Posted on 01/19/2024 5:04:33 AM PST by Fish Speaker
After months of study, the Air Force may (or may not) be on the verge of a major restructuring. While a shakeup has yet to be confirmed — much less the details of the plan — in this op-ed nuclear policy experts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin examine one road that they say Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall should definitely not follow.
During the Space Force Association’s annual conference in mid-December, Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the commander of Space Systems Command, raised eyebrows when he said, “The Air Force is going to get rid of the major command structure.” He added, “Think about how fundamental that is to the way we fight today and the way we’ve always thought about the Air Force. And we’re going to step away from what we know as the MAJCOM structure. That’s going to be a huge change.”
He later retracted his comments and explained that no concrete decisions was made … yet. For a careful officer like Guetlein to speak publicly of such radical change, the decision is likely not far from concrete, however.
Guetlein’s comments should come as no surprise. It was Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who, on Sept. 11, 2023, at the Air Force Association (AFA) annual conference, announced that he would launch a “sweeping” review of Air Force readiness and “reoptimize” the service for combat. Kendall said recommendations would come in January 2024.
(Excerpt) Read more at breakingdefense.com ...
Too often reorganization is a substitute for good leadership. Thus, should Kendall step onto the stage at AFA in September and announce yet another major shakeup of the Air Force, it may be a move the Air Force comes to regret.
Exactly my view. I have never seen a reorganization do anything but cover up leadership failures. If parts of an organization are not supporting the mission then the solution is simple. Replace the leadership if they are relevant or dissolve the organizations if they are not relevant.
The AF in the past has made significant changes in renaming MAJCOMs, disbanding/consolidating some services and commands and other actions, but doing away with the MAJCOM structure altogether seems to me to be a step backwards (or shrinking inwards).
Maybe their vision of the future is a one-weapon systems force. The Drone Force
They have a Drone Force already. It’s called the Pentagon.
This is an excellent article by the way. And it is a timely topic.
We used to respect our military leaders. We respected their competency.
Now, it appears that our leaders are incompetent and also cannot lead. DemocRATs ARE OUR ENEMY.
The sooner we admit it and react, we are so very doomed.
In order to replace leadership you need to have leaders and leaders are few in today’s military. Since Obama the military has gone down hill significantly with all this social engineering. There’s weak managers everywhere and leaders have been weeded out.
They started a restructuring in 2003 when I was in.
They wanted greater force projection, and fewer of certain AFSCs, and more of others.
I agree. Back in my day when I was in the Air Force the major commands were Tactical Air Command, Strategic Air Command, Military Airlift Command, Air Training Command, and the European and Pacific Air Force Commands (USAFE and PACAF.)
Sometime after I left they renamed the commands but the structure is basically the same. For example, my TAC is now Air Combat Command, but it's the same structure.
The Air Force experimented with changing the structure of an Air Wing in the 1990s, where instead of an entire wing having one type of aircraft, a wing was an "expeditionary wing" that had some attack aircraft, some fighter aircraft, some strategic bombing aircraft, some refueling aircraft, and in theory was a self-sufficient package that could be deployed and be ready for the full range of combat. (My old wing at Mtn. Home AFB, the 366th Wing.)
The 366th composite Wing had F-16s, F-15Cs, F-15Es, B-52s, and KC-135s assigned to it. The composite wing concept apparently didn't work because the 366th is now exclusively F-15Es.
That’s how managers show they are doing something. They reorganize.
There is one stopper for the mixed aircraft combat groups that are supposed to be self-sufficient. Its called logistics. The is a reason for grouping like aircraft in to organisations. Think about the logistic nightmares.
“…then the solution is simple. Replace the leadership if they are relevant or dissolve the organizations if they are not relevant.“
Doable if the commanders have only the security of the United States of America as their main focus but they don’t. They have an overarching responsibility to DEI. In their sick fevered minds DEI trumps America. It is t even close.
Don’t leave out the apparel manufacturers who will probably push for a complete uniform revision at a huge cost…
When you reorganize rows of toxic waste dumps you still have toxic waste dumps.
As much as I like the USAF I am not sure it is still needed in it’s current missions. It may be better to dissolve it into the new Space Force rather than to try to support the very different aviation requirements of the Army, Navy, Marines and the CG. These other departments already have air services that are tailored to their needs so having an Air Force in addition to those services is probably overkill.
But hey! it’s only tax money ... there is a lot more where that came from.
They go away when you sort them into diagonals.
I agree.
When I was at Mtn. Home in the stone age of 1978-81, we had F-111As, and were the type familiarization training base for the rest of the F-111 fleet (Cs, Ds, Es, and Fs.) My specific job was in an Avionics shop fixing Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) for the attack radar, terrain following radar, and inertial navigation systems.
I would guess that the maintenance practices would be modeled after what is done when a squadron is forward deployed, which is to ship all LRUs back to home base or a Logistics Center for repair, rather than have the unit level repair facilities on base with you.
That's a lot of boxes being shipped back and forth every day.
Hire Conslutants to do a study
Reorganize
Team Building
360 Feedback
Air Farce bases have been training pilots and air crew for decades. They are mostly able to run without intervention from the top. Staff usually passes the baton seamlessly. Most people know their jobs. Management should mostly be busy enforcing process, getting the right people in the right jobs, measuring performance and keeping the operation between the guard rails. There should be very little need for upheaval and sweeping change. Yet, each new wing commander, each new base commander feels the need to shake things up and that they are going to somehow make a sweeping change that will fundamentally improve the training process. They do and they fail to make much better. Somehow work continues in spite of them.
If somebody wanted to make a big and fundamental change they would tackle problems like why the AF procurement process sucks and why so many airplanes are hangar queens. The AF is busted. It needs to pay zero attention to DEI, woke, green and give all attention to mission readiness. Anything else is a distraction and waste.
The AF can't even execute the KC-46 platform. An airplane that has been in wide and successful service for ages using a boom system that should be proven and available by now. Procurement and incorporation of the aircraft into operation should have been a very simple process. Instead it is just another fluster cluck.
Someone posted an account of the patching of the "Hornet" for Midway after damage at Coral Sea. Nimitz donned waders with the rest of the engineering staff at the shipyard to inspect damage and cleared the way as much as possible to make the ship ready for battle in three short days. LeMay identified the failure of high altitude strategic bombing and was able to organize fire bombing of Japan in just weeks. Both are examples of what leadership is supposed to do.
Peace time military stinks, it turns upon itself often resulting in self-inflicted wounds. The scramble for note and promotion often contributes to this negatively. It may take greater leadership skills in such times than in war. The mission is not so clear or compelling and people recognize false urgency. Finding and correcting the big rock failures for the next war is hard to do in peace time without the machine being loaded or stressed. LeMay was also good at this in the cold war SAC.
Mtn Home is still one of if not the largest employer in the state. I can’t imagine the number of people there with the composite wing.
Air Force readiness and “reoptimize” the service for combat.
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It used to be optimized for tennis ...
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