers aimed at answering those questions.

The Concepts and Technology Center will focus on evaluating the future operating environment, assessing adversary technologies, and devising operational concepts. A new Wargaming Center “helps us evaluate technologies … helps us experiment with new technologies,” Saltzman said.

Finally, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, currently a direct reporting unit, will leverage advanced analytics and modeling to inform decision-making and shape the future force design, Saltzman said.

Through the new command, the Space Force aims to stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain its competitive edge in the space domain. The Space Futures Command will be the service’s fourth field command, following on Space Operations Command (SpOC), Space Systems Command (SSC), and Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM).

Preparing Guardians

Big changes are also coming for how the Space Force will prepare its personnel. Reflecting on current processes, Saltzman suggested they are not fully adequate to meet the evolving demands of space warfare, characterized by high operational tempo and technological complexity.

For that, the Space Force will redesign its Officer Training Course so that all Space Force operators will have a better understanding of every other career field. On top of that, the service will implement new career paths.

“But that’s not going to stop there,” Saltzman added. “We have to recognize that all of our operators and all of the Guardians are going to need similar kinds of training and experience different from what they’ve had in the past.”

With that, the service plans to expand educational and developmental opportunities for all Guardians in the future, including the enlisted personnel and its civilian work force.

Bolstering Readiness

Saltzman also laid out a plan for ensuring the Space Force’s preparedness for the challenges of great power competition. Drawing from his experience as a squadron commander, Saltzman detailed the elements of readiness: “It’s the people, it’s the training, it’s the equipment, and it’s the sustainment.”

How the Space Force assesses that readiness needs a fundamental overhaul, Saltzman said, noting that “we have to rewrite the standards for readiness centered around a contested domain.”

Saltzman also stressed the need for advanced training and tactics to counter adversaries effectively.

“We have to redesign our architectures, redesign the systems to do our missions so they’re resilient against an adversary,” Saltzman said, highlighting the need for swiftly enhancing the service’s capabilities but pointing out the importance of the sustainability of those capabilities in the long term. For that, the service plans to create a series of exercises with an increase in scope, tempo, and complexity to fit within a broader Department-level framework. The assessment results from these trainings will shape force design and development.

Power Projection

As a service, the Space Force primarily deploys in place, making its force generation model unique. To that end, Saltzman said the service would establish “combat squadrons” meant to fit in with the department’s “units of action” concept for presentation to combatant commanders.

While combat squadrons will focus on day-to-day functions required by combatant commanders, mission squadrons will retain some ability to focus on high-end, advanced readiness activities. He added that these tasks will be rotated through the Space Force generation models, so that “the people on the ops floor are both ready if we have to fight tonight against the adversary, but also can respond to those day-to-day tasks.”

“What we’re really doing is building combat-ready forces,” Saltzman added. “If we can’t build combat-credible units, we have no chance of deterring a very capable and determined adversary.”

Combat Wings: Air Force Chief Lays Out New Model for Packaging Forces

Feb. 12, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force will seek to move away from today’s piecemeal approach to deployments in favor of deploying units that have grown up training together as “units of action,” as part of the department’s ambitious re-optimization for Great Power Competition, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said Feb. 12 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“Our current paradigm in how we deploy forces often is that we will take one of the mission elements—a fighter squadron or a bomber squadron or a tanker squadron, or what have you, and we’ll take the rest of the forces and sort of crowdsource it from amongst our Air Force, and they will meet in theater,” Allvin said. “That does not work against the pacing challenge. We need to ensure that our combat wings are coherent units of action that have everything they need to be able to execute their wartime tasks.”

Allvin defined three types of wings:

Deployable combat wings, “where they need to pick up, deploy, employ, generate, and sustain power in theater;”

In-place combat wings, which generate combat power and fight from their home stations, for which “we need to ensure that where they reside, where they project power from, they have all that they need;”

Combat generation wings, which “we may not expect to deploy as a wing, but [which] provide combat power that can plug into those combat wings,” Allvin said.

“These wings will prioritize readying whole units that can be combat effective on Day One of a conflict,” an Air Force presentation document stated. “They will train together and, as applicable, deploy and fight together—enhancing their ability to provide direct support to Combatant Commanders.”

Common in all cases is a basic three-tiered structure, including a mission layer, a combat support layer, and a command and control layer.

“The command-and-control layer is the commander and the staff and the ability to plan and execute the wartime tasks,” he said. “The mission layer is the mission generation we’re familiar with—the ops and the maintenance generating that combat power—and then there’s a sustaining layer that ensures that where they are engaged in combat, whether it be in place or deployed, they can sustain with the ability to have the force protection, to do the logistics, to do the intel, all of those things that will enable that to happen.”

Combat wings builds on the “Air Task Force” idea rolled out in September 2023 as a concept for more effectively packaging forces. But as leaders studied the concept, their thinking evolved. The result is more modular, more common across the force, and more intuitive in structure.

“What if the combatant commander wants different combinations of airpower to come and support a particular crisis or conflict?” Allvin asked rhetorically. “So let’s say, for example, we’re going to deploy an F-15E wing, that deployable combat wing needs to be ready to take those forces and deploy forward with all the C2 and all the sustainment. But what if we also would like an F-35 squadron as well? Well, that F-35 squadron should be able to plug into that unit and go. What if we want to use tankers to be able to generate sorties or C-130s to be able to have theater airlift in there? Those mission layers at the squadron layer should be able to plug into this deployable combat wing.”

Combining different kinds of aircraft and missions into a standing operating wing proved too costly when the Air Force tried it in the in the 1990s. Called “composite wings,” these units combined fighters, bombers, and tankers.

Operating a base like that is inefficient. But assembling a wing with those capabilities can be achieved if units are built to be plug-and-play compatible.

“That modularity provides forward flexibility with coherency at home,” Allvin said.

An F-15 Eagle from the Massachusetts Air National Guard takes off down the runway passing the C-130 Hercules from the 165th Airlift Wing, Savannah Air National Guard, at the Air Dominance Center, during Sentry Savannah 2021, hosted by the Georgia Air National Guard, Savannah, Ga., April 14, 2021. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech Sgt. Nicole Manzanares

Allvin did not specify a timeline for the creation of the new combat wings. Air Force leaders had planned to test the Air Task Force concept with three units starting in summer 2024, but that effort was suspended, leaving questions about what the forward plan will be.

A key difference between the two is the question of combat service support: “running a main operating base, providing for airfield security, air traffic control, lodging, sustenance, all those types of things at a main operating base,” then-deputy chief of staff for operations, now Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said.

Allvin said the relationship between combat wings and base commanders—those responsible for combat service support—will not be permanently joined. Rather, the bases need to be able to keep operating when the wings deploy and when they come under attack, or simply face a natural disaster, whether a flood, a power outage, or a winter storm.

“In this future flight, we cannot expect that there will be a benign environment in the installations that are here after the deploying wing is gone,” Allvin said. “We have to be able to not only fight forward, but understand what it takes to continue to defend and operate the base at home.”

New Commands, Ranks, and More: Big Changes for Air Force & Space Force

Feb. 12, 2024 | By Tobias Naegele and Chris Gordon

This story was updated on Feb. 13, 2023, to clarify the status of Air Task Forces.

AURORA, Colo.—Air Force and Space Force leaders rolled out sweeping changes to the services’ organization, manning, readiness, and weapons development Feb. 12 at the AFA Warfare Symposium here. The changes aim to ratchet up readiness and gain a warfighting edge in the face of intensifying great power competition with China.

Secretary Frank Kendall, acting undersecretary Kristyn Jones, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman detailed 24 action items and an aggressive schedule for implementation in a joint presentation to open the conference.

“All of these are intended to make us more competitive and to do so with a sense of urgency,” Kendall said in a speech unveiling the changes.

Citing the prospect of conflict—either through a military move by China on Taiwan or miscalculation that could escalate—Kendall said it is well past time to make changes. “We are out of time,” he repeated several times during his remarks.

The Air Force will reorient its major commands to focus on combat readiness, peeling off their requirements and weapons development functions and consolidating those into a new Integrated Capabilities Command. Headed by a three-star general and reporting directly to the Chief and Secretary of the Air Force, it becomes a new power center for current and future programs.

The idea is to have leaders be able to define requirements and build programs without having to manage a competing focus on today and tomorrow.

“We need to both be ready today with the force that we have. We need to approach that with a sense of urgency,” Allvin said. “But we also need to update—re-optimize, dare I say—the processes, the policies, the authorities, and in some cases, the structure to be competitive for the long term. We need to do both of these at the same time. And that’s the goal of these decisions.”

The Space Force will create a new Space Force Futures Command with a similar objective. It will be the Space Force’s fourth Field Command, the service’s equivalent to the Air Force’s Major Commands.

“Over the first four years in the Space Force, we focused on some of the systems … we didn’t really have the mechanisms to evaluate all the other components that have to be in place,” Saltzman said, citing everything from identifying the number of facilities needed to handle classified information to forming the USSF’s operational concepts. “That is what a futures organization can provide for you.”

Planned changes span the services and technologies. Cyber and electronic warfare will be elevated—what is today’s 16th Air Force, the information warfare arm of Air Combat Command, will be elevated to Air Forces Cyber, reporting directly to the Chief and Secretary with responsibility for operational cyber, information, and electronic warfare. It will continue to be led by a three-star general as it is today, but its rise to direct-reporting status suggests added stature and visibility.

Focus on Readiness

Operational Air Force wings will be restructured as “units of action,” with each designated as a Deployable Combat Wing, an In-Place Combat Wing, or a Combat Generation Wing.

Each wing type will be designed and structured for its purpose. Kendall and Allvin want to clarify the blurred lines between operational units and base support, and will designate Base Commands to support combat wings and keep bases operating during conflicts or crises. “We’re going to make sure that our deployable wings have everything they need to go fight successfully as a unit,” Kendall said.

In parallel, the Space Force will set up new Space Force Combat Squadrons as its units of action, supporting U.S. Space Command on a rotational basis. Additional Space Force component commands will be established, building on those already created and aligned to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Central Command. Additional Space Component Commands could include U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Southern Command.

The reorientation of Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air Force Global Strike Command to focus almost exclusively on combat readiness aligns with plans to further refine the Air Force Force Generation Model, which will evolve to support each type of combat wing.

“What has happened over time is that we basically took a lot of what could be headquarters or could be specialized command functions and farmed them out to various Major Commands,” Kendall explained in an interview. “The list of additional duties got pretty long. … And these aren’t core jobs for these commands. What we want fundamentally is to have the major force providers—Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air Force Global Strike Command—with responsibilities across the Air Force—focused on readiness for the forces that they have.”

To do that, he and the Chiefs are digging into the Cold War playbook and re-introducing large-scale combat exercises and no-notice operational readiness assessments and inspections. These hallmarks of the days of Strategic Air Command, Tactical Air Command, and Military Airlift Command all but disappeared over the past three decades, as the Air Force focused on supporting continuous operations in the Middle East.

“We’re talking about preparing units of action, which are fundamentally a new construct,” Kendall added of the changes across the Department. “We’re going to make sure that our deployable wings have everything they need to go fight successfully as a unit. And once we have that and they have a chance to train, then it’s reasonable to commit and start evaluating their ability to do that.”

The Space Force will implement new readiness standards for operating in contested environments and when under attack, and will introduce its own exercise program nested within the Department-level exercise framework.

The Space Force has heretofore operated as if space was a benign environment, and its leaders are rapidly confronting a future in which the service needs new training—everything from ranges and simulators to large joint force exercises.

“Unfortunately, over the last decade or so what we’ve seen, is now we have to recognize that space is a fundamentally different domain,” Saltzman said. “It is a contested domain. Now if we’re going to be successful in meeting our military objectives, we have to fight for, contest the space domain, and achieve some level of space superiority if we’re going to continue to provide the services that the military needs, that the joint force needs.”

Saltzman likened the shift to transforming the Merchant Marine into the warfighting U.S. Navy.

But “you can’t just tell” the Merchant Marine they need to suddenly be able to fight a war, Saltzman said. “They don’t have the right training; they don’t have the right operational concepts to do the task that they’ve been given.”

The same is true for the Space Force, he said.

“I feel like that’s what we have to embrace,” Saltzman said. “We have to understand that we have to transform this service if it’s going to provide the kinds of capabilities, to include space superiority, that the joint force needs to meet its objectives. That’s the transformational charge that’s at hand.”

Kendall is determined not to let staffs slow-roll these changes. “We’ve got to do this with a sense of urgency,” he said. “The threat is not a future threat, it is a current threat. And it’s getting worse over time. And we’ve got to start orienting ourselves on that and behaving as if we have a deep appreciation for that.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall speaks during the opening session of AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colo., on Feb. 12. Screenshot

People

Air Education and Training Command will be reborn as Airman Development Command, with a mission to better prepare Airmen for the range of duties they can expect in the more expeditionary future, where Agile Combat Development is no longer just an emerging concept, but the standard operating procedure.

More than just a renamed command, Kendall said the change will also encompass increased responsibility and oversight of programs like NCO academies, “wherever they might be to ensure that we’re getting the type of training across the force that we need.”

The concept of “Multi-Capable Airmen” will be formalized as “Mission-Ready Airmen,” with new skills taught at every level in the training pipeline, beginning in Basic Training and continuing at Wings and at each level of advanced training.

“We’re going to be more deliberate about what training people get so that they are fully prepared to do the jobs we’re going to need them to do,” Kendall said in an interview.

The Air Force will stand up several Air Task Forces this summer, which will go through a full Force Generation cycle, but the wider vision is that wings will be the future unit of action in the Air Force. How fast can these new structures stand up and spread across the force? “My answer to timeline questions is as quickly as we can,” Kendall said. “We need these units now—we don’t need them six years from now or two years from now. We need them now.”

The Air Force will create a new Warrant Officer track for highly skilled IT and cyber talent, enabling those Airmen to not only be paid competitively, but to choose a career path that enables them to focus exclusively on their specialties, bypassing the typical officer leadership track.

“We need mass, people,” Allvin told the audience. “We need to be able to have technical talent of a very specific variety, now and into the future. … We anticipate that will drive that talent in and help us to keep that talent. There’s something specific about this career field, why it’s attractive and it’s a nice match for a Warrant Officer Program.”

Additional focus on technical tracks for officers and noncommissioned officers is in the works. Warrant officers are approved for IT and Cyber “initially,” Kendall said. The Air Force must start somewhere, Allvin explained in his remarks.

“The first thing is, we have to try in this particular career field before we even consider rolling it out across the Air Force to other career fields,” Allvin said.

No plans are in place for the Space Force to adopt Warrant Officers at least for now.

Weapons Development

The most far-reaching of the changes, however, may be in how Kendall is reorganizing the work of creating and developing new warfighting capabilities. These changes go well beyond the centralization of requirements and integrated development in the new Integrated Capabilities Command and represent the culmination not only of his 30 months as Secretary but nearly 50 years of defining operational requirements and developing weapons in the Pentagon.

A new Integrated Capabilities Office will oversee all capability development for the department, centralizing resource decisions that had previously been determined by individual Major Commands in the Air Force and Field Commands in the Space Forces. Two other new offices will be established within the Secretariat to further centralize oversight: an Office of Competitive Activities will oversee and coordinate sensitive programs, and a new Program Assessment and Evaluation Office will apply a common strategic and analytical approach to program performance and associated resourcing decisions.

“We want our fighters and operators to be ready to go to war,” Kendall said in an interview. “That’s what they should be focused on being ready to go to war now. We want other people thinking about the future.”

Removing oversight of fighter requirements from ACC, for example, or mobility requirements from AMC doesn’t mean disconnecting them entirely from the process, however.

“The current force will certainly have a strong voice,” he promised. “There’s going to be a lot of interaction. “I saw a quote the other day about ‘extreme teaming.’ You know, ‘One Team, One Fight’ has been my mantra since I got here. We’re trying to break down stovepipes as opposed to create new ones. So collaborative processes, involvement of stakeholders—the people who are going to be operating the Future Force have a huge stake in what that future force is. They are not going to be isolated from this. They’re going to be very involved.”

Operators will move into the requirements game, he suggested, and in the future, some experienced operators could move into that game full-time at the senior levels. But the key is that the people focused on the future and those focused on the present will not have to split their attention between the two.

Air Force Materiel Command will be reorganized and structured as well, with new and reoriented centers and offices to better oversee critical technical areas:

Information Dominance Center: A new three-star command that will focus on Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (C3BM), as well as Cyber, Electronic Warfare, and the enterprise-wide information systems and infrastructure that support those and other Air Force and Space Force capabilities.

Air Force Nuclear Systems Center: Another new three-star command, it will expand the existing Nuclear Weapons Center to better support nuclear forces and the command will include a new two-star Program Executive Officer for ICBMs to oversee the overhaul of the ICBM enterprise.

Air Dominance Systems Center: The Life Cycle Management Center will be redesignated and directed to focus on synchronized aircraft and weapons development and support.

Integration Development Office: This organization within AFMC will be responsible for technology assessment and technical expertise to assess the feasibility of new operational concepts and technology insertion.

“We’re going to align the science and technology pipeline,” Kendall said.

Getting Buy-In

The 24 changes outlined Feb. 12 are the culmination of five months of intense effort, during which department leaders took in ideas and inputs from across the services. Among the many proposals, some of the more dramatic ones—such as combining multiple MAJCOMS into a single Forces Command, much like the Army and Navy—were discarded and refined.

“We worked really hard to make sure everybody’s voice was heard,” Kendall said in an interview. “And we did make adjustments because of things we heard from people. I think there was a widespread perception that change was needed, and what this process has done is identify what exactly we need to do differently. … This has been a mechanism to surface a lot of things that have kind of been on the table, but not necessarily addressed.”

Now comes the hard part—implementing the ideas and making them real.

“We’ve made the major decisions about direction and we’re going to be working next on all the details of that,” Kendall said ahead of the rollout. “There are still a lot of details to be worked out. It’s going to be a heavy lift. But I think we’re ready to do it. … We’re taking an approach which is designed to overcome bureaucratic resistance. We’re going to put responsible leaders in charge of each of these things. We’ve already figured out generally who they’re going to be. And we’re going to give them the mission of making these things happen.”

None of those changes will need much funding in the near term, Kendall said. Most will be cost-neutral or can be accomplished through the usual process of reprogramming funding from other lines. That’s important, because these changes come too late for the still-not-completed fiscal 2024 budget, as well as the already programmed—but not yet requested—fiscal 2025 budget request. That is expected to be released next month. That means that funding for significant changes, like new construction, or large-scale moves, won’t come until the fiscal 2026 budget cycle, which is just beginning to be bent into shape now.

But the Department of the Air Force’s re-optimization efforts have buy-in across the DOD, from Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, and other service secretaries, Kendall said.

“If you’re going to make some major changes in your organization, even if you have all the authorities you need to do them, it’s a good idea to tell your boss before you do,” Kendall said. “I went to both the deputy secretary and the secretary and basically briefed them, and also briefed my counterparts in the other military departments. There was not a single question asked about the appropriateness of anything we were doing. It was essentially a thumbs up, you’re on the right path, go get it done. And that’s where we’re going to go. We’re going to move out on this stuff.”

Big Changes In Store as Air Force, Space Force Arrive at AFA Warfare Symposium

Feb. 11, 2024 | By Tobias Naegele

AURORA, Colo.—Air Force and Space Force leaders gathering here on Feb. 12 will lift the veil on dozens of changes designed to enhance operational readiness and accelerate the development of future weapons in the years to come. The highly anticipated changes will be announced at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III will lay out his plans in an unprecedented opening keynote panel address featuring himself, undersecretary Kristyn E. Jones, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. Together, they will break down both the rationale and the specific changes they intend to implement in the coming months.

Kendall set the stage for the changes in September at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Washington D.C., announcing multiple “lines of effort” intended to identify barriers to readiness and impediments to getting new capabilities into the hands of warfighters. He worried openly that the Air Force and Space Force weren’t as ready as they could be to take on a peer rival in an era of Great Power Competition.

In an interview in the current issue of Air & Space Forces Magazine, Kendall emphasized that his experience as an Army officer and Pentagon civilian during the Cold War informed his view that today’s force was not fully prepared for the challenges of conflict with a peer competitor, like the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s or China, today.

“Over the 30-odd years since the Cold War ended, we have drifted away from preparing and assessing the readiness of the force or structuring the force—or managing the force—so that it is truly ready for a short-notice great power conflict,” he said. “And as you dig into that, and you start to investigate—how are we really structured and postured today?—You discover more ways in which we are really not optimized for great power competition.”

In daily meetings that only picked up speed and intensity as the months flew past, Kendall, Jones, Allvin, Saltzman, and their staffs sorted through hundreds of proposals. The results of those deliberations will come into focus over their 90-minute opening keynote session beginning at 3:50 p.m. Mountain Time on Feb. 12. Those not able to attend in person will be able to view the livestream by registering for the conference virtually. Registration is free to military members and federal employees.

Changes to be unveiled will address people, readiness, power projection, and weapons development. Already, there has been extensive speculation about the return of warrant officers and potential reorganization plans.

In January, Kendall focused on the idea that there are two crucial aspects of the force: readiness for war today and preparedness for requirements tomorrow.

“We want the units that are responsible for readiness to be responsible for readiness, and to be focused on that, and to be ready to go fight on a short notice,” Kendall said last month. “But we also need … organizations that are focused on sustaining competitive advantage over time, from both the operational perspective and from the technical perspective of acquiring those capabilities and maturing technologies.”

In both cases, Kendall said, existing institutional approaches and structures got in the way of delivering what’s needed.

Kendall promised a broad range of changes. “It’s about more than organizational structure,” he said. “It’s also about how we train people. … What kind of skill sets we want to have, what that mix of skill sets is. We’re looking at how we fight …. how we assess and evaluate readiness and how we create readiness.”

Air Force four-stars got their cut on the plans in recent weeks, and headquarters staff and outlying commands began to get briefed late last week. Anticipation has been rising across the services, with some posting memes on Reddit and Facebook about waiting for the answers to what all the fuss is about.

Don’t know how yet
byu/bearsncubs10 inAirForce

Kendall came into office on a mission to “deliver meaningful operational capability to the warfighter.” His seven Operational Imperatives were intended to focus the department on more rapidly developing the key capabilities needed to compete with China. But he said that over time he became increasingly concerned that it wasn’t just future capabilities that were lacking, but rather the posture of the entire force. That’s why he pressed for a sprint last fall and why he intends to use this year to not just talk about planned changes, but to implement them.

“We’re not in a period where we have the luxury of being complacent or taking our time,” he said last month. “If we went at the normal Pentagon pace for these things, we’d be staffing things for two years. We don’t have two years.”

China set the clock years ago, Kendall noted, when Xi Jinping has told his military be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. “The threat is changing, and it will keep changing,” Kendall said. “China is a thinking, well-resourced adversary. They’re now thinking about the things we’ve said we’re going to do and how they’re going to defeat them. That’s why we have to re-optimize. We’re in a race. And we can’t just hope we win.”

Re-optimizing is not the easy path, but he necessary path, Kendall said. “We have to actually do things to make sure we stay ahead,” he said. “Change is hard, losing is unacceptable, right? We don’t have a choice about this if we want to win.”

Air Force Thunderbirds’ F-16s Ready to Roar Over the Super Bowl

Feb. 9, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The F-16s of the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds will make their first Super Bowl appearance since 2019 on Feb. 11, roaring over Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nev., just before kickoff.

The iconic red, white, and blue Fighting Falcons will blaze through the sky at 400 miles per hour, right as the live performance of the National Anthem comes to a close. The stadium, located near Las Vegas, is firmly within the Thunderbirds’ home territory, as they are stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., only about 15 miles away.

In preparation for their big game night demonstration, the Thunderbirds have been flying twice a day, six times a week, to ensure a flawless performance, one pilot told local TV station KLAS.

“It’s a delicate balance of timing, speed, and vocal performance,” Michelle Curran, a former Thunderbird pilot who conducted the 2019 Super Bowl flyover, wrore on her Linkedin page . “If the jets are too fast or slow, we’ll miss our mark. If Gladys (Knight) speeds up or extends a note, we’ll miss our mark.”

The Thunderbirds squadron comprises eight pilots, four support officers, three civilians, and over 130 enlisted personnel across 25 career fields. Curran highlighted the significance of teamwork, made possible through those who work tirelessly on the ground, including maintenance professionals and coordinating staff.

“This dance of timing and precision, unseen by most, is a testament to the teamwork among pilots and performers of various disciplines coming together to create an incredible moment,” wrote Curran. “It’s about building trust, fostering collaboration, and creating an environment where everyone is empowered to reach their highest potential.”

To qualify as a Thunderbirds pilot, one must have served more than three but no more than 12 years, with at least 1,000 hours of flight time.

The Thunderbirds, the USAF’s Air Demonstration Squadron, perform precision aerial maneuvers at events around the world. While their primary focus is on demonstrations, the Thunderbirds are also part of the combat force. This means that if necessary, the team’s personnel and aircraft can be swiftly integrated into a fighter unit at Nellis. Their modified F-16s can be made combat-ready in under 72 hours.

The anticipated flyover at Super Bowl LVIII will be the team’s first demonstration of 2024. They typically have around 75 events per year, but none are likely to surpass the exposure of Super Bowl Sunday—it has been projected that more than 115 million people could watch this year’s game on CBS.