CLARIFICATION: The new weapon system designator is “e” not “E,” to differentiate between digitally developed aircraft and electronic warfare aircraft.

WASHINGTON: Changes to the Air Force’s chains of command designed to speed decision-making in the face of rapidly evolving threats from China and Russia are afoot, the new Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown said today at the annual Air Force Association conference.

“We can be more efficient, and that’s for sure. And there’s opportunity to cut down different levels of command,” Brown said during in his first major public appearance today at the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber conference (AFA 2020), gone virtual this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that there are “some concepts” already being tossed around, as well some “discussions at the Pentagon that started even before I took the chair.”

First, Brown said, the Department of the Air Force is still in the process of “trying to figure out who does what” between the Space Force and the Air Force, given that Space Force has existed for less than a year.

“There are certain things that Gen. Raymond is going to do, certain things that I’m going to do, and certain things we’re going to do together,” he said. “I think our staffs are working through it fairly well. But there’s still some areas where there’s some overlap and maybe some redundancies. We also want to make sure there are there are no gaps and seams as we go forth.”

Space Force’s creation also has provided, “an opportunity to take a look at ourselves as an Air Force and how we might change” internally, Brown said. This includes consideration of whether the Air Force should emulate the Space Force’s streamlined command structure that collapsed five traditional echelons of command into three, for example, by creating so-called ‘deltas’ by integrating ‘wings’ and ‘groups.’

This would also mirror work already done at Air Combat Command (ACC) by just-retired head Gen. Mike Holmes, Brown noted. Just three weeks ago ACC announced the activation of a new 15th Air Force, integrating the wings and direct reporting units from the 12th Air Force and Ninth Air Force responsible for “generating and presenting” conventional forces. The 12th Air Force now will focus on its component role for Southern Command as 12 AF/AFSOUTH; meanwhile, the Ninth Air Force will be inactivated and Air Force Central Command will be re-designated as 9 AF/AFCENT, the announcement explained.

Further, Brown said, there is a need to examine the responsibilities of the Headquarters Air Staff and Major Commands (MAJCOMs).

“One of the things I’ll do is review our roles and roles and responsibilities between Headquarters Air Force Staff and our MAJCOMs. We do have some overlap,” he said. “Some of that’s good, but some that may be redundant. We need to eliminate some of those redundancies, and that might drive some levels of reorganization. And if we do reorg, form must follow function — any efficiency we gain, we need to turn into an opportunity to repurpose manpower so we can put put that manpower against emerging missions, or under-resourced missions.”

At the same time, Brown said, organizational changes have to be thought through to ensure that they align with Joint Force needs, the needs of the Combatant Commands and “do no harm.” So a key question, he said, is, “How much can the market bear?” Brown wants to avoid a situation where, “we’re changing so much, we’re confusing ourselves; we can’t figure out what’s up and what’s down.”

But after that caution, Brown stressed that he intends to take risks, and encourage the service to do the same. “Leadership without risk is called management. We don’t need more managers in the Air Force. We need more leaders. I don’t intend to manage change, I intend to lead change,” he said.

Indeed, Brown has made “go fast” his command motto, with his strategic vision document, “Accelerate Change or Lose,” issued Aug. 31. Quoting the Will Ferrell comedy “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” Brown said: “I want to go fast. I want to go fast. I want to go fast.”

He explained during his formal remarks, and in a Q&A, that a number of “accelerants” were already forcing change within the service. These include the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s pivot to peer conflict with Russia and China, Space Force’s stand-up in December 2019, and the pandemic. The idea, he said, is to “ride the wave of change” and speed needed reforms to force structure and decision-making processes.

To whit, he has issued four “Action Orders” to implement his vision to the Air Staff, and a first update on progress will be provided to him at the annual “Corona” meeting “in the next couple of weeks.” Corona is the name of the annual summit of senior Air Force leaders that usually takes place in October.

Brown explained the Action Orders as such: “My focus is pretty simple. It’s as simple as A, B, C, and D: Airmen; Bureaucracy; Competition; and Design implementation.”

  • A. Airmen. Brown said that a first priority has to be “talent management,” including increasing diversity, providing better education and promotion opportunities, and taking care of people and their families. “We’ve got to make the Air Force an attractive career choice.” It also includes empowering airmen at all levels to speak out, and make decisions, he added.
  • B. Bureaucracy. Being able to empower airmen in part lies on breaking bureaucratic barriers, Brown said.  This in turn requires “collaboration and communication across our staff,” enabling information to be pushed both up the chain and down. He said the aim is to eliminate typical staff meetings where the commander talks and subordinates listen but don’t voice any opinions — until they get into the hallway after the meeting and talk among themselves. “We must have the meeting after the meeting in the meeting, so we can have some hard conversations,” he said.

It also requires that commanders clearly communicate their “intent” and allow their subordinates to “proceed until apprehended” with implementing decisions and actions. Otherwise, US forces will be forced into a reactive, rather than proactive, position on future battlefields. “Those decisions need to be informed by analysis and be made in a timely manner to outpace our competitors decision cycle. Remember John Boyd and the OODA Loop? We need to do that at the strategic level.” This leads directly to

  • C. Competition. “For every single one of us, we need to accelerate our understanding of our competitors. We need to drive competition to our advantage. We need to understand exploit the vulnerabilities of our competitors. … We’ve got to be able to adapt,” Brown said. “And we gotta be willing to take some risks.”
  • D. Design implementation. This means, Brown explained, not just talking about change but actually moving away from platforms and focusing on capabilities for 21st century warfare — a pivot that began under his predecessor Gen. David Goldfein, with his focus on all-domain operations and Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

“We stood up the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) and that  will allow us to continue that future design work. We must accelerate the operational concepts in the force structure that they’re laying out,” Brown said. “I fully realize that future budgets are driving us to make some difficult force structure decisions. Whatever decisions we make, they need to be affordable, defensible, based on analysis and congressional support. We must transition for the force we have today. The force that’s required, that’s focused on China and Russia.”

CLARIFICATION BEGINS. One of the changes being driven in force structure development being led by AFWIC is the move toward digital design, which Brown said is exemplified by Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk trainer that now has been re-designated as the eT-7.

Air Force Secretary Barrett announced in her opening keynote this morning that the trainer, as the first digitally designed aircraft, is the first to be given the new e-designator that will be applied to other systems in the future.

“Today, the Department of the Air Force is announcing a new weapon system designator. The e-series aircraft, satellites, weapons, and more, that are digitally engineered will receive an e prefix. The first e designator is awarded to an aircraft that was designed, built and tested using digital engineering: The eT-7, the Red Hawk,” she said. CLARIFICATION ENDS.

Barrett said that digital engineering promises not only promises to lower costs for development of new systems and capabilities, but also is allowing the Air Force to tap into innovations being made by industry including start-ups. “Advancements are underway, in hypersonics, AI enabled command and control, a supersonic Air Force One, flying cars, on-demand cubesats and future missions to Mars. Your US Air and Space Forces are capturing the upside of these innovations,” she said. (We would like to hear more about what the Space Force would like to incorporate from technology aimed at Mars exploration being developed, for example, by the likes of SpaceX founder Elon Musk.)