After eight months of planning, the US Air Force's reorganization is moving forward, albeit slowly. Six Air Force and joint bases have been identified for re-optimization to meet the China threat. However, significant questions remain as to how the new unit construct will meet the global challenge posed by the People's Republic of China (PRC).
US Air Force Not Ready to Defeat China
When the Air Force first announced its initiative to reorganize, Liberty Nation News explained what it was about in as much detail as was available. The Department of the Air Force (DAF) has decided to reorganize with a program called "Optimizing the Air Force for Great Power Competition." From the first day he took office on the fourth floor of the Pentagon's E-Ring, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has sounded the alarm that the US Air Force is not ready to take on China and win.
"As I've said many times, it has been clear to me for over a decade that China is intent on fielding a force that can conduct aggression in the Western Pacific and prevail even if the United States intervenes," Kendall wrote in a Sept. 5, 2023 memo to all Air Force members. So, molding the DAF to achieve victory against the People's Liberation Army should be no surprise. Yet molding it how and why remains an issue.
It's been over eight months since Secretary Kendall revealed the re-optimization initiative. Still, there have been few reliable details about how it will all work, and at least a couple of questions need to be answered. First, what is it about the existing organization that is not up to facing the PLA in a great power conflict? Then, a corollary to this first question: What is it about the PLA that demands reorganizing? That is, besides the rapid expansion of China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), which is a capacity and capability challenge that probably won’t be addressed by simply reorganizing what we already have.
The Heritage Foundation, in its 2024 Index of US Military Strength, compared Air Force aircraft numbers in 2024 with those of the last time the Air Force was prepared to fight a near-peer enemy, 1987. "[T]he Air Force will have a total force that equates to 47 percent of the fighter (1,932), 43 percent of the bomber (140), 67 percent of the tanker (471), and 76 percent of the airlift assets (274) it possessed the last time the United States was prepared to fight a peer competitor," the report stated. With the PLAAF growing at an accelerated pace and the US Air Force with significantly reduced numbers of combat aircraft, reorganizing may not be the most pressing priority.
Why the emphasis on re-optimization, anyway? There is an argument to be made that regardless of how the DAF is organized, there's a shortfall in warfighting systems, aircraft, and the ability to sustain readiness. Air Force leadership needs to provide a compelling case for the re-optimization based on why the current construct isn't optimized. The explanation from the Air Force is that the current environment is different than previous threat environments.
Great Power Competition Needs New Approach
In The Case for Change, General David Allvin, chief of staff for the Air Force, opens with an introduction titled “A Legacy of Adaptation.” The Air Force, over the years, has been optimized for different basic conflict environments. Optimization for the Cold War meant prioritizing stealth and precision technologies to offset the numerical inferiority in conventional forces. Optimizing for the “Unipolar Moment” after the success of the Gulf War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant a massive downsizing of the US military. After 9/11, the Air Force reoptimized yet again for the “Global War on Terror,” which called for innovations in technology and tactics focusing on on-demand power projection and sustainment accomplished by continuous rotational deployments.
Unlike in the past, the Air Force believes great power competition entails a new set of warfighter demands – urgent threats, accelerated change, contested environments, and ascending domains. However, past Air Force leadership would argue they did prioritize urgent threats like the "complex security environment defined by the PRC…and the acute threat of Russia." The Air Force dealt with new and disruptive technologies representing accelerated change. Precision-guided weapons of all types would fall into this category. There has never been a time in the Air Force's history when it has not dealt with "state actors, aggressive and asymmetric actions." Though more prominent today as threat environments, the Air Force has traditionally incorporated ascending domains like cyber and space into its defense calculus. The growing gap in aircraft numbers appears to be the most urgent of the warfighter demands.
More details are needed regarding the Air Force's plans to re-optimize to justify a wide-ranging disruption to how airmen do business. Congress would like more granularity on what the US Air Force is proposing. The FY2024 Defense Appropriations Act report language states:
"On February 12, 2024, the Secretary of the Air Force announced an effort to re-optimize the Department of the Air Force to meet the challenges of Great Power Competition. The agreement notes that, to date, the Department of the Air Force has not provided thorough justification for this reorganization, a comprehensive implementation plan, or detailed budgetary information necessary for the Subcommittees to assess this plan."
Once the US Air Force has provided Congress with a "thorough justification" of what it has in mind, we’ll have a better idea of just how and why the re-optimization will address beating China in a great power competition. After eight months, we don't know much more than we did in February. However, if the threat is as Kendall describes, it will take more than rearranging the deck chairs.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
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