Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin entered the service’s top job in November 2023 with a challenge for airmen: Don’t take your foot off the gas.
Allvin, a profession mobility pilot and strategist who previously served because the Air Force’s No. 2 officer, believes airmen stand at an inflection point between how past wars were fought and what tomorrow’s conflicts will demand.
“Now we have accelerated change, and now must turn this momentum into outcomes,” he said in prepared remarks at a Nov. 17 welcome ceremony. “The time to execute is now.”
To avoid losing on the worldwide stage — and jeopardizing America’s superpower status — the four-star desires to proceed a multibillion-dollar modernization of the Air Force arsenal to rival China, crafting more relevant training and agile deployments, and ditching outdated rules that may hinder airmen’s well-being.
As chief of staff, Allvin oversees an roughly $180 billion portfolio and around 689,000 uniformed and civilian employees across the globe. His right-hand man might be Lt. Gen. Jim Slife, a profession special operations airman who was confirmed Dec. 19 because the service’s four-star vice chief of staff.
Also newly confirmed are Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who will move from running Pacific Air Forces to Air Combat Command, and Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, who will take over as PACAF’s top officer, amongst other nominees for senior roles. They’ll have to make sure the force can juggle myriad conflicts world wide without significant growth, and persuade a restive Congress to fund those plans.
“We face a security environment which grows more complex by the day and a pacing competitor which continues to advance at an alarming rate,” Allvin said Nov. 6. “Now we have a responsibility to guide and advance the combination of the joint force. … We must now follow through.”
Rachel Cohen is the editor of Air Force Times. She joined the publication as its senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared within the Washington Post, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), Air and Space Forces Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy and elsewhere.