WASHINGTON — Over the last few days, confusion and outrage have swirled over the fate of the Air Force’s premier think tank focused on Chinese air and space power, as fears mounted that the organization faced the axe.
On Monday, social media posts revealed that officials planned to eliminate civilian staff positions at the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute, seemingly the end of the organization. The Air Force then released a statement that CASI will continue, but operating only with uniformed personnel. After that, CASI itself published a press release stating that the institute will close — a post that has since been taken down from the website of its parent organization, Air University.
In a new statement to Breaking Defense Wednesday, an Air Force spokesperson doubled down on its stance that CASI will remain open. “Air University continues to evaluate the alignment of the CASI mission to best support DAF [Department of the Air Force] priorities,” the spokesperson said. “The mission will continue using assigned military personnel and civilian personnel to execute priorities outlined in their charter.”
The Air Force spokesperson said eight civilian positions would be affected by the reduction, and that “[e]mployees filling those positions will continue to serve and support CASI” with five military staff “for the foreseeable future.”
So what’s actually going on?
Formally, the Air Force is keeping CASI open, and the organization will still function normally in the short term. But in the long run, the Air Force is doing little more than keeping the lights on, at least according to Brendan Mulvaney, the institute’s director.
In an interview and in emails with Breaking Defense, Mulvaney praised the organization’s military personnel. But he said that CASI’s research — which draws heavily from open-source material published in Mandarin — is largely carried out by its 10-member civilian staff whose positions are now all being eliminated.
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“The idea that you could do research or the translations that we’re doing is not credible” without civilian experts, he said.
The description of five military positions is “disingenuous,” Mulvaney asserted, explaining that number includes two fellows and one military post unmanned since last year. He also noted that two civilian positions were already vacant. The director added that his understanding is Pentagon-wide workforce cuts “trickled down” to Air University, and that the timing was driven by the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
“So it had no reflection on CASI, our mission, our work, or any of that stuff,” he said of the staff cuts. “It was just simply, ‘Hey, we are getting forced to give up a certain number of positions, and yours are the ones we’re giving up.’”
Mulvaney said he published the now-deleted post announcing CASI’s closure to provide a clear picture of its fate. Civilian positions are converting to an unfunded status, meaning that staffers will continue to work until being moved to a different role elsewhere in the DAF. (He said the press release must have been taken down by Air University.)
CASI’s current batch of commitments will stretch until probably around March, according to Mulvaney. There could be a range of outcomes for employees: some might continue in an unfunded status for an unclear amount of time, others may find other government roles, and others still could pursue opportunities in the private sector, he said.
Once a position opens up, it can’t be backfilled, and new employees can’t be hired. Eliminating a position outright would require what’s known as a reduction in force — a key tool used by the Department of Government Efficiency initiative in 2025 to cull thousands of Pentagon workers — but that hasn’t happened yet, Mulvaney said.
CASI regularly publishes research on Beijing’s air and space forces. The entity shares its findings within the US military and the broader defense community to promote understanding of China’s military prowess, with the goal of shaping policy and strategy. Experts expressed dismay about its fate.
“I’ll admit there are opportunities to rationalize how the U.S. government buys the development and sustainment of China knowledge and expertise,” Jacob Stokes, senior fellow and deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, posted on X. “But closing CASI should *not* be on that list. Immense analytic and educational value per dollar, lost.”
William Yale, a Navy surface warfare officer whose social media post widely raised awareness of the CASI downsizing, told Breaking Defense he’s benefited from the institute’s research. He agreed with Mulvaney that while military staff are skilled, they “can’t replicate” the work done by civilian employees.
“While CASI staff will likely land on their feet, the institutional knowledge and influence that CASI built over many years will be lost, and CASI’s research collection at the National Defense University (NDU) will be at risk,” Yale said, stressing his opinions were solely his own and not those of the Pentagon. “If there is any consolation from the defunding of CASI, the ensuing publicity is a good thing and may open the door to some way of salvaging the situation.”
News of the CASI cuts raised questions about similar programs run by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Spokespeople for the Army and Navy confirmed that the services’ Beijing-focused research programs, known respectively as the China Landpower Studies Center and China Maritime Studies Institute, are not expecting any changes.
Marine Corps Base Quantico did not respond to a request for comment about the status of the China Warfighting Initiative, housed at the Marine Corps War College located on the base.
Mulvaney has run CASI since its inception nearly a decade ago, and said he’s going to stick around as long as he can to ensure its staff find new roles. He’s additionally seeking a way to keep the organization open, or move it elsewhere.
“I was the one that turned on the lights,” he said, “and I’ll be the last one out the door — with the exception, obviously, of the military members, assuming that they keep them for that long and don’t reassign them.”