Task Force Concepts of Operations: transforming the USAF - Features - U.S. Air Force

Air & Space Power Journal, Summer, 2003 by Larry Weaver, Anthony C. Cain

Just as Air Force leaders began to discern outlines of the campaign they faced, the White House introduced one of the most significant national security strategy (NSS) changes in recent memory. The new NSS places greater emphasis on the utility of military power as an instrument of national power. Now military planners must shift their focus from a strategic framework in which the military is a tool of last resort (subordinate to diplomatic, economic, and informational instruments) to one in which military power could play a dominant role--a preemptive role--in US foreign-policy initiatives. In this new role, DOD and service leaders had to shift their attention to providing more expeditionary capabilities than they anticipated as the Cold War faded into history.

Air Force transformation efforts, therefore, needed to confront at least four characteristics of the new security environment. First, a peer competitor will probably not emerge for at least the next 10-15 years. Barring the advent of a competitor's technological leap that fundamentally changes warfare, this leaves the United States and the Air Force in a dominant technological position that discourages a search for radical new operating concepts and technologies. Second, DOD and the services were not satisfied with earlier attempts to revolutionize institutions and technologies presented by the end of the Cold War. Now the proliferation of overseas threats and the urgency of the threat to the homeland dictate a conservative and evolutionary development strategy. Third, because the Air Force experienced nearly a decade of relatively stable but underfunded combat and combat-support force structures, it is not optimized for the expeditionary demands placed on it by the emerging security environment. Fourth, the reality and urgency of present-day threats exert pressure on service leaders to emphasize and nurture contemporary capabilities. The Air Force finds itself mired in an expanding deployment and employment cycle that favors current systems and infrastructure. In other words, the system is under great pressure to perform, which means less emphasis and concern for embarking on a path that aims to produce fundamental technological, institutional, or operational change.

Status--Task Force CONOPS

The Air Force transformation focus produced seven conceptual operating concepts to cope with pressures radiating from the emerging strategic environment discussed above. Operating concepts and CONOPS monikers proved confusing both within and outside the service. The USAF Transformation Flight Plan provided the most complete description of how the operating concepts would lead to transformation. (2) This document linked Air Force transformation initiatives to larger plans under the auspices of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) and the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The USAF Transformation Flight Plan first outlined a clear transformation definition: "A process by which the military achieves and maintains asymmetric advantage through changes in operational concepts, organizational structure, and/or technologies that significantly improve war-fighting capabilities or ability to meet the demands of a changing security environment." (3) This broad definition afforded planners enough guidance and ample maneuve r room to respond to midcourse corrections as senior leaders refined specific goals in response to shifting security demands.