National Interest: The U.S. Air Force's New Mission: Accelerate Change or Lose?
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is a wrecker and a builder. The new U.S. Air Force chief of staff wants to uproot post-Cold War attitudes toward air warfare—attitudes premised on everlasting U.S. air supremacy—and implant a mindset premised on competitive entrepreneurship. Can he succeed?
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is a wrecker and a builder. The new U.S. Air Force chief of staff wants to uproot post-Cold War attitudes toward air warfare—attitudes premised on everlasting U.S. air supremacy—and implant a mindset premised on competitive entrepreneurship. Shortly after taking up his post this summer, Gen. Brown issued a brief directive to the service entitled Accelerate Change or Lose. It’s a manifesto explicitly aimed at recasting how airmen think about air power.
Brown points out that the air force has gotten by with certain assumptions since Desert Storm thirty years ago. Aviators have grown accustomed to having the leisure and taxpayer largesse to field top-end platforms, sensors, and armaments; to thinking of North America as a safe haven from hazards on the far sides of the oceans; and to regarding command of the air as something that belongs to the United States as though by a law of nature. He proclaims that “these assumptions no longer hold true today.”
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WNU Editor: The message (and warning) from the new US Air Force chief is blunt .... The Air Force Isn't Dominant Anymore ... Says Air Force Chief of Staff (Popular Mechanics). He also sees future wars happening 'not far' from US shores .... New US Air Force Chief Suggests Possible 'Future War' Would Be Fought 'Not Far' From US Shores (Sputnik).
