The U.S. Air Force desires to have its Integrated Capabilities Command up and running by the tip of 2024, the service’s chief of staff told reporters Thursday.
The command is a central pillar of an enormous reorganization the service announced in February. This revamp, the service’s largest because the end of the Cold War, is intended to higher prepare the Air Force to counter major adversaries resembling China and win a high-tech, modern war amid limited funding.
The Air Force has turn into “fragmented” and built up its capabilities “in chunks at a time,” Gen. David Allvin said at a roundtable. But in an era where the Air Force must prepare for a possible fight against a sophisticated enemy, he added, the service must take a broader look to organize for the long run.
For instance, he said, a siloed approach to modernization may lead one section of the Air Force to concentrate on updating an outdated capability, even when that capability won’t be relevant to a future fight. By having an Integrated Capabilities Command taking a look at the large picture, he noted, the service might recognize such an upgrade wouldn’t be price it.
The command is meant to take a more unified approach to developing the Air Force’s future requirements into recent systems or other capabilities. It can centralize the Air Force’s current system for developing plans for future capabilities, which is now largely done piecemeal by individual major commands resembling Air Combat Command and Air Force Global Strike Command.
The service remains to be figuring out many details concerning the recent command, Allvin said. However the service intends to place a three-star general in charge, he noted, and sure one from an operational background, even when it has to select a brief commander at first.
And the organization could ultimately have between 500 and 800 airmen, Allvin said, though he stressed that figure remains to be in flux. These could be airmen who concentrate on conducting longer-term planning and preparing for modernization projects.
He said the Air Force’s goal is to have individual airmen tapped for the command and already beginning to work of their recent jobs by the tip of the calendar 12 months.
Allvin indicated the variety of airmen moved from individual commands to this recent one would probably number just a few dozen, adding: “We don’t anticipate it would be moving lots of from a spot.”
The Air Force is working to make sure it doesn’t mistakenly take airmen away from major commands, which could impact the readiness of existing systems, Allvin said.
The Air Force envisions a series of satellite offices for the command throughout the US, Allvin noted, meaning most airmen would likely stay at their current bases.
The Air Force must think more creatively about ways to perform its missions, Allvin said, resembling carrying out long-range strike operations to sink Chinese ships. For the last 20 years, he added, China has focused on constructing a naval force designed to maintain the US at a distance — something the U.S. Air Force must counter. He pointed to the service’s experimentation with launching cruise missiles from the back of a cargo plane as an revolutionary option to achieve long-range strike requirements without employing traditional bombers.
Or, he said, modernization planners working on updating the F-16 jet′s radar might need more access to experts working on the KC-46 tanker and share ideas and methods that may work higher.
“We wish to have the option to maintain up with the pace of technology, the pace of change, and have the operators come together to construct one force design, slightly than multiple parts which might be form of stitched together at the tip,” Allvin said.
This may profit your complete service by resulting in “a more coherent force design,” he added, in addition to help Air Force Materiel Command higher understand and predict what it would need to construct and sustain all of the service’s different systems.
“That is about getting the system right,” Allvin said. “Looking into the arc of the long run and the way we see how technology is playing out, how the strategic environment is playing out, and the way we assess the way in which that we put together the capabilities we use to go to war.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.