Watch, Read: Allvin Shares Updates on New ACC, NGAD’s Future & More

Gen. David W. Allvin, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, joined AFA President & CEO Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.) on June 13, 2024, for an Air & Space Warfighters in Action Q&A. The Chief discussed the Department of the Air Force’s progress on reoptimizing for great power competition, including changes to Air Combat Command (ACC), the future of Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), his vision for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and more.

Watch the full event or read the transcript below.

Transcript

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Welcome to Warfighters in Action. I’m Burt Field, President & CEO of your Air & Space Forces Association. I’m here today with the 23rd Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Dave Allvin. General Allvin was sworn in a little over seven months ago as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force making him responsible for organizing training and equipping about 689,000 Active duty, guard, reserve and civilian Airmen. He’s doing so in a time when the Air Force is shrinking, when the Air Force is at its oldest and smallest in history and the global threat is rising daily. No pressure, Chief.

Before we get started, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this program and you see them listed here on the screen and on your screens at home. Thank you very much, because without you we would not be able to perform this great event. General Allvin, thanks for joining us.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Look, we’re going to get right at it. In February, you introduced a plan to re-optimize the Air Force for great power competition, and the plan focuses on four buckets, developing capabilities, developing Airmen, projecting power, and generating readiness. We’re going to dig into all of those areas, but before we do that, can you share a little bit of your thought process on how you came to focus on those four areas?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Absolutely. First, if I could add my thanks to sponsors and everyone, this is a tremendous platform. It has a broad reach. And right now, when we have as much volume and impact of change that we’re trying to implement, this is a fantastic platform to be able to continue to have the dialogue, get the feedback. I want to thank everyone for allowing me to be here and share some thoughts. Burt, to your question about how do we get to those buckets, it was pretty interesting. When you try and take on a project of this size, how to scope it and scale it was really one of the things we spent the first couple weeks thinking about. We have to start off with what do we do? What is our job? In the Department of the Air Force, meaning the United States Air Force, organizing, training, and equipping forces and then providing them to combatant commanders to be able to do the deterring and defeating that the nation asks.

That’s what your starting point. How do you gravitate into the actions that you want to do to re-optimize? The way we approached it was really methodically, if that’s what we do, what is it about the environment that we’re in that needs re-optimizing? What are some of the characteristics that show us maybe we’re not in the right spots? We did an analysis of that, a rundown. Some of the things that we intuitively know, but we put them on the headline so we would pay attention to them. The pace of change has to be one of the key ones. The pace of change has to be something you consider when you’re understanding the characteristics of the environment you want to optimize for. The digitization, the fact that it’s software over hardware and things. The fact that we have an advancing threat, the likes of which we haven’t seen for decades. The fact that we have a restrictive fiscal environment that we don’t see abating in the near future.

There were several of these that we sort of laid out and said, “These are the characteristics of the environment.” Then we said, “Okay, given that, if you were to create a Department of the Air Force–in our case the United States Air Force–from scratch, right now in this environment, what are some of the attributes that you would want?” Then when you say those attributes, just don’t say they’re nice attributes. We needed to tie them to the environment. When we talk about some of the attributes that we came up with, this idea of looking at enterprise solutions. Well, what is it about that? We drove it back to some of the key attributes. Solving for agility, this is something anybody who knows me, I’ve been talking about for over a decade. Solving for agility, because if you confuse precision for accuracy in a nonlinear time like we are right now, you’re going to find a brittle solution that if you’re wrong, you may not be able to recover from.

Agility, this idea of constant introspection and being able to assess and reassess. Why? Because the pace of change allows you to adapt quicker. But if you don’t constantly reassess and you trust your gut, that may be a 20th century model that might not serve you well. We looked at those attributes and then we looked at where our gaps were. And when we looked at those gaps and what we needed to do, it sort of fell out. Sort of like where we started in. You need to generate readiness, you need to project power, you need to develop those Airmen to be able to do it and long-term, you need to develop the capability. It started off with what do we do, adapting to the environment and those buckets revealed themselves.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, great. Another one of the things that you’ve been talking about is the Air Force being a bit fragmented and you’re looking to try to re-piece this all together. One of the ways it seems that you’re looking at that is through a stand-up of a new command, the integrated capabilities command. It seems like that’s where in the future we’re going to put the requirements to achieve our mission and for mission success versus a platform-centric model. There’s also some changes that you’re making in AFMC to help with that capability development. The question is can you just discuss how these changes are going to help us in the future and are there any mission areas or capabilities that you’re prioritizing as you stand up this new command?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, I’m trying to choose carefully the words I talk about when I talk about a fragmented Air Force. It is not like we’re broken, and I certainly am not in any position to impugn my predecessors or feel like that I would make any better decisions than they would. We adapted to the time that we were in. I have a much longer diatribe about that. But when you think about the things that the environment asked of us, it drove us to be a little bit more diffuse and distributed. We didn’t have a clear existential threat like we had in the Cold War. We had a joint force that didn’t need large packages of air power to go and do massive clearing of the IADS and gain and maintain their superiority in a challenging environment, all of those things that we had prepared for the last time we were in great power competition.

That’s not what the environment asked of us. We started adapting to that environment, and that even translated into the way that we developed capabilities. When we didn’t have a larger war fighting concept against which to apply our capabilities like air-land battle. We tried things like air-sea battle and we worked at that in the 2000s, but it never really fully took. We continued to develop the capabilities for our Air Force, but we started to really hone in on the core functions. We developed our Air force in pieces around what’s the next fighter platform? What is the next iteration of long-range strike? We almost thought about it and our core functions, air superiority, global strike, rapid global mobility, ISR, and command and control. But when you do that, you start to develop it individually and you miss opportunities in the environment that we’re in to be able to come up with innovative solutions.

I’ll give you an example. One of them is long-range strike. When you’re talking about Global Strike Command, they are looking at long-range strike capabilities. When you’re thinking about it within the platforms that you have, you don’t always think in your first thought that, “You know what? Maybe there’s another way that I can maybe take a few JASMS and put them on a pallet and put them in the back of a C-130 or C-17.” That gives you longer range strike. There’s some limitations there, but it’s a different way of thinking about it. When you’re thinking about command and control within your core function and within ACC, you’re thinking about things like block 20 for the AOC, or AOC 2.0, or those things. How do you make that C2 center better? You may not be thinking at the first blush, “I need a more resilient air layer. And maybe one way I can get that is to put a comm suite on tankers that’ll give you a more resilient airborne layer of command and control.”

Those sort of things, when you develop the Air Force in pieces, you don’t get to that until the very end. And we can’t afford to be doing that at the very end. So that’s really this integrated capabilities command to bring all those rock stars that are in ACC, AMC, Global Strike, those that are doing the thinking about the future within the core function, bringing them together to talk about a single force design that includes those core functions but is adapted to be able to fight the joint warfighting concept.

So that’s the integrated capabilities command. Now within Air Force Materiel Command, it’s about the same thing. It’s about integrating where we sort of become diffuse and fracture. So these stand up or of some of these system centers is designed to do that. So the nuke weapon center is now going to be the nuclear system center, which has a broader role of integrating across nuclear material management across all of the force, not just within one segment. So it has a broader integration role.

The information dominant system center is a new one, but that is one that has been picking up some of the table scraps that fell off when we were at platform-centric capability development. Things like the EW capabilities, the cyber capabilities, understanding the C3 battle management, and putting those together in an integrated system center to where we start thinking about developing our Air Force systems first, platform second. Because the way you do it when you do platforms first is you develop a platform. You say, “Okay, now I need to put the systems on. I need a radar. I need to be able to have munitions integration. I got to have a comm suite.” And you have some of these bespoke systems, and then you got to have another platform, and then you got to do the integration.

But if you start with the systems first, common architecture, agile mission systems, the idea of this is the central core and then the platforms, the price of admission when you develop those platforms is to snap into this architecture, that allows you to upgrade at the speed of software rather than integration all the platforms. So that’s this idea of integrating across and AFMC is doing that not only within these new systems center, but putting a broader responsibility on the PEOs for integrating and aligning together. That’s the idea.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

That’s great. So another planned change is how we’re going to develop Airmen in the future, and that includes changing air education and training command to Airmen development command. So a couple of questions here is how’s that going to be different? How do you see this taking place and when do you see it finishing up? And most importantly, what are you expecting from our future mission-ready Airmen?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

I’m going to start with the last one first, because the mission-ready Airmen, that’s one of the things you don’t really see very clearly, that we really need to develop a lot more rapidly and comprehensively. And that is taking all of our Airmen and developing them with a common understanding of the threat. So when we talk about the diffusion and the fragmentation of our air force, we saw, again, the environment that we were in this for fiscal reasons we’re going to shrink central management headquarters. So what that means is, and that made sense at the time, what that means is a lot of those career field management or the functional management functions were distributed well throughout the Air Force. And when you do that, you try and give central guidance about this is the path we want the Air Force to proceed on. That gets interpreted by hundreds of voices through hundreds of perspectives. And now, your Air Force develops through the lenses of the disparate functional areas.

And so, by bringing all of this together under one commander, holding one commander accountable for a single approach to force development, a single understanding of the advancing threat, a single understanding of our major changes in operational scheme of maneuvers, such like Agile Combat Employment, a new understanding of what is going to be required of Airmen beyond their technical specialty, that is really what Airmen development command is designed to do. And you have sort of the authority to look over it and ensure that this is being even across all of our force.

The other part that we understand is, as we move into the future and we develop things like Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and we look at more human machine teaming, and the wave of the future, we need to make sure human capital, our Airmen have the right skills to do that, and we’re putting those Airmen in the right squadrons or at the tactical edge if it’s required. So for example, in Collaborative Combat Aircraft, there may be a version where we need coders in the squadrons that are going forward and being able to more rapidly leverage what we’re understanding in the battle space and turn that to our advantage.

These are things we need to think of centrally, understanding a single force design and making sure that our Airmen are able to meet that design. One of the things that we’re doing now, I know it’s one of those that probably is going to impact the smallest part of our force, but it’s got the most headlines, is the warrant officers. So I’ll just take a second on that. The idea behind cyber and IT warrant officers, this is a very niche area within our United States Air Force that we’re pursuing, and for a very specific purpose.

We are finding that it is more difficult to retain the cyber talent that we spend a lot of time investing in, and that is going to be so critical to us going forward. We’re looking for every alternative path that we can have to maintain that elite cyber talent. Some of these are these technical tracks we talk about for those who want to stay in the Air Force and still pursue the path along their technical expertise, but don’t feel like they have to be burdened by the career pyramid where you’re up or out after a certain period of time. But the warrant officer track is something we’re experimenting with, quite frankly. We expect the cohort overall to be about 300 to 350. Other services are doing it within the cyber and IT career fields. The combatant commands love it.

The idea behind specifically this niche area is when the cyber field, it’s moving so fast, if you go off the path and you can’t stay on the cutting edge, I think you’re punished more than in other career fields. So if you want to maintain your career development and get off the technical path, you’re going to be punished and we’ll be punished because we won’t have that capability. We also see a tremendous amount of interest, and I’ll tell you, we started having the call outs for volunteers and we had many more than we could handle. So the talent is there. So we believe this is going to be a good path to ensure that we have the talent for today and tomorrow in a very cyber heavy force that we’re going to need.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

So right now though, it’s just focused on those specific career fields rather than looking to expand later on though. Right?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

That’s right-

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Unless you see what happens.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, we want to make sure that we are doing the right action for the right reason and this makes sense within this career specialties for the reasons I said. Now other people would think, well, it’d be great if I didn’t have to do this hard leadership stuff. We’ll just do warrant officers for everybody. That’s not where we’re going. But if there is a case to be made in other career fields that have specific requirements that aren’t being met by our overall leadership path, we could consider. But right now it’s just Cyber 19.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. So also, you sent out a letter recently saying that we’re going to work to raise numbered air forces to service component commands. So how do you see that better enabling us to project power and where does that stand, that effort right there?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

This is an interesting part of the change that we’re doing because if just by itself you could say, “Well, I guess it makes sense, but maybe the juice might not be worth the squeeze.” But if I can talk about the inner relationship with this and some of the other changes, one of the real things that I think we need to do is if we believe that the future of national defense and the joint force is going to require some of the attributes that exist in our air and space forces, then we have a requirement to not only be able to participate in the joint force, we need to start leading it. If we’re going to lead in the joint force, not be the best JFAC out there only, but maybe be the best JTF commander, because the character of war is privileging the things that air power has been doing for a long time, understanding speed and tempo and agility and resilience and lethality. So we need to continue to grow our Airmen to be able to be good JTF commanders.

And so, as we look at the way that we organize our force and present it to the combatant commands, were sort of like wooden shoes. We have some service component commands that are large and very substantial, PACAF and USAFE run by four-star commanders, but they’re still service component commands. Then you have, for example, Air Mobility Command, that is a MAJCOM, but it’s also a service component command, it’s AFTRANS. Air Force Global Strike Command is AFSTRAT. So we’ve got some that are solely service component commands and some that are a little bit of both. And then, we’ve got some service component commands that fall under our four-star commands. When you have 16th Air Force, AFCYBER, when you have 12th Air Force, AFSOUTH, they fall under Air Combat Command. So we’re sort of disjointed.

So the idea that we have a consistent way that we present forces and command structure to the combatant commands, more directly interfacing with those combatant commanders, I think not only gives a better joint experience to our leaders, but it also has a consistent path across our Air force in how we relate to the combatant commanders. Now related to that, this is not an indictment on how ACC has been handling those numbered air forces that are also service component. They’ve been doing a fantastic job. But we need to understand what we’re asking ACC to do. ACC is transitioning into a different type of a command. Because they’re no longer going to be doing as much of the future, because that’s going to be going into the capabilities piece that’s going to integrated capabilities command, and we’re taking away some of this responsibility to look after the numbered air forces that are parts of the service components, Air Combat Command’s role is really outsized in how we see it for accounting for the readiness of the entire Air Force, the entire Air Force.

So working across the other institutional commands to generate the readiness, the exercises, have the inspections to ensure that we’re mission ready, not just task ready. So this is actually carving out a little room for ACC to have that expanded readiness role as well. So they’re all connected together, but I think there’s definitely value in having the joint force be able to understand this is where I go for this level of command across the Air Force, rather than a bunch of wooden shoes.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. Okay. Well speaking of task forces, we also heard that you might be standing up three air task forces this summer, two to central command and one to INDOPACOM, and that’s laying the groundwork for a new kind of deployment model, it’s laying the groundwork for the combat wings that you mentioned a couple months ago. So what are you hoping to see initially and how do you see it evolving after this first effort?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, this has been a journey we’ve been undergoing for a while. And I think Elmo Spain’s coming to talk in a a couple weeks.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Yes. He is.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

He’s so much smarter than me. So I’m going to stay at the wave top level and let him go into depth. But when I talk about, I’m going to go back to talking about one Air force versus a fragment in a diffuse air force, because the way that we project power right now is the way we projected power really since 9/11 and beyond, it’s crowd-sourcing. We had an air expeditionary wing go forward to a base in the Middle East in the past year and if you looked at the number of sources, it came from 93 different installations, 93. Now the biggest core that came from a single installation was probably the handful of fighters or the maintenance that went with it. They’re all from the same unit. But everything else was crowd-sourced.

You know why? We have to remember how we got here. Because since 9/11, the idea was being able to continuously provide forces into a theater and still have some level of continuity back. We didn’t want to break bases, and so we spread the pain, and we could spread the pain because everyone sort of understood the mission. It was uncontested environment. The operations were fairly set. Let me tell you team though, if it looks like we’re going to have to go to a big fight with high-end adversary. We can’t be meeting up in theater and saying, “Hi Bob, I’m Dave, I’m going to be your commander. Let’s go fight.” We can’t do that. We have to have coherent units from the start who train together in the large units they’re going to deploy, understand where their weaknesses are, work on those, be inspected against those, be ready as those units. And so this is a path we’re on, and the air task forces are really a midway point on that path.

So what we are doing now with the air task forces is there’s overall going to be six of them. When you mentioned the three, the first three are going to be in the first part of FY26 and the second three are going to be in the second part of FY26. But these task forces are extant here in CONUS, and they are at installations where the entire leadership team is from one place. We’ve hired them in and they all are tenants on different bases and I will miss them all, but we’re using Scott, Davis-Monthan, and JBSA, there’s six across the CONUS. That this Air Task force leadership is coming together and they will train up through their AFFORGEN cycle. They will train up together as a leadership team with the A staff. They will go do collective exercises with their combat service support pieces of the air task force. And they will go with their mission generation force elements, think the fighter squadrons or whatever, they will train up through this AFFORGEN cycle.

Now, we know where they’re going. So when you said two in CENTCOM and one in INDOPACOM, those are the expectation that we are still going to have rotational requirements there. Now if those rotational requirements change, they will still be trained up as a unit. We’ll just shift what mission they’re going to. But the fundamental thing is these people, these Airmen are going to be going to training ranges and practicing the way they’re actually going to do the mission in a way that helps them be more ready and more day one, coherent, unified. And we have the two requirements in CENTCOM because we know those are rotational requirements, but the ones in INDOPACOM, we’re going to start trying on Agile Combat Employment and getting better and better. So this ATF is a pathway to the future that we would expect to have extant, deployable combat wings all behind the fence line that can do that very same thing. That’s what we’re trying to get back to.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

And then getting back to what you just mentioned about ACC, is all of this training going to fall under ACC and they’re responsible for it regardless of theater that these folks deploy to? Correct

Gen. David W. Allvin:

That’s a great point, Burt. So the interesting thing, this is why ACC’s role is going to be so outsized, is because now, as you know, having unity of command is great because those are all the things in which you have the authority, that’s unity of command. ACC is going to have to be masters at unity of effort. Because not all of the forces that are going to go are service retained forces. They’re going to need to work with mobility forces and those mobility forces. If you don’t know, they CoCOM-assigned. They’re really assigned to TRANSCOM. So there’s going to be this relationship in building the exercises, building the training mechanism for the whole force that deploys not just what has traditionally been the fighter force. That’s where ACC is going to be really accountable and responsible for the readiness of the whole force. That’s a big mission.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

It is a big mission.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Big mission.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

I can’t wait to see how that works.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

It’s changed. Everybody loves it.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

It sure is. So you’ve kind of introduced it, but so now as forces fall in underneath these task forces, as they move out and do whatever they’re going to do on their deployment, you obviously see this as a better way to meet the CoCOM demands and requirements. Can you just go into a little more detail on that, on how the CoCOMS are seeing this, and how your discussions with them and what they’re saying or not saying?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Or not saying, right. Absolutely. So when you’re saying the CoCOMs, it’s almost like saying Congress, because they’re not an entity. All of them are different. And quite frankly, the fact of the matter is that’s where the word optimizing is most clear here is because they have different requirements. This is not optimized for CENTCOM, it’s not optimized. We are optimizing for the pacing challenge. So this construct is best suited for going over and doing deterrence exercise or actually having to go over and employ Agile Combat Employment against the pacing challenge of China.

So to me, if you are looking at needing to go against an O plan, needing to go against anything that is going to require the execution in some form or fashion of the joint war fighting concept, which by the way, I think that’s one of the galvanizing things that we haven’t had for 40 years that we’re driving towards with our force design. Anytime you’re going to need to be able to execute some element of that, this is optimized for that. Now, here’s what it’s not optimized for. It’s not necessarily optimized for the traditional missions in CENTCOM, but those are lesser included cases we believe and we can adapt to that. So we think we’re optimizing for the most pressing challenge and that’s what we need to do.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. So now let’s talk about just seeing how ready we are to do this. Have you all come up with some war games or modeling and simulation or exercises or any of that that’s going to test either the training here, the deployment part, or the operational execution out in theater?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Absolutely. So it’s interesting, because the war gaming is what has reinforced the fact that we need to do this. That there are elements that we need to be able to … It is a graduate level work to be able to actually execute Agile Combat Employment. And if we understand because of the nature of the threat and the geography and the capabilities that the adversary has, et cetera, if we do not have the ability to aggregate for effect and disaggregate for survival and be able to do some of these intermittent post operations, we will not be successful. So the war game has sort of driven the requirement for us to do that.

The exercises, it’s interesting because this is another part of this generating readiness is the exercises that we’ve had have been sort of piece parts of understanding Agile Combat Employment and the way we’re going to fight. And god bless them, the Airmen at the wings are just crushing it. They’re doing everything they can to try this on to understand how they would take their wing and deploy. Frankly, they don’t have a lot of money, they don’t have a lot of resources. And so, when we penny pack our resources to do this, we don’t really understand the fullness of what it’s going to take. And that’s what concerned me.

There are things that probably have less to do with the employment of air power as far as the actual conduct of tactical operations. I don’t sweat that at all. I think we’ve got great capabilities, but I wonder about all of the other things it takes to make that happen. How good are we at understanding contested logistics, being able to sustain and aggregate and disaggregate. So that’s where exercises, larger scale, we have a big one coming up in ’25 that is going to help us. In the meantime, in August, our next exercise, bamboo eagle, we’re trying on a couple of these deployable combat wings as well. So we are driving everything into this in the exercise area and we’re also reinvigorating our inspections that go beyond just compliance inspections and really are inspecting mission readiness rather than task readiness. So across the board that’s really where we’re moving at.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, it sounds like, so when I used to be a commander, I would say, Hey, I’m ready to go and my squadron is ready. I just need an airfield. I might want a fence. I might need some food. Somebody needs to bring me some gas and munitions. I might need some security. So what I’m hearing you say is you’re taking all this into account and trying to measure the readiness of the entire force to go do that mission. So who is this back to ACC and they’re working with the other MAJCOMs to get all this together?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

One air force, deploying together. You might be a deployable combat wing commander who flies a different platform than the platform within your overall unit. Because what we need to understand, I believe, is that in the warfare of the future, rather than, and I’m going to go to the extreme to make the case, but rather than the wings deploying and being ready to deploy, which would’ve been I’m ready to deploy and I’m ready to execute the ATO that’s given to me. That’s tactical execution. But if we actually believe that the wings need to be doing more of those war fighting functions, they need to be having that command level that is doing maneuver and controlling fires at that lower level, it’s a different type of operation for a wing to be ready. And so, that’s what we’re really trying to integrate into the system that the wing commander of the future is going to need to be more of a warfighting operator than a tactical execution leader.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, got your work cut out for you chief. So last question before we get to the audience is that’s a broad list of things and I don’t know whether you can answer this with one or two, but what do you think the most challenging part, what have you found the most challenging part from either communicating, to budgeting, to working with Congress, to spreading the news across the joint world to what’s the biggest challenge you’re seeing?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Well, it goes back to my opening what I said, which is thank you for this platform. Because the most challenging is the communication. Once you get into the eaches, it makes sense and which is why I become more passionate the more we go down the path, we see the things that we’re doing and I really have more and more confidence we’re heading in the right direction. But when you have an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, it’s easier for people to wake up and have an awareness. Okay, your minds are open, you’re open to new ideas because you see that there has been this sort of cataclysmic event and maybe there’s something that brought you to that event that you want to change. So people are more open to change, but we don’t have that right now. We’re trying to pierce the fog through this sort of, we are the frogs in the water and just a little degree being turned up.

That’s the challenge is trying to convince people we’re in the wrong spot before we have the catastrophe that says, “Ooh, we should have known we were in the wrong spot.” So doing that and talking about the why. And to me, the most important thing about talking about the why is going back in our history and seeing what things happened. When we talk about how we got here, when people talk about the brittle defense industrial base. How’d we get here? Well, let’s go back to the last supper in the summer of 1993, when there’s a reason why the defense industrial base did what it did. It was because we were at the end of a cold war. We had a healthy base that was producing stuff all over the map, and now we didn’t need them anymore.

And so, understanding those and what actually happened along the way, it’s been a slow insidious move. And that’s really what one of the biggest challenges is, the communication. The doing of the eaches, I think we’re coming along very well. We’re still collaborating well. The Air Force is aligned. It’s really looking at the external stakeholders, I think.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Well, thank you, Chief. Thanks. Well, I think you’ve set up a lot of things for us to discuss, and we’re going to turn it over to some audience questions now. And we’re going to start with John Tirpak from the Air & Space Forces Magazine. John, over to you.

John Tirpak:

John Tirpak, Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Hold on. We have a microphone for everybody.

John Tirpak:

Sir, you’ve got a financial tsunami bearing down on you, cost caps, inflation, maybe a double-digit pay raise. You got to find $40 or $50 billion more to do Sentinel. How is the Air Force way of war going to have to change? You’re the smallest and oldest air force you’ve ever been. The chief has said, I’m sorry, the secretary has said the really hard choice is coming in the ’26 budget. You’re building that budget now. Do you have to change the way we’ve done things for the last 80 years? Do you withdraw from an inside force to a standoff force? Can you do NGAD? Give us an idea of how things are going to have to change to comport with the resource situation.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

We thought we’d start with a softball question.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yes, that was easy one. That was easy. No-

John Tirpak:

You’re welcome.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Thanks. Because you actually hit on the things that I wake up every day and right now, specifically in this time and go to bed every night thinking about. All of those things you said are exactly right, that all of those pressures are coming to bear against us. And we do have to ask the fundamental question, what does an effective Air force look like in the future? And how much of that is dependent on external resources? Some of that we can control the resources. It’s very tough. We can advocate for resources. But what we have to do internally, and that’s why I’m so passionate about this, is that we need to make sure that we aren’t perpetuating a structure, perpetuating a set of processes that is going to continue us down this path.

And that’s why, while it may be the longest one that yields results, this changing of the way that we develop capabilities, this idea that we have to understand how to solve for agility, that we cannot pursue a lot of eggs in one basket and then find that if the threat advances and that assumption is in question, that we don’t have a way to jump, that we can’t pivot. And those are the things we need to watch out for as we go forward. And I think there will be areas of risk. You’ve heard us talk about the risk today versus risk of tomorrow. Is it the modernization? Is the readiness today? Those are all things we’re trying to balance. And yes, ’26, it’s very, very thin across the board. But what I can control, I think, what I can influence is to ensure that we set us on the path and make a legitimate case that the Air Force that we are optimizing, that Air Force, it’s right for the environment today and into the future.

So what are the things we are taking bets on? I think one of the big bets we’re taking is on human-machine teaming. I think that’s a safe bet. Now, if we say we’re going to have a platform and it just does one thing and it solely focuses on that and we can’t pivot off of that, then we’re failing. But the idea of not only looking at human-machine teaming, but also re-looking at the way that we develop capabilities, and this is where I think you need look no further than Collaborative Combat Aircraft. I don’t want a set of Collaborative Combat Aircraft that’s going to last for 25 or 30 years, because what comes with that? Well, now if it’s going to last 25 or 30 years, then it’s got to do everything but make me toast in the morning. Okay? If it’s got to do that, it’s going to be expensive. If it’s going to be expensive, then we can only buy a few of them. If we can only buy a few of them, then it’s got to do, and you get in that spiral.

Built to last was a tremendous 20th century bumper sticker, but the assumption was whatever you had was relevant as long as it lasted. I’m not sure that’s relevant to anymore. So that’s why we aren’t building a sustainment structure. In 10 years after this, I’m hoping the technology will make it so that CCA won’t be as relevant, but it might be adaptable. And that’s where we’re building in the modularity and adaptability. So solving for agility and making some bets that we think we can spring from is the best that we can do. But yeah, you make no mistake. I am picking up what you’re putting down. It is going to be a challenging next couple of years to sort out the resources.

John Tirpak:

Well, given that investment, do you think you can still do NGAD or is that going to have to change into something that turns over every couple of years?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Well, we’re going to have to make those choices, make those decisions, and across the landscape that’s going to probably play out in the next couple of years or by this ’26 POM [program objective memorandum] cycle. So those are things in work.

John Tirpak:

Thank you.

Dan Muscato:

Sir. Thank you very much. Dan Muscato from Blue Halo. I had two questions. I want to understand how PACAF and USAFE will fit into the task force structure. And then, one thing I’ve been trying to figure out is when you talk about fight the base, a little more about that, our company does a lot of airbase, air defense type technologies, but I’m having a hard time explaining to my ELT what it is you guys are going to be willing to do, and when they look at the POM they’re not seeing the funding.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah. Okay. So a couple things. First of all, with PACAF and USAFE, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to move into this model with as little disruption as possible. But when you think about it in PACAF, for example, PACAF has as close to a deployable combat wing in Kadena and up in Eielson as we have really in our Air Force that’s fairly close. So the ATFs are only, they’re a path to get the deployable combat wings, understanding we still need to meet the CENTCOM deployment requirements. But if the question is let’s fast-forward into the future and we have deployable combat wings, will one of those have to pick up and go into the CENTCOM AOR?

The idea is we will leverage the service retained total force by the way. This is, we’re working in the Guard and Reserve on how to make this really work in order to be able to service those constant deployment needs. But largely we’re looking at having the structures be the same, but the deployable combat wing, if you’re in PACAF, you might need to take that wing forward and do Agile Combat Employment in hubs and spokes in a different part of the AOR. With respect to the fighting the base, boy, there’s fighting the base and there’s fighting the base. If we’re talking about ground-based air defense, I will say that we do and have relied on the army and we’ve been working with the Army and CAPE on some possibilities for getting some active air-base air defense. And boy, do we need it. I’m really hoping the army continues to work with us and really steps up. We need it in order to be able to do this. And that’s one of my great hopes.

When we’re talking about fighting the base at home. This is one of the reasons where we are separating the deployable combat wing from the basic man. So when you think of it in the current structure, the deployable combat wing will have everything it needs to deploy, which has some elements from what is currently the mission support group. But in many cases, the base command will come back out from the largely the mission support group. Are we going to build up the bases, going to have that many more people? No. Again, we’re optimizing with what we have. What did we privilege before? We don’t break the base. So we crowd-source to the fight. We’re not going to crowd-source to the fight anymore. We’re going to try and have as much comprehensive pickup and ready to go as a single unit. So what are we going to have to do? We’re going to have to mitigate the risk of whatever is at home, back at the base, and maybe not have all the capabilities you need extant because your base has gone forward.

In the past, maybe we didn’t need that anymore. Our bases are no longer sanctuaries. If we’re talking about getting in a major conflict, we need to think about things like cyber attacks, like disruption of power, what might happen in the counter-small UAS to our CONUS installations. I believe both of these responsibilities are so much more complex than they used to be. That’s requiring the severability from the deployable combat wing. I don’t want that deployable combat wing commander having to worry about all of the other things that go on on a base. They’re great, they’re awesome commanders, and they would do it, but could they do their job better if all they had to do is focus on the increased complexity of being able to move forward and do the deployable combat mission? Yes. And it’s so important to ensure the installation can survive to continue to regenerate that power. That’s why we have the separation. So there’s a fight in the base at home, and then there’s the air base air defense that we need for our scheme of maneuver forward.

Steven Losey:

Thank you, General. Steven Losey, Defense News. Wanted to ask you about Secretary Kendall’s operational imperatives and how they may have shaped your reoptimization. It’s been about two years, more than two years since the OIs were announced. And can you talk to me a little bit about how those OIs shaped how you put the reoptimization strategy together, if they did?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Thanks, Stephen. I don’t know that they did directly, but they’re all parts of the same journey that we’re on. And so, when Secretary Kendall came in, he saw a need to focus on specific modernization priorities and capabilities that would provide in as soon a time as possible meaningful capability in the hands of the warfighter. So it was really, and as we have talked about it, these capabilities do not guarantee victory, but we were pretty sure that if we don’t put these together, you got a pretty good chance of failure. And so that’s why these are the things, these are sort of the must dues separately. This is separate from that.

We realize that with all those capabilities in the world that you have, if we do not have the right structure to be able to employ them in the tempo and the pace that the environment demands, not only to be able to do the fight, but the enduring competition that might go on for decades, that was a separate thing. So I don’t know that it influenced it. It was just all parts of a larger puzzle. If we’d have done the reoptimization without the OIs though, we might’ve said, yeah, we got the force ready to go, but I’m not sure that we have the kit. So they’re really all parts of the same puzzle we’re trying to solve.

Steven Losey:

Thank you.

Ed Rolay:

Morning, Chief. Ed Rolay, CACI. My question is specific to maybe what your vision is for EMBM of the future, electromagnetic battle management, and over the past few years, there’s been an emphasis on bringing to bear that community of folks and their mission and their resources recapitalizing that back to where it should be maybe over the last four years. What is your vision for that mission, especially as you’re seeing Agile Combat Employment and AOC block 20, and the way that you’re employing forces?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, thanks, Ed. I appreciate that because you’re right, there’s been sort of a reawakening about the importance and the increased complexity when it comes to use of the spectrum and the idea of electromagnetic battle management, it’s part of the entire battle management house that we’re building. But this is one of the reasons why information dominant system center was put together because that was one of those things that was sort of on the side, yeah, we know we need to do EW, maybe it’s not as important now that we’re seeing it’s important. It is, has to be integrated with the rest of the battle management scheme, manage the spectrum, protect, defend, deny along those lines. So I believe that the systems and the architecture really that Luke Cropsey and his team are doing, building the C3 Battle Management Network, have to understand also how to integrate with to be able to provide decision space for electromagnetic battle management to integrate overall.

So I think this integrating thing that we’re doing is going to be very, very important because it’s going to happen fast. This is one of those we also have to be able to recognize and react and act faster than ever before within spectrum understanding and be able to deny. Much like we’re not going to able to have air superiority for weeks on end, we’re not going to be able to control the spectrum continuously, but we need to be able to understand and find the niche areas where we can given the resources and time. I think they’re all part and parcel of the same thing, integrating.

Bill Conley:

Sir, Bill Conley, chief technology officer at Mercury Systems. I had the pleasure of working for Secretary Kendall back in the Pentagon eight years ago now. Knowing Secretary Kendall, he has a view on how he wants to engage with the industrial base. How do you need the industrial base to be on the integrated team and how do you need us to engage differently besides, I mean the obvious we need to build stuff for you. But how do you need us on the team to bring the insights that can help?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

I think this is not as hard as I think we’ve made it. It is a communication and an understanding. I think we had, royal we, right? I won’t pin it on any given service or any part of the government, but in general, we’ve drifted towards saying, “Build 17 of those that look exactly like this and that.” And then we’re angry. “That didn’t solve my problem. I didn’t want that. Bring me another rock.” So the idea that we have a dialogue better about what our problems are, just what are the challenges that we have, but being as specific as possible about the challenge, not about the solution. And I think that is going to be important. I think this development of the integrated capabilities command and this better integration on AFMC site is going to really help our relationship with industry as well. And here’s why.

Because now the way it is now, if there’s something that industry has to offer that maybe government hasn’t been asking for, engage with a MAJCOM, and the next greatest thing that would go on the KC-46, well, that industry partner’s going to go to Scott Air Force Base and try and knock on General Minihan’s door and say, “Here’s what it is.” And so they’ll work through that MAJCOM. That MAJCOM will say, “Okay, I think this is it. This is something great.” And meanwhile, industry’s spending its money trying to think that this might become something. And then it goes into the abyss that is the corporate structure at the Pentagon, and it doesn’t make the cut, because they were looking at it through the stovepipe and it didn’t fit into the overall scheme.

So I believe that as the integrated capability command stands up and we start talking about the intricacies of one force design. So when we talk about developing our capabilities against our core functions, we have to start asking the next question. And the next question is, we’re developing this capability for rapid global mobility. The next question is, in order to do what? So that’s where the force design comes in, and the joint warfighting concept comes in. And we talk about, we do these core functions in order to do missions. Air Force needs to kill more ships at long range, at scale. Air Force needs to do better about countering the C5 ISRT of the adversary. These are the mission threads that we need. And now, when we come up and have that dialogue between industry and the Air Force in this case, there’ll be a better chance that you’ll know what exactly the problems are, the challenges that we have, and then your money that you’re spending to try and solve them might have a better chance of making into a program of record than they would currently now.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

So that’s a big culture change that you’re talking about there for both the military and the industry. So that is part of your comp plan in the future.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

100%. And this is a trust fall. We’re going to be integrating this together, but I think it just makes common sense if we can get the new muscle memory in to be able to understand, we need to understand within the Air Force itself how we might be doing different core functions differently because we’re asking that next question, the in order to question might change the way we do things a lot. And then now we have the, “Ooh, how do we solve that?” We’re getting to that next answer faster.

Greg Hadley:

General. Greg Hadley, Air & Space Forces Magazine. I wanted to circle back to something you said about how ACC is changing and the service components. In the reoptimization rollout, there was a lot of talk about Air Forces Cyber. I’m also thinking about other numbered air forces like AFNORTH, AFSOUTH. What kind of actual changes do they have to go through to become those service components that you envision?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, thanks for that. So this is some of the work, and when we rolled things out in February, which by the way seems like two years ago, I have to keep reminding myself, it’s been like 120 days. People are like, “You’re not done yet.” But when we rolled these things out in February, we said, “We have work to do to get to the answers.” This is the direction that we think we’re heading. So we’ve done several tabletop exercises and OPTs to get together on this. And really, we really need to understand what is it that a service component needs to be effective in being able to present and have the dialogue with the combatant command. And I don’t want to overstate or oversimplify this, but that part is actually the easier part. You probably still need the C2 elements. So the AOC and elements of the command and staff and the ability to be able to present those forces. So those, the AFSOUTH, AFCENT, again, AFCENT rolling out from under AFCYBER and AFNORTH. And so these are changing it to those service component commands is the easier part.

But there’s another part with ACC as well. So we just talked about separating base and wing commands. So now within the ACC largely and all the other commands, but there’s going to be a lot more O-6 commands. So you’re probably going to need a larger set of numbered air forces in order to be able to have the scope of responsibility to be able to manage those. So for example, right now, the 15th Air Force is three times the size of the Space Force. That’s one NAF. So as we’re doing this, this is interrelated to elevating these service component commands for that clearer path to the combatant commands.

But then, on the rest of these numbered air forces will serve more as institutional numbered air forces helping Air Combat Command oversee those wings within Air Combat Command that have both the operational element, the deployable combat wing element, and the base command element. So there will be a separation of what the NAFs look like that are institutional NAFs that are doing the organized training and equip piece. And that part is actually ongoing right now, and we’re in very close dialogue with General Wilsbach who was looking at what that looks like.

Tobias Naegele:

Tobias Naegele, Air & Space Forces. Way back in February, you rolled out the deployable combat wings. One of the elements that you talked about was, well, some of these wings may not have all the people that they need. We may have to add people. But people are the most expensive thing that you have. So do you anticipate as you go forward that you’re going to need thousands more Airmen, which would be expensive? Or do you anticipate that maybe some wings will go away, some other structure goes away to fill in those blanks?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, that’s a great question, Tobias, because we are currently underway in that analysis right now. But the question one, and this is so important, another reason this is so important for us to do, I inherently believe that our nation needs more Air Force. What chief of staff doesn’t? But I do believe that for all the reasons I’m talking about, the changing character of war is really privileging the things that we know how to do best. And so I believe that that’s the case, but I can’t just say, “I need more.” We need to understand first of all, what is the requirement? Once we have this structure of these deployable combat wings and the combat power that they can present, how many of those do we need? How many of those does the national defense strategy call for? We have what we have. We need to decide if the number is X and we have X minus this many, then I can at least better articulate this is Y.

But before we do that, we need to figure out, do we have it shaped right before kind of sized right. So again, we have been shaped for the last 20 years, 30 years. So that’s a long way of saying we don’t quite know yet, but we are starting with that, and not every wing is going to be a deployable combat wing, because if you think about that, that is more combat power than I think the nation needs or can afford. When you talk about every single wing, that’s across the total force. So getting that part right is going to be part and parcel to understanding whether we just need to reshape or how much more that we actually need. There are some wings that will be perfectly suited to just be these combat generation wings. What does that mean? You don’t have all of the structure in the command element and all of the sustaining layer, but you’ve got combat power. And that combat power, so think about a C-130 wing, for example.

Now that C-130 wing might have what we call mission generation force elements, which are sort of the combat power that’s within the squadrons, that mission generation force element should able to pick up and fall into a deployable combat wing. So imagine now people are going, “Oh, this is composite wings again.” To the combatant commander, it might look like composite wings. Why do composite wings fail? Too expensive. You couldn’t keep them on one base, small numbers and all that sort of stuff, but the combatant commander would love them. I want two of those, five of those, six of those, and I want them under a C2 structure. That’s sort of what we can do when we have these deployable combat wings, but they will be made up of perhaps all homogeneous mission generation force elements, but perhaps some different ones as well. That might provide a little bit different way to do Agile Combat Employment where you actually have the logistics center attack piece as well.

Vanessa Montalbano:

Hi, General, thanks for putting this together. Vanessa Montalbano with Inside Defense. I wanted to ask a bit about the 2025 exercise in INDOPACOM. Obviously, that’s going to be an opportunity to kind of display this new joint warfighting concept. How much of the reoptimization plan needs to be complete in order to execute that exercise and how much of it do you think will be complete by then? And also, I wanted to ask in relation to that about the depot centers and repair parts that will need to be accessible from that part of the world. How does that look right now?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, well, on the last part, I think that separate from, if you’re talking about the intermediate repair pieces versus the depot on the way back, that’s one of those we need to understand how much we take forward to how much we can attrit before bringing back to depots or larger back level maintenance. That is part of the scheme of maneuver. I think that is, we’ve got a pretty good idea on that. With respect to the exercise in ’25, I feel pretty confident that we’re going to be ready to have enough of the forces go forward, enough of the deployable combat wings identified to be able to really, really test this out.

The idea that we are going to be taking some of these out of regular wings, we hope to have, if not perfect deployable combat wings, but they’re close enough to where we can fully exercise the Agile Combat Employment piece. The other thing I want to make sure people know is this is not just the Air Force deciding to go into INDOPACOM and do something. It is integrated into the INDOPACOM campaigning path. So we are not trying to do something extra or is that is going to go contravene their approach. So we’re going to slide right in there just with more combat power. I feel pretty confident we’re going to have enough to where we’re going to be able to stress the system. This one, we’re going to learn a lot. We’re going to learn a lot.

Mike York:

Hey, sir, how are you doing? Mike York, Microsoft. Good to see you again, sir. It’s been a little couple of years. Quick question that no one’s hit on so far. You talked about your next big bet, human-machine training, obviously working for Microsoft. How do you see that application of technology going forward to potentially address, ironically, the question about manpower and the cognitive load or the staff training, how do you see that integrating into close some of these challenges you have in terms of the force going forward?

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Yeah, thanks for that. This is where I do a little intellectual flight of fancy here because I think a lot of times when we talk about human-machine teaming, we may be oriented on how much better can we make that machine do machine stuff. I’m really thinking about how we leverage it to optimize human performance. I think there’s a lot out there, and a lot of this comes from my personal dabbling around with wearable technology and the things where you understand more about yourself. That’s on a minor scale, but imagine scaling that to where we are better able to understand fatigue levels, stress levels in the midst of the combat that will enable you to, so let’s say for example, let’s imagine you are in your F-35, and you are managing six Collaborative Combat Aircraft. You’re running an OCA lane up there and you’re managing six of these uncrewed platforms because that’s what we think you can do and for some reason we’re able to understand that overstressed or something happened differently.

You may not know it yet, but technology knows, the machine knows, that you are now stressed beyond the point where you cannot effectively manage all four of those, maybe two of them have to go to an auto mode. That’s just an example of understanding how we optimize the human performance. The second part of it is I really want us to leverage a lot of the things that are already at extant in technology to be able to have a more individualized training capability. I think that right now we understand you’re a different learner from how you learn and how you learn, and if we could actually accelerate our individual Airman’s ability to get competence and maintain proficiency by leveraging having a digital, I would’ve my own digital persona. And as we go through these training or upgrade exercises and you could train tailored, to me that is an edge. We’re always looking for an edge in this great power competition. That’s where I think we could actually leverage the human-machine teaming to make the human better.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. Unfortunately, we’re all out of time. General Allvin, thank you so much for joining and sharing all of this with us. I really appreciate it and I know the audience does also. For the audience next week, if you want to continue the conversation, we’re going to be joined by Lieutenant General Adrian Spain. He’s the deputy chief of staff for operations. We’re going to continue along these discussion lines. There’s a QR code that you can scan or you can look at our website, afa.org under events, and sign up there. In the meantime, I want to thank you all for coming and especially back to you, Chief. Thanks so much for spending some time with us.

Gen. David W. Allvin:

Thanks for having me here. This has been great. Thank you very much.

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