The Weak Link in the Air Force Is Me
Colin Biery
February 11, 2022
Commentary
An organization under strain will fail at its weakest link. As the U.S. Air Force faces possible wars with China and Russia, I have a bad feeling that I know where its weakest link is. If the Air Force loses its next battle, campaign, or war, it will not lose it in the air, despite some inevitable casualties, delays, and degradation. If the Air Force is truly defeated, it will be defeated on the ground. It will be defeated because the service’s combat support elements won’t be able to provide the logistics, protection, and infrastructure required while under attack. My uneasy feeling is that the Air Force’s weakest link is the tactical level leadership of its combat support units, their company-grade officers — officers like me.
At this point, the threats posed by the anti-access/area denial, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities of America’s rivals have been discussed in great depth. For the first time in a long time, the Air Force is facing the possibility of adversaries that can hit back. The roles that potential enemies seek to target and disrupt are largely those filled by Air Force combat support. Flowing forces into theater, establishing infrastructure and networks, then sustaining and protecting it all, is my job. However, for reasons of experience, training, and culture, I am not ready to accomplish that job during the kind of conflict that the Air Force may very soon face. As a service, the Air Force tends to assume that its support squadrons will always be there with what it needs. It is time to take a hard look at that assumption.
Combat Support’s Competing Tasks
The opening phase of a war with China or Russia would be chaotic and generally miserable. Preparing for anything else is setting the conditions for failure, but that is what the Air Force has unintentionally done for many of its junior officers. To understand how this has happened, and what might be done to fix it, it’s first necessary to understand the competing tasks that an Air Force combat support squadron must balance.
Combat support in the Air Force is best thought of as the middle piece that connects the pointy end of the spear with the rest of the defense establishment, almost always through some form of airbase. Logistics readiness, airfield operations, security forces, civil engineering, force support, contracting, finance, maintenance and the remaining pieces of communications, constitute the Air Force’s combat support element.
https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/the-weak-link-in-the-air-force-is-me/
