The Air Force plans to eliminate group-level operations and maintenance commands. Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin announced the move June 14, characterizing it as a better way to project combat power, according to an article published by the Air and Space Forces Association (AFA). Allvin delivered his remarks recently at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium.
“We’re talking about having a doctrine of mission command that means empowering at the lowest competent level, giving left and right limits – commander’s intent – and letting them leverage their initiative,” Allvin said.
“These squadrons need to be able to exercise that. And sometimes, if there’s another level of command between the squadron commander and the wing command, the group command may be helping them out too much.”
These operations and maintenance commands are typically led by colonels. As the change takes place, these officers will likely move to wing staffs, Allvin said, according to the AFA article. Once in their new jobs, their roles would shift to operational war-fighting and war-fighting functions, he said.
Allvin acknowledged that the new organization would entail adjusting officers’ career paths and shifting professional military education to emphasize the operational wing level for wing commanders and their staffs, AFA reported.
Officials at the symposium also said they plan to break down the Air Force’s operational wings by:
* Deployable combat wings, with units can deploy together with their own command-and control, mission and support elements. These would serve as the primary “units of action.”
* In-Place combat wings, which are complete units that would fight from their home stations with command, mission and support elements.
* Combat generation wings, which would provide force elements to deployable combat wings.
The aim is to move to a system where a multitude of units in an expeditionary wing would no longer only meet and work together after they arrive in theater, In time, such wings would train and deploy as “one singular unit,” AFA reported.
More details regarding the role of deployable combat wings still need to be determined.
“We don’t want to have a deployable combat wing that’s got two airplanes in it just because we’ve got to spread them around,” Allvin said. “So finding the right number of platforms around which you can do the command element and then the sustainment element is going to be key, but it starts off with, what are the requirements? And then what are we resourced to do?”
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