Air Force Chief of Staff David W. Allvin said the principal aim of his much-advertised but still secret force design is to refine the service’s thinking and give it options to maneuver in the face of evolving threats—or different budgets.
“The design is, it’s almost more conceptual, but we’re designing the force to be able to account for the environment. That environment is one that has varying levels of and varying densities of threat,” Allvin said in a recent interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine.
The Air Force’s approach differs substantially from the force designs that have been issued by other services, especially the Marines. In the case of the Marine Corps, its concept was a detailed roadmap that called for getting rid of all of its tanks, eliminating all of its bridging companies, and upping its missile batteries.
In contrast, the Air Force design does not prescribe precisely how the service plans to fill out its force in terms of aircraft or personnel—at least in an unclassified executive summary or in public statements.
Rather, the fundamental intent is to establish a framework to facilitate tough decisions as the service tries to prepare for future threats with resource levels that have yet to be determined in the years ahead.
“The design of the force is something that helps you put together the structure,” said Allvin. “You can you can build a bigger force or a smaller force, but that force can do what you need it to do in the environment. How much it can do depends on how much Air Force you get.”
The force design sorts capabilities into one of three “Mission Areas,” ranging from initiatives to cover a broad spectrum of threats to those for a more permissive environment:
- Mission Area 1 capabilities “have attributes that allow them to live within and generate combat power from the dense threat area which will be under constant attack from adversary ballistic and cruise missiles or attack UAVs.”
- Mission Area 2 is less high-end, with “attributes that afford them the range to operate from the defendable area of relative sanctuary beyond the umbrella of most adversary ballistic and cruise missiles or attack UAVs and project fires into highly contested environments.”
- Mission Area 3 envisions the “flexibility and mass to span a range of potential future crises” under “limited adversary attack.”
The specific capabilities themselves to address those range of threats have yet to be spelled out publicly, though they include programs that are well underway. The force design will also be key to informing priorities for the service’s new Integrated Capabilities Command, Allvin and Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures Lt. Gen. David A. Harris told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
“We’re looking at the right mix of the high-end, sophisticated, most capable capabilities, along with lower-end capabilities and asymmetric capabilities that provide the outcomes that we need,” Allvin said. “You can’t build a force design that doesn’t take cost in mind, so we’re trying to develop the force … to make sure we have the appropriate survivability and lethality and agility that adapts to the different levels and densities of threat.”
The service is analyzing the future of its Next-Generation Air Dominance crewed fighter, with a decision likely before the end of this year. It is also setting up an experimental test unit to figure out how its semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones will function in the real world.
Those decisions loom as the Air Force prepares for a new political landscape, with the Trump administration set to nominate a new Secretary of the Air Force, as well as a Republican-controlled Congress.
While President-elect Donald Trump has broadly promised an agenda based on “peace through strength,” how much money his incoming administration and the next Congress will allocate toward the Air Force remains unclear.
As the Air Force plans to cope with the uncertainty, Allvin pushed back when asked about criticism from some quarters that the service doesn’t have a clear plan for the future.
“If you give me a dollar value, I know exactly where I want to go,” Allvin said.
“To say, the Air Force doesn’t know where it wants to go, I think that that may be a refrain. But we are trying to narrow down the variables, because as we are coming to key decision points, what we don’t want to do is commit ourselves to something that on the other end of it, we misinterpreted the future, and we are too invested in one thing, rather than being able to pivot,” Allvin said. “It’s got to be resource-informed.”