The State of the Air Force 2024
A strategic reorientation is unfolding against changes in the conduct of air warfare.
AUDREY DECKER | APRIL 8, 2024
AIR FORCE
The great strategic reorientation of the past decade—from counterterrorism to great power competition—is now unfolding against changes in the conduct of war itself. Air Force leaders are working to meet the challenges through a dramatic reorganization, rethinking how to deploy forces, and a renewed focus on uncrewed systems and next-gen technologies.
“We certainly look to optimize for the pacing challenge, but we do it the nation asks us to do, and I would say that the great power competition [effort], it is focused on China, but actually we're optimizing for the environment that we're in, so whatever that turns out to be,” Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said March 28 during Defense One’s State of Defense series. “The changing character of war demands us to think about things differently, so I would say that this optimization is really as much as optimizing for the environment within which there's great power competition [instead of] just focusing on China.”
For the past 20 years, the U.S. Air Force has been deploying forces one squadron at a time to the Middle East, and taking people and aircraft from units across the service. But that’s not going to be good enough in a bigger fight against China, officials say.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/04/state-air-force-2024/395449/
