JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas (AFNS) —

Unprecedented changes to the global security environment are driving sweeping reforms to the way the U.S. Air Force will develop, deploy, and employ combat forces and capabilities to defend the United States, allies and partners nations around the world.

Officials from Air Education and Training Command, which will be redesignated as Airman Development Command, are rapidly redesigning core institutional training and development architectures to support Great Power Competition. This includes designing education and training for the future force with a “mission over function” mindset, where the primary focus is on developing Airmen to emphasize their shared military purpose and mission objectives over individual functional roles.

“Success in today’s strategic environment requires a force aligned and focused on the requirements and attributes that will keep us competitive,” said Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, commander, AETC. “In the context of the U.S. Air Force, ‘mission over function’ emphasizes prioritizing mission success over organizational silos. When it comes to GPC, we are laser focused on developing our Airmen first, ensuring they are mission ready, with the skills we need to succeed as we transform into a more expeditionary force with deployable combat wings.”

As the Department of the Air Force implements major changes, the ADC will develop Airmen with a mission first mindset, and serve as the institutional major command responsible recruiting, training, educating and developing resilient, mission ready Airmen who thrive in complex and contested environments.

“This mindset helps us create an optimized, functionally informed, and agile force development command that effectively accelerates the journey from recruitment to operational deployment, aligns learning content with operational feedback and future capabilities, and precisely matches talent with Air Force requirements,” Robinson said. “Ultimately, our purpose is to enhance the Air Force’s operational readiness by fostering rapid content development, precision talent management, and training pathway agility, ensuring the force remains adaptable, resilient and strategically adept.”

In this construct, force design and operational feedback will serve as the guiding North Star in the overall development of Airmen.

The ADC’s centers of excellence at the Headquarters and Numbered Air Force levels will serve as primary focal points for early integration and coordination with Air Force Materiel Command, Air Combat Command, the service component commands, and the Integrated Capabilities Command regarding sustainment, operational feedback and future capabilities development, ensuring initial skills training and leader development incorporates the competencies every Airman needs for success in GPC.

“With ADC owning overall responsibility for force development, the training for new weapons systems is less likely to be an afterthought due to our ability to integrate with ICC to prepare that training through a mission perspective lens,” Robinson said. “The COEs will expeditiously provide enterprise-focused training and education solutions to support the operationalization of new integrated capabilities in collaboration with the other institutional commands.”

According to the USAF’s The Case For Change, developing personnel is a deliberate priority requiring a dedicated and unified effort to attract, retain and nurture the talent and specialized skills demanded by the emerging strategic landscape. The Air Force must cultivate Mission Ready Airmen—individuals with the expertise and versatile skillsets required to win in various operational scenarios. The personnel we need requires optimizing the force we have by centralizing force development, reinvigorating our warrior ethos to create Mission Ready Airmen, and establishing robust and effective paths for technical areas critical to creating competitive advantage.

“Tomorrow’s Airmen will remain technical experts, but they will also be trained to be mission-ready with additional skills and competencies,” Robinson said. “This includes the concept of mission command, which will allow them to make bold decisions and take advantage of fleeting opportunities to fight and win multiple fights as agile teams. This type of leadership doesn’t just happen. It takes intentional development and practice.”

Additionally, The Case For Change emphasizes centralizing specific facets of force development under a single commander will streamline the coordination, integration, and execution of Air Force training and education initiatives. This centralization will enable the identification and evaluation of specific areas of Airman development that are common and would benefit from a concentrated, integrated approach. This will ensure a more standardized Airman experience and development with a shared understanding of the threat environment.

The desired outcome is the development of the right Airmen for the right place and time, a skilled cadre well-prepared for future challenges, and a cohesive workforce adept at competing effectively—poised to surge and sustain operations during times of conflict. This transition also requires the appropriate renaming of AETC to ADC, reinforcing its focus on shaping the Airmen of tomorrow.

Efficiencies to having force development under a single commander include:

– A single focal point to consolidate and respond to warfighter training requirements that allow the command to rapidly deliver new curriculum that enables the more rapid expansion of training production in a crisis or conflict.

– Enables force providers and components the ability to focus on combat readiness training vice institutional training.

– Improved relationships with industry and provides a single advocate for training modernization research and development and increases the opportunity for new technology use in training at scale.

One example of a mission transitioning to ADC ownership is the development team process, which provides the tools to be accountable for career field succession plans and force development vectors with ultimate responsibility residing with the ADC commander.

“We are transitioning functional force development requirements to ADC while still being advised by functional authorities on the competencies needed by Airmen in the field,” Robinson said. “With multiple functional communities individually directing development in a variety of ways, enterprise needs can sometimes take a backseat to functional career field needs.”

The ADC will provide that holistic, enterprise integration and assessment, via a single commander with the requisite force development authorities to make enterprise-level decisions.

“We’re out of time, and we have to really think differently and figure out how we develop the force at the speed of need and relevance,” Robinson said. “Our strategic advantage is our Airmen. Our sole focus for ADC is making sure our enlisted Airmen, officers and civilians are prepared sooner to be credible, capable, and competent in delivering unstoppable air and space power to detect, deter, confront, and if called upon, combat and defeat potential adversaries.”

By Dan Hawkins, Air Education and Training Command Public Affairs

MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. (AFNS) —  

The Curtis E. LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education and Air Mobility Command collaborated on significant revisions to the recently released Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-36, Air Mobility Operations, reflecting the service’s renewed commitment to maneuverability and lethality.

The publication’s first major revision in five years also reflects the evolving strategic environment and re-emphasizes the importance of the joint functions of maneuver, sustainment and command and control. “These principles are critical to preparing the mobility air forces to effectively position the joint force for advantage and deliver lethal effects at the tempo required for victory,” said Gen. Mike Minihan, AMC commander.

Highlighting the publication’s release, Minihan stressed, “Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics, the victors study maneuver.” Remarking on the efforts to update the doctrine he added, “This version of AFDP 3-36 pushes the envelope in recognizing what the mobility air forces bring to the fight and how we elevate the lethality of the joint team. It includes new sections on command and control, maneuver, the key role air mobility plays in deterrence operations, and critical lessons learned from Operation Allies Refuge, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and recent operations in Israel. Our future challenge demands close reading of this document and thinking about how to fight.”

AFDP 3-36 underscores that air mobility operations are a fundamental extension of airpower — the capability to project military power through control and exploitation in, from and through the air. This updated doctrine aligns with the realities of Great Power Competition and is the first in a series of major service doctrine updates designed to prepare the Air Force for future conflicts.

The LeMay Center is responsible for the development, dissemination and implementation of Air Force doctrine. It is conducting a full doctrine review in support of the Air Force re-optimization for Great Power Competition.

By SMSgt Richard P. Ebensberger, Air University Public Affairs

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) —  

Adding detail and context to an ambitious effort for “reoptimizing” the Air Force, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said in separate appearances June 13 and 14 that changing the way the Total Force trains, plans, modernizes, and is equipped must succeed for the Air Force to meet emerging challenges from China and other competitors.

Speaking first at an Air & Space Warfighters in Action session June 13, Allvin said the Air Force has made real and tangible progress instituting elements of a broad strategy announced in February to evolve how the Air Force develops people, generates readiness, projects power, and develops integrated capabilities.

Allvin pointed out, for example, progress in reinstituting warrant officers to help fill and keep personnel with in-demand skills such as cyber and information technology. That effort, he said, is well underway, with the warrant officer selection board scheduled to convene this month and the announcement of selects tentatively scheduled for late July.

The service started soliciting applications from April 25 to May 31 for Airmen aspiring to become the inaugural cohort of warrant officers in information technology and cyber careers.

He also provided an unambiguous rationale for the undertaking and why Air Force leaders insist on pushing it forward with urgency.

“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,” Allvin said at AFA. “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.”

Separate efforts to assemble, train, and deploy so-called “Air Task Forces” are moving briskly. These units will work and train together throughout the AFFORGENcycle to deploy as Units of Action in fiscal year 2026. The introduction of ATFs marks a significant milestone in the journey toward modernization and readiness, laying the groundwork to ensure the Air Force maintains a competitive advantage over the pacing challenge, he said.

“We have an advancing threat the likes of which we haven’t seen for decades,” Allvin said at AFA. He went on to say, “a key piece of reoptimization is taking all our Airmen and developing them with a common understanding of that threat … That’s central to being ‘Mission Ready Airmen’.”

In addition to understanding the threat, Mission Ready Airmen comprehend the service’s unique and inherent capabilities to defend against the threat.

“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 be leading it. The character of war is privileging the things that airpower has been doing for a long time.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen David Allvin

In a media session June 14 at the Pentagon, Allvin expounded on his comments from the day prior and discussed the need to be “One Air Force.”

“We are taking an Air Force that has been somewhat fragmented due to the strategic environment over the years and really better aligning it and coming back to be one Air Force with one force design, one unit of action type, and one Airmen development concept,” he told a group of reporters.

Near the end of the hour-long session with reporters, Allvin articulated his long-term commitment to the reoptimization effort and better integrating the force.

“I got about a little less than three and a half years left [as Chief of Staff] … and this [reoptimization] is what I am going to be about. It will be nonstop. That I can promise you,” Allvin said.

By TSgt Nicholas G. Koetz

Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs