BZ to USAF Secretary

...march to the sound of guns...

While well-meaning people acting in good faith can have a variety of ideas - some in stark contrast to those held by others - there is one common thread connecting them all; the best know whatever we are doing is not ideal to prepare our nation for a future conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Only the incompetently arrogant think they have a perfect vision of the future. Simple mortals know they can only make their best guess, and then bake in enough flexibility to respond to the known-unknowns as they reveal themselves.

We all have our favorite reasons why we are in the position we are - flat-footed in the face of a determined PRC - and it often seems as if the system as a whole is vapor locked to inaction - everyone looking to the people to the left and right to break free of the accretions encumbering positive action in order to move the ball forward.

Beyond the substantive reasons derived from the point I made in the first paragraph, I think a lot of the pushback against the USMC’s Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept responding to the challenge in WESTPAC by the PRC was simply because … there was movement. For many change is scary, scary is bad, bad must be opposed.

At least USMC leadership remembered that when under fire, standing still on “the X” is the best way to get killed. Move somewhere, anywhere, except the spot where you’re taking fire.

With the present leadership and the present structure our military runs under, I increasingly think waiting for a “Joint Comprehensive Strategy” or even the “Maritime Strategy” subset of the same is folly. We are well past having “time” for such things to carefully plan around - I’d argue we’re incapable of producing one.

So, without clear orders, yet under threat, what is a leader to do? The American tradition - well, its best tradition - is to take action. Looks like the USAF is the next service to take a step to act in line with the USMC.

The U.S. Air Force is changing the way it deploys forces as part of a sweeping overhaul to make the service leaner and prepare for a fight against China.

Instead of deploying forces one squadron at a time, and taking people and aircraft from various units throughout the service to meet in theater, the Air Force will now structure wings so they train and deploy together.

Future Air Force wings, or “units of action” as the service calls them in the new plan, will need to get “whole units” ready for conflict.

“We need to ensure that our combat wings are coherent units of action that have everything they need to be able to execute their wartime tasks,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin.

…

“We are going to turn this enterprise and point it directly at our most challenging threat,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said.

OK, I can’t help myself. For the love of LeMay … can we stop with all the “enterprise” weekend-MBA babble. “We are going to turn the Air Force and point it directly at our most challenging threat,”

Wouldn’t that be a better way of putting it?

So, BZ to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. Am I in love with all of his plan? No. Do I think some of it is wrong? Yes. … but in aggregate; Salamander approved - as I don’t think he is in love with or think it is all correct either.

Kendall said all of these changes won’t have a “big cost imposition.” The service didn’t ask for any funds in the 2024 or 2025 budget for the effort, but might need some in 2026.

“These changes are going to be done within existing resources, which in some cases, is probably going to mean we'll have to stop doing some of the things we're doing now,” Kendall said, noting that will be identified in the planning process.

However, Allvin said the service will need more money to conduct the large-scale exercises they’re planning to practice their new deployment method.

While some of these changes may not be the right move, service officials said, and a lot of details still need to be worked out, the service can’t risk staying stagnant.

“We do not have them exactly right and I am unapologetic to stand here in front of you and say I do not know the exact final destination and here's why. Because if we wait to move, to have those final answers, we will be too late,” Allvin said.

Willing to be wrong? Open-ended experimentation? No promise of magic beans of transformation … but hoping for maybe just some incremental good options?

Sold.

There are baby steps in this direction by both Army and the Navy, but nothing this clear about the threat.

Maybe all of DOD should start the “Salamander 12-Steps Program” to get past our lethargy that, in FEB24, thinks it is normal that we can only, for example, produce one submarine a year in spite of two decades plus appreciating the problem we have in our submarine industrial sector:

1. We admitted we were powerless over the dead hand of the post-Goldwater-Nichols unaccountable defense nomenklatura in DC — that our ability to address the challenge from the PRC had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that the historical example of others greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our OPLANS over to the care of The Gods of the Copybook Headings as we understood them.

4. Made a searching and fearless truthful inventory of our industrial capacity and war reserve weapons stockpiles.

5. Admitted to the taxpayers, to ourselves, and to another member of the natsec nomenklatura the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have transparent oversight remove all these defects of program.

7. Humbly asked honest & direct staff officers recently off sea duty to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all our critics we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through regular PT and performance reviews to improve our conscious contact with budget realities as we understood them, praying only for knowledge of future continuing resolutions and the power to survive them.

12. Having had a defense industrial base awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to Congress, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.