The Air Force and Space Force’s top civilian and uniformed leaders unveiled large-scale plans to structurally reorganize at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado following a wide review that began last fall. The Air Force will create a new forward-looking capability planning command, refocus its training enterprise, and rethink how airmen deploy as part of a set of 24 initiatives designed to reorient the service to outpace China’s military ambitions and prevail in future conflicts.
What this means for the future of the Air Force missions throughout Joint Base San Antonio still is yet to be determined but is promising with our treasured role in the Education and Training of airmen and guardians. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin relayed that the service will replace its Air Education and Training Command (AETC) with a new Airman Development Command. Allvin said the renamed command aims to streamline the educational pipeline so that when troops move “from one part of our Air Force to another part of our Air Force, they don’t need to relearn the systems and tools and they can develop faster.” The Develop People goal will work to consolidate force development functions under this expanded Airman Development Command to provide Airmen with a common, mission-focused development and training path.
Many of the plans behind this week’s announcements are being finalized and are still pending details including a plan to move Air Forces Cyber from under Air Combat Command and elevate it to a service component command. AFCYBER would report to U.S. Cyber Command for daily offensive and defensive operations on military networks and systems. This is part of the project power goal to elevate AFCYBER to a standalone Service Component Command, reflecting the importance of the cyber mission to the Joint Force and across the Department of the Air Force. Doing so may allow CYBERCOM to more seamlessly direct Air Force cyber units and give the organization a larger role in managing its training and resources. This sounds like a promising development for the Cyber professionals based at JBSA-Lackland.
Many of the plans will require congressional buy-in especially as the reorganization entails significant personnel movements and considerable investment of time and resources to implement change amidst years of underfunding of mission essential support, as well as shortfalls in recruiting of many career fields across the Air Force. The announcements sound promising for San Antonio’s missions and your Chamber will remain engaged as these changes are implanted in the near and long term.
More details on the plans titled: Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition can be found here: http://www.af.mil/Reoptimization-for-Great-Power-Competition/.