WASHINGTON (AFNS) —
The Department of the Air Force announced Feb. 17, the Multi-Domain Warfare Officer (13O) career field will be phased out while emphasizing that multi-domain capabilities will become fundamental across the Air Force.
This phase out impacts 136 currently-assigned Total Force Airmen in the active component, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve.
“We must be prepared to face future conflicts with our joint and combined partners, and the knowledge Multi-Domain Warfare Officers bring to the fight is too critical to confine to a single career field,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. “To continue outpacing near-peer adversaries, we must reinforce all Air Force members’ multi-domain expertise.”
The Air Force will continue to evolve its professional education and force structure to ensure all Airmen can apply operational concepts and contribute to Joint All-Domain Operations, versus limiting it to one core AFSC.
The transition will begin after eligible officers meet the LAF-X Colonel central selection board March 29 – April 14, 2022. Commanders will guide Multi-Domain Warfare Officers through the reassignment process. Officers trained in multi-domain warfare gained valuable experience in all-domain and joint planning capabilities which will be leveraged at all levels of training and professional military education to strengthen enterprise-wide capabilities.
“We want to utilize the depth of knowledge and experience that our Multi-Domain Warfare Officers bring to the fight and to the maximum extent possible need their help to train and educate Airmen to fight and win against a peer threat in all domains,” said Maj. Gen. Albert G. Miller, director of Training and Readiness, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at Headquarters U.S. Air Force.
Air Education and Training Command, the lead for Professional Military Education, plans to implement principles of the current Multi-Domain Warfare Initial Skills Training into Air Force-wide developmental education. This will increase the operational knowledge and expertise required to produce joint-capable and credible Airmen.
The Multi-Domain Warfare Officer (13O) career field was established June 25, 2018, as a result of the Multi-Domain Command and Control Implementation Plan to train operational-level C2 personnel specialized in executing command and control of multi-domain operations.
For an earlier SSD article from last November on the 130 Career Field, I said this;
“Every time I see ‘multi-domain warfare’ advertised I have flashbacks to ‘effects-based operations’ [EBO] on the Joint side, and ‘perfect situational awareness’ or ‘deep battle’ from 20 years ago for the Army. More training on how to leverage, synchronize, and deconflict, all available assets and thwart enemy actions and reactions is always a good thing. But color me skeptical that this latest cohort of planners are anymore “Jedi Knights” than the Army SAMS graduates thought they were a generation or two ago.”
It turns out that this initiative had an even shorter shelf life than I thought it would. Too bad. Now, I suppose, the Air force will go through the motions of making everyone “multi-domain qualified” – whatever that means. Bottom line, if this complex shit was that easy, they would have just trained every Airman to do it in the first place.
TLB
Agreed. Can you imagine being so shortsighted your create an officer careerfield of only 100+ over three years and then get rid of it. They even created a goofy badge for it.
SSD,
I find it odd – given how high the AF’s stated expectations were for these “Jedi” – that the concept was not given at least a little more time to prove itself. I’m guessing that it became obvious pretty quick that the “operational art” juice they were producing wasn’t nearly worth the squeeze. I would love to hear from a 130 who has been trying to do the job for the last couple of years. Did the Service select the wrong candidates? Was the training inadequate? Or did leadership have no clue what they actually wanted from the graduates? My bet is a combination of all three.
TLB
I assume there is an underground of 130 alumni, and that some interesting comments will start to leak out in due course. And it will also be interesting to see what pattern of promotions and assignments these folks will roll into. I bet a lot of them burned bridges with their previous career fields when they went “Multi Domain”.
I’m sure all three plus the added problem that most weren’t rated officers and were telling the anointed ones how to suck eggs.
The Air Force has what are called “patch wearers” who attend Weapons School at Nellis. It started out as a finishing school for the best fighter pilots and then expanded to most airframes and associated ops careerfields like Intel, Cyber, and Space. Traditionally, they have been the go-to folks for planning. This concept directly competes with their primacy although it is much broader looking and more well rounded.
Heck, even us lowly cops are getting our own weapons school. AFGSC is leading the effort; I believe the first class with open enrollment is this year.
You talkin about the Gunfighter course?
Officers in the Air Force and Navy will remain at the tactical level through O-6, and in a few specific cases, O-8. Taking senior officers who were great fighter pilots, ship, and sub drivers away from the weapons system and assigning them to an Air or Maritime Operations Center creates challenges.
The MDO and Naval Operational Planner career paths were intended to create a group of officers that are trained at the operational level of war, and remain in the appropriate billets. The problem is that once they leave their traditional communities, they don’t fare well at advancement boards. The new career paths are so small that they also don’t fare well in boards, so why keep the specialty career path?
The courses will continue. The career path will be disestablished.