Policy makers should embrace the U.S. Space Force as a means to increase attention on U.S. space systems and their protection and not revisit the decision to create the sixth military service, established in December, 2019 through language in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said on Jan. 25.
“I think we ought to move forward,” he said on Washington Post Live in response to a question from Post columnist, David Ignatius. “When I was out in Pacific Air Forces when the deliberation [on the creation of Space Force] was ongoing, one thing the debate about Space Force did do, it actually increased the discussion on space, the importance of space and why we need to defend space. With the decision already being made and the Space Force stood up, there are some opportunities here to increase our visibility on space. As a side benefit, because the Space Force is coming out of the Air Force, it’s given us an opportunity to take a hard look at ourselves as an Air Force, and there are some things we can do differently and better. There are some things we’ll be able to learn from a new service that starts from scratch.”
Under Brown’s “Accelerate Change or Lose” approach, released last August, the service is to speed the fielding of advanced weapons systems through such means as “digital engineering,” an effort championed by former service acquisition chief Will Roper that is also underway in Space Force. Last month, the Air Force released action orders to implement “Accelerate Change or Lose.”
The upcoming fiscal 2022 Air Force budget is likely to contain significant alterations in force structure and acquisition/research and development programs, as the service seeks to meet the competitive threat of China first and Russia second.
The “Accelerate Change or Lose” action orders say that the service needs “to identify systems and programs that are outdated and/or unaffordable to make way for capabilities that will make us competitive in the future high-end fight.”
In addition, per the action orders, the service “must reexamine its decision processes and organizational scheme in
order to compete effectively and win the high-end fight.”
“Current processes are too slow, allow ‘soft vetoes’ without accountability, incentivize counterproductive inter-MAJCOM and inter-functional fighting, and too often deliver sub-optimized solutions for the sake of compromise and consensus,” the orders say. “The current USAF structure is optimized for an obsolete strategic context and must be updated to compete, deter, and win the high-end fight.”
The Biden administration is to evaluate military service budgets and their relevance to the administration’s national security goals, which are likely to feature winning the technological competition against China.
“In any joint warfighting scenario, the USAF will have a pivotal role responding to conflict with either China or Russia,” per the “Accelerate Change or Lose” action orders. “Effectiveness in deterring or prevailing in high-end conflict depends upon actions taken in peacetime competition, particularly given the time required to affect structural change in developing and fielding air forces.”
Given its history of technological focus and its range, the Air Force may fare well in the upcoming fiscal 2022 budget.
The “Accelerate Change or Lose” action orders call on the the service to take immediate action to compete more effectively against China and Russia. “While competition affects all aspects of the defense enterprise, the implications of competing effectively, or not, are most significant to the USAF,” said the action orders, which also call upon the service to develop “future force design and operating concepts to defeat the adversaries’ ways of war (e.g. informationalized warfare, systems confrontation warfare, and systems destruction warfare).”