The Air Force wants to begin putting in key parts of its sweeping reorganization as soon as possible so it may possibly higher plan for its future needs, the service’s chief of staff said Wednesday.
But budget uncertainties and a possible 1% cut to funding levels could jeopardize the Air Force’s ability to establish a brand new Integrated Capabilities Command and other changes in time to have the suitable impact, Gen. Dave Allvin said at a Brookings Institution event.
“It’s not a matter to me of: that is an optional thing that we expect is a great idea to do,” Allvin said. “The strategic environment compels us to do that. Otherwise, we discover ourselves in a situation next yr, then the yr after and the yr after that, where we fall further behind.”
Allvin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, and other top officials unveiled the revamp — the service’s largest because the post-Cold War period within the Nineties — earlier this month on the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium. The shift is an element of the service’s effort to higher position to counter major adversaries, particularly China, and win a high-tech, modern war, all while coping with budgetary limitations.
The creation of a brand new Integrated Capabilities Command is one among the most important changes within the works for the Air Force.
Today, the Air Force often develops the longer term capabilities it would need partially inside its major commands and piecemeal.
But the only, centralized Integrated Capabilities Command within the works will take charge of developing the Air Force’s future requirements into recent systems or other capabilities and permit a more unified approach.
This recent command “understands the impacts of modernizing one a part of our Air Force with the opposite a part of our Air Force, and it helps us develop a more cohesive and coherent force design into the longer term,” Allvin said. “We have now to make quality decisions faster. And sometimes, if you diffuse the facility structures and the decision-making authority across the functions, it’s very hard to get an enterprise solution on time.”
These changes may not be noticed outside of the Air Force, Allvin said, but he predicted they might have a big effect internally.
The service is working on organising the Integrated Capabilities Command as soon as possible, he said, so it may possibly start changing the way in which it conducts long-term planning for the longer term force. But he acknowledged the total reorganization may very well be done in pieces and take years — and will not be completely finished when his tenure as chief of staff ends in 4 years.
“It’s all I’m going to be doing … from start to complete,” Allvin said. “If I do my job, and get the support and I’m capable of construct a team and construct the advocacy, you’re going to see a drastically modified Air Force.”
He said it is just too early to inform how much the reorganization may cost a little, though he doesn’t expect it to be “a big fiscal burden.” He believes the Air Force already has many of the resources and talents it needs, and must start moving on these changes immediately.
“This Integrated Capabilities Command, I can’t inform you to the airman what number of are going to be there,” Allvin said. “But we can also’t wait for that with a purpose to start. We want to know that we’re going to maneuver forward and adapt on the fly.”
But with the fiscal 2024 budget languishing in Congress, the Air Force — like the remaining of the federal government — remains to be operating on a unbroken resolution funding it at 2023 levels. If lawmakers don’t pass this yr’s budget by April 30, an additional 1% cut will kick in.
That might not only jeopardize the Air Force’s ability to make these changes, Allvin said, it could also create “a more existential issue.”
“The one thing that we actually lose is time, and our ability to give you the chance to spend the valuable resources on the things that we had planned on with a purpose to keep pace,” Allvin said.
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.