The Air Force is mulling a bureaucratic shuffle that might refocus the service on 4 key areas it believes can improve the way it organizes, trains and equips airmen for war.
Those core missions — combat readiness, careerlong training, acquisition and future force planning — will eventually fall under the purview of 4 major organizations, dubbed “institutional commands,” accountable for force-wide planning and policymaking, Air Force officials said in public remarks earlier this month.
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The plan goals to streamline the Air Force’s fragmented internal structure, which currently spreads those missions across nine major commands that oversee various varieties of aircraft and geographic regions, to grow to be more practical and mirror other branches of the armed forces.
The 4 commands would come with:
- Air Combat Command, which might expand its concentrate on fighter, intelligence and other units to as a substitute manage readiness for the complete service;
- Airman Development Command, which might handle education and training over the course of a service member’s profession;
- Air Force Materiel Command, which might run acquisition programs across the force; and
- Integrated Capabilities Command, which might handle long-term planning.
Those core commands would absorb some assets from current Air Force major commands, like Air Mobility Command and Air Force Global Strike Command, to offer them the resources they should manage troops and weapon systems across the force, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a chat on the Air and Space Forces Association June 13 and in a roundtable with reporters on the Pentagon the next day.
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In practice, it could look very like the Army, which since 2018 has spread those missions across Army Training and Doctrine Command, Army Forces Command, Army Materiel Command and Army Futures Command.
It’s unclear how the opposite current major commands will interact with the 4 overarching organizations, or whether the service will look so as to add more subordinate commands as well.
The Air Force would also turn each of its service components into standalone organizations that provide forces to higher combatant commands across the globe. Immediately, some service components, like Air Forces Cyber, fall under Air Combat Command’s purview, while others like Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Air Forces in Europe, don’t report back to the next Air Force command and have more control over their very own planning.
“We adapted to the time that we were in. … But when you concentrate on the things that the environment asked of us, it drove us to be slightly bit more diffuse and distributed,” Allvin said. “We didn’t have a transparent existential threat like we had within the Cold War.”
The reorganization is the newest piece of a sweeping effort launched in February to realign the Air Force to outpace China and other advanced militaries after a long time of fighting within the Middle East, when the Air Force responded piecemeal through siloed commands that focused on a single kind of air mission, like bombers or tankers. Now the service wants a more holistic approach to lending those air packages to the joint force.
Some pieces of the plan, including standing up the brand new Integrated Capabilities Command and turning Air Education and Training Command into the brand new Airman Development Command, were unveiled by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in February.
Now, additional parts of the puzzle are starting to emerge.
Air Forces Northern, Air Forces Southern and Air Forces Central — which supply forces to commanders in North and South America and the Middle East — would move out from under Air Combat Command to as a substitute sit on par with the opposite service components like U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and Pacific Air Forces.
With less to observe over, ACC would work with “other institutional commands to generate the readiness, the exercises, have the inspections to make sure that we’re mission-ready, not only task-ready,” Allvin said.
“ACC is transitioning into a unique kind of a command,” he said.
That may include ensuring the Air Force’s combat wings are prepared to fight, including the attack assets that fall under so-called “deployable combat wings” or the wings that may complement them with airlift and other assets, known as “combat generation wings.” They’ll leave behind separate units tasked with keeping Air Force bases running at home during deployments, in addition to wings that perform their mission from home station, like intercontinental ballistic missile units.
Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain, the service’s deputy chief of staff for operations, said the Air Force predicts it’s going to be eventually find a way to resource 24 deployable combat wings, 16 of which could be energetic duty and the rest from the reserves. Those wings are expected to dispatch teams of airmen from the identical bases who’ve already trained together, fairly than filling empty jobs overseas as needed from different squadrons.
Their precursor units, known as air task forces, are spinning up this summer at six bases across the country in preparation for deployments to the Middle East and the Pacific in October 2025. One other three are slated to interchange them overseas in 2026.
ACC might want to work with the opposite commands to make sure airmen across the force are getting the training they need, beyond the fighter units it has traditionally managed.
“There’s going to be this relationship in constructing the exercises, constructing the training mechanism for the entire force that deploys not only what has traditionally been the fighter force,” Allvin said. “That’s where ACC goes to be really accountable and liable for the readiness of the entire force. That’s an enormous mission.”
If executed well, the revamp may benefit the service, said Clint Hinote, who worked on the reorganization before retiring from the Air Force as its three-star strategy boss in 2023. He cautioned that it could encounter opposition if the service opts to maneuver the three- and four-star leadership positions that currently govern those commands. But he argues failing to evolve could be a mistake.
“I believe they do it improper by not changing,” Hinote said.
Courtney Mabeus-Brown is the senior reporter at Air Force Times. She is an award-winning journalist who previously covered the military for Navy Times and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where she first set foot on an aircraft carrier. Her work has also appeared in The Latest York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and more.