U.S. Air Force

Since the birth of the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1947, Airmen have struggled to define the universal skills or common knowledge that all Airmen share. The easy solution, and one adopted since the services’ establishment, is to instill a ground warrior’s mindset, with skills traditionally associated with the Army or Marines. While these skills have proven effective in shaping the current culture, do they mirror what Airmen will be asked to do in a 21st century near-peer conflict? While future, friendly and adversarial operations will include: stand-off munitions, unmanned vehicles, electronic & cyber-attacks, automated processes, robust sensor fusion, artificial intelligence, and supply chain interruptions, will the service be prepared to fully integrate or counter them through its own operations. When an Airman serves in a joint environment, can they contribute expertise that is unique to the force, regardless of their specialty or experience? Finally, is the service fully capitalizing on the talent that is recruited into its ranks every year? Presently, the answer to all of the above questions is an emphatic ‘no.’ To maximize the USAF’s contributions in the next conflict, it must supplement or replace current force-wide training with a cultivated universal technological skill set. This skill set must be shaped through a deliberate assessment of tomorrow’s challenges, instruction on transformational technologies, and the embracement of critical thinking. A new approach to talent management must also be adopted, focused on recruiting and capitalizing on crucial technological talent. This shift will not only alter the USAF’s identity, but it will also  significantly aid in continued air domain dominance well through the 21st-century. It was said that the “[p]en is mightier than the sword,” the future will prove that for the USAF, the computer will be mightier than the gun.

Through the mission of Air Advising, the Air Force can produce a network of partners to counter the network of non-state terrorist organizations that threaten global stability. Embracing Air Advising as a core mission will also provide the U.S. with a promising way to counter China’s growing influence in developing nations. Finally, this mission ensures that America retains much needed low-intensity conflict expertise and capability. Air Advising can greatly reduce the risks the U.S. is taking in shifting its defense priorities, but to so, the Air Force must embrace it as a core mission.

Andrew Krepinevich’s “Army Concept” provides a useful model for understanding the mindset military organizations take towards advising operations, which subsequently shapes outcomes, including the U.S. Air Force’s advising efforts in small wars. Efforts to advise the South Vietnamese Air Force and Afghan Air Force demonstrate that U.S. Air Force advising concepts have been poorly suited towards irregular conflicts, creating counterproductive effects.

Every discussion of a military organization’s future must begin with this question: what capabilities does it require to meet possible strategic objectives in a variety of conflicts? Unfortunately, a recent article suggesting that the Air Force downsize significantly to focus solely on air superiority within the organizational construct of Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) fails to begin this way.

In the aftermath of WWI, the question of Air Power’s role in the military as an institution arose. Two competing theories arose: The first treated air power as another branch of the Army and Navy, while the second treated Air power as a separate form of war that would be super-dominant. America’s Military has tried both forms, using the former during WWII and the latter post-1947. In recent decades, many critics of an independent Air Force have called for its abolition and a return to the first model.

The USAF is well known for its precision strike capability as well as space and airborne ISR expertise. With this consideration, a resilient ISR C2 model that offers embedded expert joint controllers for leveraging ISR C2 capabilities is appropriate; in other words, a single, integrated structure that fully empowers the TACP through its ISR team to execute C2 of ISR missions. This ensures that the USAF’s expertise is leveraged and optimized through streamlined and synchronized joint operations.

The US Air Force requires an inexpensive, light air support aircraft as a practical and cost-effective means of providing air support for IW in low air threat environments.