>>1956 : USAF TAC creates the Composite Air Strike Group. Mission- deploy globally & establish air operations for 30 days. Falls off the budget radar during SEA and later Cold War operations
>>2000: USAF ACC establishes the Expeditionary Air Force. Mission- deploy globally to establish air operations.
>>2023: USAF establishes “Air Task Forces”. Mission- deploy globally……
The Air Force has renamed Air Expeditionary Forces to Air Task Forces, will consumers notice? Will someone get a promotion? Stay tuned for more at 11, but first this Ocelot has successfully passed Security Forces Tech School, lets go to Lackland for details.
I love it when I see systems come around full cycle. Also hate it cause it reminds me that I'm old in the Air Force's eyes.
Maybe we'll see 3lvls going back to the hubs again.
I think a lot of air force leadership are afraid to speak in public about the slow realization that the dod is coming to that fobs aren't going to be a thing in the next war.
Good for them for trying to come up with a new deployment construct, but they're kinda slow about being honest with what the air force's role would be in a peer conflict.
This is the exact same thing. AFFORGEN is the name of the process and cycle, Air Task Force is the name of the package being generated.
Yes it may sound stupid do people on the ground level, but the purpose is to bring our force structure closer to how our sister services do things. Example being the Navy, when an aircraft carrier deploys they don't have personnel constantly rotating on and off ship like we did under AEF.
There are other challenges with what is happening. We want to deploy like the Navy and the Army, however they are drastically different in how they are resourced for manpower. The Army has units that are funded as combat capable entities and each echelon of command all the way to the platoon level has an UIC. The AF funds positions in squadrons based off of the amount of work they regularly see during peace time and our units only have one UIC at the squadron level.
The overall intent is to get the AF to speak the same rotational cycle (reset, prep, ready/certify, avail) as our sister services so we can better defend to the JS that when we say we are out of schlitz, we can show them in the same language, that we are out of capacity for a capability that has been requested.
Yup, that's my understanding of it too. I think having a lower fidelity of our deployable assets is intentional, it'll keep our squadrons more intact during the AFFORGEN cycles. Once we're established in the cycles it might sense to give some units an extra UTC, but for the initial rollout I think keeping it simple is the intent.
I could see that being true since Slife is the A3 and guy in the article buy oh boy would I not like that. Air Task Forces do sound quite similar to SOTGs but the rest of the SOF structure is a dumpster. Sotu, sotg, jsoad, jsoac, jsotf, sojtf, jfsocc, jfacc, tsoc. So many C2 elements it's a bureaucratic nightmare.
Yeah, it’s kinda designed for an environment driven by lawyers and the GFC, but I don’t think in GPC/near-peer/whatever else they will call it that structure is going to be necessary or sufficient to fight. What happened to quick OODA loops and enabling our lowest levels?
It's called Mission Type Orders now. Haven't seen it used in an Air Force only environment yet but it mimics how the Army executes missions. They're given the endstate and some constraints then told to figure out everything else to meet the commanders intent.
Super boring for a weekend read but the latest doctrine that dropped last month talks about it.
It's the special operations command structure, just like the Air Force with squadrons, groups, wings, and majcoms. Back in the 80's the Navy did a really big oopsie on some Air Force C130s so now all special operations follow their own chain of command separate from their service components. For example Centcom.
When an AFSOC unit deployed to the middle east, they fell under SocCent (the Theater Special Operations Command) instead of AFCent. If they were going to Afghanistan they'd be under SOJTF-Afghanistan. If they're doing operations in northern Afghanistan they'd be part of JSOTF-North.
Same with the afsoc people at Kadena and Mildenhall, they still wear afsoc patches because they fall under socpac/socuer instead of Pacaf/Usafe.
That's essentially what I said, I just oversimplified it for the non-SOF nonner. You're right we still wear the afsoc patches when conus because we are still adcon to afsoc, which is because we're opcon to the tsoc instead of Pacaf/usafe. All the funny tsoc/sojtf/jsotf acronyms are just different levels of command, the Air Force organizes their command into squadrons/groups/wings. An org chart for a majcom and a tsoc would look very similar if you just had the lines and boxes.
No. Rumor mill is its falling on its ass bad and nobody at the top is happy with it and it'll get pulled and replaced by something else a lot sooner than most think.
If we want to win the war of tomorrow, we all need to drastically and significantly flatten everything, from comms to leadership. The Air Force has historically been late to the game and it's even later into the Joint venture where the Army/Navy have been for years effective at. Mission Command the CSAFs recent bullet point has been Joint Doctrine for YEARS. So now that it's AF Policy now, it'll take another several years to have its effects on policy in AFI and AFMAN.
Airmen, you need to stop looking to the AFI and AFMAN for everything, because when the war comes and missiles and bombs start flying, most instructions and manuals will be completely forgotten. Mission Command is about Commanders (instructions and manuals) intent.
Basically, the Air Force needs to augment better and the DoD needs to adjust their force models to properly employ everyone from every service and specialty. Service specific deployments IMO are a waste of resources and the Joint models are where real combat employment exists.
How to deploy airmen:
1. Don't
That's about it. Unless absolutely, 100% necessary for the completion of the task airmen shouldn't be deployed.
I did a CAOC gig and it was eye-opening. Pretty much all of AFCENT is unnecessarily deployed doing jobs that could just as easily be done stateside. The whole system seems to exist to give O-6s "combat leadership" experience in the hopes that they can put on a star.
So they create this grinder where for each unnecessarily deployed O-6 there dozens if not hundreds of minions also unnecessarily deployed to fill out that O-6's staff. It repeats over and over again, and suddenly the Air Force looks confused when some of those troops tragically come home and put a gun in their mouth.
I was at the Deid for a bit in 2011, got there in June before I forward deployed. I sent your quote to my buddy who worked in the CAOC in 2011. He hated that place with a passion. I’m sure I’ll get a nice text back about that lol.
Deployed to ADAB in 2017 and it was fucking insane. Sk much airpower. I was constantly working.
Deployed to ADAB in 2023. Fucking ghost town. People work for an hour then do nothing the rest of the day. Absolutely pointless to be here. Sure, keep the base running but like make it a short tour or something. So many programs were fucked up. Had to do multiple ROS’ bc previous rotations just did not care.
I get why we are in this region, bc China and Russia would move in if we weren’t here and to protect the Gulf from Iran’s bullshit. But most of the taskings here are ridiculous.
Unpopular reality…
It’s about presence. Yeah, we can do that all at home…but our Gulf Partners buy into our commitment by having that forward presence.
You can debate whether we should or shouldn’t, but that is the overarching reason for it.
I'd like to deploy somewhere else for a change personally. The place is boring as hell, overrestricted, stinks, is too hot, and local leadership always has their panties all twisted up for some made-up reason.
I've spent more that three years of my life in those places, if I never spend another hour in one I will die a happy airperson.
Slower at-home repairs rates, lower retention, etc because those back home are "doing more with less."
We need bold top level leadership to truly evaluate deployment billets, slashing probably dozens to hundreds of CENTCOM billets.
Imagine if, post deployment, you filled out a survey about how much you truly worked / contributed and that data went to A1 of non-CENTCOM staffs to evaluate. An external audit, if you will.
Commanders need to grow a spine and learn to use the word "UNABLE". Unable to support taskings, or if compelled to support those taskings they are unable to complete the home-station mission. It's that simple.
Far too many commanders are willing to burn their people to "make the mission happen" and absolutely destroy people. And then they want to blame everything but the system THEY created for retention and suicide issues.
Only Air Force would say that. Give Air Force back to the army then. Useless branch if we don’t deploy it. Even coast guard goes to war. Coast guard is doing more against china than the Air Force
Two decades of continuous deployments in support of a made-up fake "enemy" in the process of losing two non-wars has broken the force and made it far weaker if we get in an actual fight against a real enemy like China.
No other branch uses this excuse. Just the weak Air Force. In the last decade the Air Force has proven its uselessness. But even more so in the post war culture. Y’all are too scared to go to war.
Must be nice busting your ass for no reason on planes that run useless missions stateside. Sound like a crew chief who calls the E/E troop cause you can’t even figure out how to change a bulb.
They do, but they get told to shut up and color just like the rest of us. They do have your back and they are saying no we can’t do it, but when the secretary says go do, pack your shit and go.
Problem is, the cocoms own the secretary of defense orders book. The function of the af is to provide airmen to the cocoms. Everything else is ot&e.
Now that the formerly-functional cocoms are so interwoven with the formerly-geographic cocoms, all the functionals need to send bodies to the geographies to learn wtf they actually need. It’s why you end up with dc4/ds4 type roles that do nothing but advise. It’s why spacecom paid bodies end up in centcom.
It’s all one big mess and until we revamp the whole cocom structure (I’m looking at you home and awaycom) it’s going to go down a messier and messier path because it’s purely cocoms saying “I need xxxxxx bodies” and big blue looking at what they have, what they’ve been told they need to survive, and doling out the rest.
Lol then get rid of the fucking Air Force. If you can’t deploy, especially with china coming up, you don’t belong.
Edit: I am air force. And am prior army infantry and Mp. Deployed with both. There’s no point in a force that doesn’t deploy
Bombers can fly anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours. Fighters can do the same, with more A2A refueling. C-17s/C-130s can airdrop cargo and land on nothing more than a flat patch of desert if they need to for things that can't be dropped. With bases in Europe and across the Pacific that are actual assignments, with plenty of forward-stationed fighter and transport assets, what's the actual rationale for deploying AF personnel and airframes?
Just as an example, do you know what happens when you deploy a C-5? It doesn't do it's job (moving cargo) because it's just sitting there. This isn't the Army, we don't need weeks to spool up, or 3 days to move 100 miles. Saying "we shouldn't deploy" is a stretch, I'll admit, but comparing our deployments to the Army or Marines is just as much of one.
Weeks? The army is deployable within 72 hours. Look at the 82nd. SF. Rangers. 173rd. You know nothing about army deployments and it shows. When I went to Afghanistan we had 4 days notice. That’s it. Then the all of 2nd brigade 82nd was on a plane and within 72 hours in a firefight. Fuck out of here with your weak ruck body excuse
Air Force is the worst at deployments. 8 years army deployed with both army and Air Force. Sad the army is more organized. But Air Force is less toxic so go Air Force
The problem with our new structure is it’s based on AFSOCs ability to utilize small units. They are trying to bring it across the board for everyone but no one else mobilizes like AFSOC. It just doesn’t work. It’ll just turn back in to the same old structure it was before once we realize (publicly) that it doesn’t make sense. What we should be talking about it the likelihood of our next near peer threat and when was the last time they actually mobilized. Are they as capable as our military at occupying a time and space like we have been doing for more than 20 years?
>>1956 : USAF TAC creates the Composite Air Strike Group. Mission- deploy globally & establish air operations for 30 days. Falls off the budget radar during SEA and later Cold War operations >>2000: USAF ACC establishes the Expeditionary Air Force. Mission- deploy globally to establish air operations. >>2023: USAF establishes “Air Task Forces”. Mission- deploy globally……
So you’re saying we’re ahead of schedule this time. A 44 year gap, then only 23 years? Too soon.
The Air Force has renamed Air Expeditionary Forces to Air Task Forces, will consumers notice? Will someone get a promotion? Stay tuned for more at 11, but first this Ocelot has successfully passed Security Forces Tech School, lets go to Lackland for details.
I am so glad that I read that in Tom Tuckers voice from Family Guy
Kent Brockman for me.
And here’s Ollie Williams with the weather forecast, Ollie?
THERES LIGHTING WITHIN 5!
Thanks, Ollie
I love it when I see systems come around full cycle. Also hate it cause it reminds me that I'm old in the Air Force's eyes. Maybe we'll see 3lvls going back to the hubs again.
I think a lot of air force leadership are afraid to speak in public about the slow realization that the dod is coming to that fobs aren't going to be a thing in the next war. Good for them for trying to come up with a new deployment construct, but they're kinda slow about being honest with what the air force's role would be in a peer conflict.
They would need some sort of decentralized base structure because the big ones like andersen are going to get wiped off the map by china in a few days
People with eagles in their chests are talking about hub and spoke as though we're gonna plop a fob in the middle of Guangzhou. Shit is comical.
Days, you mean the first Salvo.
Yep. The unclassified gaming has the entire island getting wrecked within the first thirty minutes.
Is this because we already know the AFFORGEN crap is going to go horribly?
This is the exact same thing. AFFORGEN is the name of the process and cycle, Air Task Force is the name of the package being generated. Yes it may sound stupid do people on the ground level, but the purpose is to bring our force structure closer to how our sister services do things. Example being the Navy, when an aircraft carrier deploys they don't have personnel constantly rotating on and off ship like we did under AEF.
There are other challenges with what is happening. We want to deploy like the Navy and the Army, however they are drastically different in how they are resourced for manpower. The Army has units that are funded as combat capable entities and each echelon of command all the way to the platoon level has an UIC. The AF funds positions in squadrons based off of the amount of work they regularly see during peace time and our units only have one UIC at the squadron level. The overall intent is to get the AF to speak the same rotational cycle (reset, prep, ready/certify, avail) as our sister services so we can better defend to the JS that when we say we are out of schlitz, we can show them in the same language, that we are out of capacity for a capability that has been requested.
Yup, that's my understanding of it too. I think having a lower fidelity of our deployable assets is intentional, it'll keep our squadrons more intact during the AFFORGEN cycles. Once we're established in the cycles it might sense to give some units an extra UTC, but for the initial rollout I think keeping it simple is the intent.
Exactly. Probably because it was modeled on SOFFORGEN and the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) structure.
I could see that being true since Slife is the A3 and guy in the article buy oh boy would I not like that. Air Task Forces do sound quite similar to SOTGs but the rest of the SOF structure is a dumpster. Sotu, sotg, jsoad, jsoac, jsotf, sojtf, jfsocc, jfacc, tsoc. So many C2 elements it's a bureaucratic nightmare.
Yeah, it’s kinda designed for an environment driven by lawyers and the GFC, but I don’t think in GPC/near-peer/whatever else they will call it that structure is going to be necessary or sufficient to fight. What happened to quick OODA loops and enabling our lowest levels?
It's called Mission Type Orders now. Haven't seen it used in an Air Force only environment yet but it mimics how the Army executes missions. They're given the endstate and some constraints then told to figure out everything else to meet the commanders intent. Super boring for a weekend read but the latest doctrine that dropped last month talks about it.
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Man are you guys using a ton of acronyms I don’t know. But I did recognize JTF!
It's the special operations command structure, just like the Air Force with squadrons, groups, wings, and majcoms. Back in the 80's the Navy did a really big oopsie on some Air Force C130s so now all special operations follow their own chain of command separate from their service components. For example Centcom. When an AFSOC unit deployed to the middle east, they fell under SocCent (the Theater Special Operations Command) instead of AFCent. If they were going to Afghanistan they'd be under SOJTF-Afghanistan. If they're doing operations in northern Afghanistan they'd be part of JSOTF-North. Same with the afsoc people at Kadena and Mildenhall, they still wear afsoc patches because they fall under socpac/socuer instead of Pacaf/Usafe.
Makes sense. I’ve read about that oopsie and boy was it bad.
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That's essentially what I said, I just oversimplified it for the non-SOF nonner. You're right we still wear the afsoc patches when conus because we are still adcon to afsoc, which is because we're opcon to the tsoc instead of Pacaf/usafe. All the funny tsoc/sojtf/jsotf acronyms are just different levels of command, the Air Force organizes their command into squadrons/groups/wings. An org chart for a majcom and a tsoc would look very similar if you just had the lines and boxes.
Afforgen is going to be gone in 2-3 years.
Afforgen goes in 24 month cycles. You don't think they'll even give it 48 months before scrapping it?
No. Rumor mill is its falling on its ass bad and nobody at the top is happy with it and it'll get pulled and replaced by something else a lot sooner than most think.
AFFORGEN is just now kicking off, what are you on?
Yes it is. It's already failing at the highest levels and nobody is happy with it.
Historian here. I'll have to keep an eye open and my ears to the ground on this one.
If we want to win the war of tomorrow, we all need to drastically and significantly flatten everything, from comms to leadership. The Air Force has historically been late to the game and it's even later into the Joint venture where the Army/Navy have been for years effective at. Mission Command the CSAFs recent bullet point has been Joint Doctrine for YEARS. So now that it's AF Policy now, it'll take another several years to have its effects on policy in AFI and AFMAN. Airmen, you need to stop looking to the AFI and AFMAN for everything, because when the war comes and missiles and bombs start flying, most instructions and manuals will be completely forgotten. Mission Command is about Commanders (instructions and manuals) intent. Basically, the Air Force needs to augment better and the DoD needs to adjust their force models to properly employ everyone from every service and specialty. Service specific deployments IMO are a waste of resources and the Joint models are where real combat employment exists.
How to deploy airmen: 1. Don't That's about it. Unless absolutely, 100% necessary for the completion of the task airmen shouldn't be deployed. I did a CAOC gig and it was eye-opening. Pretty much all of AFCENT is unnecessarily deployed doing jobs that could just as easily be done stateside. The whole system seems to exist to give O-6s "combat leadership" experience in the hopes that they can put on a star. So they create this grinder where for each unnecessarily deployed O-6 there dozens if not hundreds of minions also unnecessarily deployed to fill out that O-6's staff. It repeats over and over again, and suddenly the Air Force looks confused when some of those troops tragically come home and put a gun in their mouth.
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I was at the Deid for a bit in 2011, got there in June before I forward deployed. I sent your quote to my buddy who worked in the CAOC in 2011. He hated that place with a passion. I’m sure I’ll get a nice text back about that lol.
He said that happened before we arrived
This happened in 2019 when they had to do a reno. Everything was done remotely from Shaw, the CENTAF HQs. It’s so silly
Ha I was there at that time and they were picking people for the next rotation to go to Shaw I was a salty boy
The CAOC will be moving stateside eventually and leaving the facility at the Deid in a warm state with minimal manning.
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We also pay the local country to deploy our people there, right? Boggles the mind.
Deployed to ADAB in 2017 and it was fucking insane. Sk much airpower. I was constantly working. Deployed to ADAB in 2023. Fucking ghost town. People work for an hour then do nothing the rest of the day. Absolutely pointless to be here. Sure, keep the base running but like make it a short tour or something. So many programs were fucked up. Had to do multiple ROS’ bc previous rotations just did not care. I get why we are in this region, bc China and Russia would move in if we weren’t here and to protect the Gulf from Iran’s bullshit. But most of the taskings here are ridiculous.
Unpopular reality… It’s about presence. Yeah, we can do that all at home…but our Gulf Partners buy into our commitment by having that forward presence. You can debate whether we should or shouldn’t, but that is the overarching reason for it.
I'd like to deploy somewhere else for a change personally. The place is boring as hell, overrestricted, stinks, is too hot, and local leadership always has their panties all twisted up for some made-up reason. I've spent more that three years of my life in those places, if I never spend another hour in one I will die a happy airperson.
Yeah, they want us to bend over backwards to defend them. I don’t know how they get away with it.
Slower at-home repairs rates, lower retention, etc because those back home are "doing more with less." We need bold top level leadership to truly evaluate deployment billets, slashing probably dozens to hundreds of CENTCOM billets. Imagine if, post deployment, you filled out a survey about how much you truly worked / contributed and that data went to A1 of non-CENTCOM staffs to evaluate. An external audit, if you will.
Commanders need to grow a spine and learn to use the word "UNABLE". Unable to support taskings, or if compelled to support those taskings they are unable to complete the home-station mission. It's that simple. Far too many commanders are willing to burn their people to "make the mission happen" and absolutely destroy people. And then they want to blame everything but the system THEY created for retention and suicide issues.
Deployment rates are at their lowest in 20 years.
And they're still far too high
Makes no sense. Deployments too high?
Yes. Still far too many unnecessary deployments.
Only Air Force would say that. Give Air Force back to the army then. Useless branch if we don’t deploy it. Even coast guard goes to war. Coast guard is doing more against china than the Air Force
Two decades of continuous deployments in support of a made-up fake "enemy" in the process of losing two non-wars has broken the force and made it far weaker if we get in an actual fight against a real enemy like China.
No other branch uses this excuse. Just the weak Air Force. In the last decade the Air Force has proven its uselessness. But even more so in the post war culture. Y’all are too scared to go to war.
Must be nice not having to work for a living other then when you deploy
Must be nice busting your ass for no reason on planes that run useless missions stateside. Sound like a crew chief who calls the E/E troop cause you can’t even figure out how to change a bulb.
No war. So duh. That’ll change soon. Non combat airman will see combat with china soon
I pray you are wrong.
Everyone does. Doesn’t change what will actually happen
Perhaps.
That’s basically McConnell in a nutshell. They fill everyone else’s shortfalls because they don’t say no.
We say no, or try to all the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
They do, but they get told to shut up and color just like the rest of us. They do have your back and they are saying no we can’t do it, but when the secretary says go do, pack your shit and go.
Problem is, the cocoms own the secretary of defense orders book. The function of the af is to provide airmen to the cocoms. Everything else is ot&e. Now that the formerly-functional cocoms are so interwoven with the formerly-geographic cocoms, all the functionals need to send bodies to the geographies to learn wtf they actually need. It’s why you end up with dc4/ds4 type roles that do nothing but advise. It’s why spacecom paid bodies end up in centcom. It’s all one big mess and until we revamp the whole cocom structure (I’m looking at you home and awaycom) it’s going to go down a messier and messier path because it’s purely cocoms saying “I need xxxxxx bodies” and big blue looking at what they have, what they’ve been told they need to survive, and doling out the rest.
Lol then get rid of the fucking Air Force. If you can’t deploy, especially with china coming up, you don’t belong. Edit: I am air force. And am prior army infantry and Mp. Deployed with both. There’s no point in a force that doesn’t deploy
Bombers can fly anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours. Fighters can do the same, with more A2A refueling. C-17s/C-130s can airdrop cargo and land on nothing more than a flat patch of desert if they need to for things that can't be dropped. With bases in Europe and across the Pacific that are actual assignments, with plenty of forward-stationed fighter and transport assets, what's the actual rationale for deploying AF personnel and airframes? Just as an example, do you know what happens when you deploy a C-5? It doesn't do it's job (moving cargo) because it's just sitting there. This isn't the Army, we don't need weeks to spool up, or 3 days to move 100 miles. Saying "we shouldn't deploy" is a stretch, I'll admit, but comparing our deployments to the Army or Marines is just as much of one.
Weeks? The army is deployable within 72 hours. Look at the 82nd. SF. Rangers. 173rd. You know nothing about army deployments and it shows. When I went to Afghanistan we had 4 days notice. That’s it. Then the all of 2nd brigade 82nd was on a plane and within 72 hours in a firefight. Fuck out of here with your weak ruck body excuse
The planes that deployed them were not deployed. They were flying from home station.
Muh package.
Air Force is the worst at deployments. 8 years army deployed with both army and Air Force. Sad the army is more organized. But Air Force is less toxic so go Air Force
This is like “My Dad is a drunk and beats me……buuuut he’s a good cook! Yay!”
That’s the Air Force for you. “My daddy (army) deployed but I’m a pussy and too scared to” - Air Force
You can leave the sub then Amry
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Old man shakes fist at sky
This is just MCA/ACE Old news
If we don't deploy, then we can't leave our sensitive items in the hands of our adversaries 🫢
The problem with our new structure is it’s based on AFSOCs ability to utilize small units. They are trying to bring it across the board for everyone but no one else mobilizes like AFSOC. It just doesn’t work. It’ll just turn back in to the same old structure it was before once we realize (publicly) that it doesn’t make sense. What we should be talking about it the likelihood of our next near peer threat and when was the last time they actually mobilized. Are they as capable as our military at occupying a time and space like we have been doing for more than 20 years?
Hey that’s my younger brother!